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What is a reasonable shipping timeframe?
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What is a reasonable shipping timeframe?
#1
This is fairly important question that I'm (hopefully) going to make a sticky out.

Please vote and ALSO attach a post here to this thread if you have some extra stuff to add.

We need some thoughts here.

My 02 is:

Dry goods from a 100% business - shipped within 10 days. I do not think we ALL should be Amazon.com here.

LIVE goods / Feeders - Shipped within 3-5 days. Lets face it, it's food and your animals probably need it fast.

Frogs / Live animals - Downpayment / wait list EXCLUDED. I feel that if you pay, you NEED to expect your animals within 2 weeks from another hobbyist or a little sooner from a business.

This crap about weather and all the string-along stuff that people like Justin do, are hurting the hobby.

Now the reverse is true also. There should not be an expectation of shipping 1,2 or 3 days from time of order to taking the box to UPS ect. I'm not talking 1,2 or 3 days in TRANSIT either, to clarify. I'm talking when money is paid until shipping happens.

Does that make sense ?
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#2
I disagree; unless we're talking livestock and weather windows, or something that has to be custom built or ship truck freight, if I order something from someone I expect that it's going to be shipped within at most 3 business days, unless they've set my expectations otherwise ("We ship on Wednesdays", "This won't go out until Monday", etc.).

This is 2014; you can pay for shipping online, drop it off at various drop-off points, etc. You can print a label and stick a small flat rate priority parcel box in your mailbox for under $6 and have it picked up and delivered 2-3 days later without ever having to put on a pair of shoes. It's never been easier to ship stuff, and your customer's expectations are getting shaped by services like Amazon -- if you don't set their expectations otherwise, they're going to expect prompt shipping.
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#3
That all seems reasonable. Now extreme cold and extreme heat, I can understand. As someone who ships a pretty ridiculous number of feeders, I personally only ship Mon-Wed. So if someone orders on Wednesday, the order would ship most likely the following Monday. That is typically the longest I go, unless I get 10 or 20 orders to send in one day, then it could take me an extra day. And if folks have a feeder emergency, I do everything I can to get it out right away. However, I work from home and understand not everyone has that convenience. I will give Justin this, if you order plants, they go out right away, and you get more than you paid for. I have never ordered frogs from him though, so can't speak to that. I have ordered broms from him on several occasions and it went smoothly.
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#4
I guess I'm trying to give a 'pass' to the small hobbyist who doesn't earn income ect thru the hobby.

I recently heard a horror story from a buddy of mine about a guy that paid for a couple clippings of plants. This guy expected the plants to go into the mail the NEXT day and have a tracking number for the clippings provided the NEXT day. I dunno but that sounds unreasonable.
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#5
Philsuma Wrote:I guess I'm trying to give a 'pass' to the small hobbyist who doesn't earn income ect thru the hobby.

I recently heard a horror story from a buddy of mine about a guy that paid for a couple clippings of plants. This guy expected the plants to go into the mail the NEXT day and have a tracking number for the clippings provided the NEXT day. I dunno but that sounds unreasonable.

Maybe, maybe not -- but that's an expectation you're increasingly going to find, which is what makes expectation setting so important. I buy and sell a lot of stuff online in an unrelated field, and I make a point to be sure the other party understands when shipping is going to be, whether it's the next day, or two days later. Takes two seconds to do, avoids a lot of misunderstandings.
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#6
I also know the story Phil is speaking of and it was very unreasonable. A lot of folks work a lot of hours, I myself used to average 70 hours a week, and they aren't shipping things on a daily basis. And it is not always as easy as shipping online. Even though I give folks instructions of what to do when paying for feeders, I still have people putting it in as gifts probably 25% of the time. In that case, shipping from Paypal is not an option, and a lot of the time I have to wait for them to respond to give me a shipping address because it was not listed in the "gift" section. I think it is unreasonable to think someone would cut out of work early to ship $15 worth of plants. If it is an online store, I expect it to be faster as they are a business and have a storefront, etc and that is all they do. However 95% of us work full time and this is a hobby, not a business, and to think those folks are shipping 5 days a week is a bit much.
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#7
Not saying you have to ship five days a week at all; just saying that if you don't, it's worth a minute to set expectations, just to avoid misunderstandings. Which you already do -- I bought some springs from you a week or two ago, you told me they'd go out that week, no problem (and they were great, thanks!).

Just going back to Phil's initial post, my point was that expecting people to just automatically be patient is increasingly unrealistic in today's world.
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#8
Agreed. People are becoming less patient. Glad you liked them! Just some folks pay ane before u get a chance to respond, they are wondering where the item is. And that is a bit much I think.
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#9
In the absence of the seller stating anything. I guess I expect

3 business days for dry goods.
2 weeks for live good during spring and fall
winter and hot summers, not sure don't have enough experience.

I have done a ton of trading, buying, and selling online. My general observation is most people are pretty good. I mean most things I buy the guy ships out the next day after a transaction is finalized. But it seems the slow guys are just really slow like they take a whole week or more. Kinda funny how it works out like that.

On the selling side I work insane hours, weekdays and weekends. So it's my experience that if you are going to try to sell under these conditions you spend a little time getting to know how to ship efficiently. Drop offs, pickups, printing labels etc.... All this stuff is going to save you time and if you are busy you need that so invest a bit of time now to learn how it works and it will pay you back dividends over the long run not just in dart frogging but everywhere.
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