Does extending a "SHIP BY date" hurt visibility?

[FrenchFarmhome]

Buyer placed an order & requested that I hold off on shipping it for at least 7 days (until after 2/24.) I extended the "ship by" date & have noticed that I have not received any other orders since I extended her ship by date. Has anyone else noticed this negatively affecting visibility or perhaps it's just a coincidence?? 

[NanaLetha]

No, it does not hurt you.  Better to extend than ship late.

[FrenchFarmhome]

I sure hope not. This is not the norm for my shop. I just ran my stats for the same 4 days last year & my revenue has decreased 94%. 

[ArtDollsbyJD]

No it does not hurt visibility.  Chances are you are just having a normal pattern.  Sales always go up and down.

[michellepatterns]

No, extending the date for one package won't hurt.

It's possible etsy watches for over use of extending shipping dates but the occasional reschedule is a totally normal thing to happen and it wouldn't make sense for them to monitor and suppress shops for these one-offs.  

[AnnaleasFinest]

@FrenchFarmhome

it hurts my sales nearly EVERY TIME.

I obviously can't prove it, but etsy could indeed conclude that a seller who postpones shipment may be a little overchallenged at the moment and disappoint buyers.

As soon as delayed orders are being marked as shipped, sales roll in again, often the same day.

At least that's my personal experience.

[FrenchFarmhome]

Perhaps I should have just cancelled the order? It wouldn't seem logical that a Seller should be penalized for providing good customer service. 

[FallenAngelBrass]

As others have said, Etsy indeed does not penalize sellers for providing good customer service when we periodically extend the ship-by date on an order.   Extending a ship-by date now and then is a normal practice for many Etsy sellers.  One of the purposes of our having the ability to extend the ship-by date is to allow for periodic extenuating circumstances so that the seller does not get penalized. 

[AnnaleasFinest]

@FallenAngelBrass.

that's the official etsy narrative.

My experience says that's a lot of coincidence that sales collapse after a delay and pick up again after I shipped the according order....

I once asked the same here and several sellers experienced the same.

Others don't.

I think it could depend on how many sales a day you have....

[BagmakerSupply]

Undoubtedly Etsy has some internal triggers that flag shops that extend the shipping date "too often". Is "too often" more than once per day, or more than once per month, or more than 1% of your orders, or more than 99% of your orders? That is something that Etsy will probably not share with us. It might also get worse if they perceive there is a pattern to the ship by date extensions - such as every time a shop has five open orders they extend the date on at least one.

[TBQSC]

The only other recourse is to deny the buyer’s hold request … buyers in the USA can / should have a hold mail request on file with the USPS!  Sellers should not be held responsible for buyers lack of planning.  What if you forget to extend ship date or forget to ship or have other plans (vacation)?  Then you have to deal with the consequences of losing Star Seller or a bad review.  If buyer isn’t available for delivery, they can always purchase at a later date!