Estimated delivery dates are off/Saying order will arrive late when shipped early

[RootBotanical]

I've noticed this for sometime but just recently ended up refunding a buyer over it because Etsy stated they should receive their order in an unrealistic time frame.  My processing days are  set to 3-5 days. I usually ship everything out in 3. When I go to create a label, at the top it almost always says now that it's going to arrive late and the buyer expects it before it's even due to ship. I almost always ship days before ship date. What's happening!?  Here's a few examples:Order was placed on 5/6 and was due to ship by 5/13, It stated buyer expected it to arrive 5/10-5/15, another order was placed 5/11 and due to ship by 5/16, I shipped it on 5/14 and it said it would be late and buyer expects it 5/15-5/18. Is this happening to anyone else?  Why is expected delivery date still within my processing dates?  It's also stating to buyers that ground advantage could possibly only take 1 day to arrive to a state clear across the country.  I feel like this is just setting me up for failure and I need to push my processing dates out even further so  people aren't expecting unrealistic delivery times. Help!

I should also mention, that everything ships First class/ground advantage and to US only.

Any insight would be very helpful! Thanks.

[KMBankston]

Ignore it, the message is wrong.  Ship it like you always do.  Its been going on for months now in my shops.  No repercussions at all.  I think its just a screwed up Etsy message!

[RootBotanical]

I've been ignoring it but now that it's cost me money and upset buyers it's hard to ignore. The buyers see those unrealistic dates as well and it just takes one person that needs something by a certain time and it causes a big ol' headache.

It also doesn't help that the wording Etsy uses on the item listing is "recieve this item by so and so date" instead of "this item is estimated to arrive by" or "Get this item as early as blank date" or something along those lines. We all know there's issues with USPS on top of all this so it really can create quite the mess.  

[SimplyCrone]

Actually it does make a difference. I lost my star seller title due to "late shipment" which was shipped within the time frame I designated. 

[AshleyLaneJewels]

Same here.  I received an order today (5/16) shipping to California from NC, and the red message on my shipping screen states that customer expects it between 5/17 - 5/20.  Next day??  That's completely unrealistic.  With my set processing time of 1-2 days, shipping M-F,  I have until 5/20 to ship it.  If that were the case it would be "late" according to Etsy.

I ship early so luckily most of my packages have arrived by the last date of the "expected by" time frame.  But I agree with you that this is setting us up for failure.

[RootBotanical]

Yeah, it's super unrealistic and it seems like there's a huge influx of people wanting things for free these days, just waiting for any opportunity to ask for a refund. Really wish they would fix this.  

[NickiesNest]

I just had the same experience. Order received yesterday, going from Florida to California.  Will ship it today.  When I purchased the label it showed the earliest arrival date as tomorrow.  I had no idea that the USPS now has rocket mail.

It's ridiculous.

[GroundZeroCreations]

I say screw it all! I ship within the window I promise. Etsy can make all the promises they want. If a customer wants a refund because of delivery date being inaccurate, they can take it up with Etsy. My note to buyer includes a disclaimer that once a package leaves my hands, I have no control over carrier delivery times. But if there is a problem with delivery to contact me and I will try to help. I just want the buyer to know I am not the one making promises I can't keep.

[RootBotanical]

That was my initial stance and told the buyer to contact Etsy because something was askew on their end but it was a lower priced item and I didn't want to use up my buyer protection coverage since I think there's limitations and I'm sure that's how Etsy would probably end up handling it.

[RootBotanical]

I'll add too that I don't really want negative reviews concerning this either. The reason I ended up refunding the buyer in addition to the unrealistic dates,was that on top of that USPS didn't scan their item upon acceptance. So not only were they not getting their item when Etsy told them, they also couldn't track it, so it was kind of a perfect storm.

[RootBotanical]

Update to add: this is not just a glitch on the seller's side. The buyer also sees these unrealistic dates. If you go into your shop page (customer facing) and click on an item, look at the date it says you'll receive it. Today, I did this and it says I'd receive it in 6 days although my processing times are set to 3-5 days and it's also accounting for the weekend since todays Thursday. I don't have Saturday and Sunday set to be counted as processing days, I turned that off.

[MoonkistDesigns]

From what I can tell, Etsy is using the earliest date possible to determine an estimated delivery range. So, you have a 3-5 day processing time (excluding Sat-Sun), Etsy has started calculating the delivery range starting at 3 days out from when the order was placed (example: order placed 5/17 with 3-5 day processing and USPS ground advantage shipping, the delivery estimate would be for 5/22-5/31). It's absolutely annoying and we've run into a few issues ourselves where customers were shown that a thing would arrive within a date range that started before we'd even shipped it, and had placed the order with upgraded shipping because Etsy had indicated to them that they would receive it at the earlier end of things. Our particular issue is that we make our pieces to order and oftentimes need every bit of the 5 days of our stated production/processing time. We've actually started testing a few things by changing our processing/production time to 5-7 days on a few listings, just to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room and see if the delivery estimate is more accurate to what it SHOULD be for the 3-5 day time.