Royal Mail International Shipping from U.K. has totally inaccurate delivery dates on Etsy

[#1]

I have reported this repeatedly to no avail via “chat” so am trying again here. There needs to be 2 different International Shipping rules for overseas from U.K. or a system to allow us to specify the delivery timeframe. 

My international sales are predominantly to the USA. Royal Mails delivery “aim” to the USA is 5-7 working days. In reality, it often takes up to 10 working days. Etsy constantly advises my customers of totally unrealistic delivery dates - often as little as 3 working days! 

In an attempt to preempt angry customers, I message every overseas buyer to explain that the delivery dates they are given are entirely inaccurate and to give more realistic dates. Of course, not every customer reads this and I inevitably get penalised for “late” delivery.

Etsy has told me that they use information given by the shipping provider but that simply can’t be the origin of this information. As I said, Royal Mail International (which is what my profile is set to) aims to deliver to the USA in 5-7 working days and within Europe, it aims for 3-5 working days. At the very least, if Etsy is drawing from this information but not differentiating between destination country, Etsys “Royal Mail International” profile should then surely allow a window of 3-7 working days?

However, I can have 3 orders within minutes of each other, all with the same “dispatch by” date (they all share the same shipping profile), all going overseas and they all have different (wildly inaccurate) delivery dates! Why? Today, I even have one to the U.K. which is showing a longer delivery window than one going to the USA! How would that possibly happen?

PLEASE can someone from Etsy look into this. It’s driving me mad.

I have been on Etsy for 6 years and know my way around shipping profiles and processing times - it is definitely not an issue with either, at my end. It is an Etsy fault/bug and I would be extremely grateful if someone would PLEASE look into it. I can’t believe I am the only UK seller experiencing problems with this.

Thank you in advance, Kim

[MischiefWarren · Accepted solution]

Just to update everyone with this. I have been sending Etsy screengrabs of any crazy estimated delivery dates (like UK to USA in 3 days!) via Etsy messaging. I can have two orders within minutes of each-other for the exact same item, using the exact same shipping profile, going to the same country, but the estimated delivery dates given are wildly different.

It is NOT a Royal Mail or USPS issue (although they are lax these days which only exacerbates the problem) it is purely and simply an issue with the way Etsy generates the estimated delivery dates. They do NOT accurately use the carriers delivery "aims" (that is Royal Mail's actual wording), but create some which are simply impossible to achieve. This IS negatively impacting my shop in several ways.

Etsy says it is an issue they are "aware of" and the tech team have it in their (no doubt huge) list of fixes. They prioritise their actions based on the number of sellers it effects... so if you don't say anything to them, they wont know it's an issue. I thought that was the point of this section of the forum but I guess not. 

I used to regularly visit the forums for guidance but certain people are incredibly bullying, totally miss the point and don't give helpful advice. For that reason, I no longer ever comment in the forums. It took me an enormous amount of courage to post this thread and I feel "bashed" as a result of some comments.  If your shop is not impacted by this issue, then you need not comment. You can't fix this problem, only Etsy can.

This message is for the purpose of (hopefully) drawing the attention of Etsy to an issue that is affecting many sellers and needs to be fixed please. The more of us that inform Etsy of the impact this is having, the more likely they are to action a fix. Thank you.

[BabiesRepublic]

Same here, if I ship from Ireland to US, if my "ship by date" is 20th of May, the US buyer sees delivery date- 21st,  , even in case US to US it would be hardly possible,I deal with it for now by making the processing time longer and sending the orders much faster than processing time, but in busier autumn/ winter period, I will actually need this long processing time, I had to cancel orders last December because when my "ship by" date - the date by which I had to send out was e.g. Dec 21st, my US customer saw his delivery dates e.g. "21-23"- ridiculous from Ireland to US, if my shipping times were showing correctly like I have them set up, they would know if I send it out on the 21st, they would not get it before Christmas and they would be not annoyed as they were when I had to explain to them (to multiple customers) that it is etsy's technical glitch and not me trying to mislead them with unrealistic shipping times, I have this issue for over 6 months now, please Etsy fix it, it is not enticing buyers to buy , it is making them angry and disappointed with etsy as a platform, it looks like I will have the same issue before Christmas this year again, as my average shipping time from Ireland to US is still ONE day, although in my shipping profile it is set correctly, I do believe it is not a glitch but done on purpose, again it does not encourage buyers to buy more but makes them upset and confused.