Shipping on a Holiday - 7/4/23

[OOAKHomeAccents]

I had an order that was due to ship by 7/4/23, Independence Day.  Businesses were closed since 7/4/23 was a holiday and the order did not ship until 7/5/23.  Therefore, the order was recorded as a "late shipment,"  skewing my shipping stats for Star Seller. 

How can I get this error corrected so I can get my Star Seller designation?

Thank you.

OOAK Home Accents

[NanaLetha]

You can't now. You should have extended your shipping date or mailed earlier. 

[ChillwolfArt]

Sorry about that.  Etsy doesn't manually change or correct Metrics because of  holidays (they vary for everyone).  So we have to extend the processing time/ship date and push it out, before a holiday comes.

Hope this helps.

[BagmakerSupply · Accepted solution]

@OOAKHomeAccents: "How can I get this error corrected" You cannot because to Etsy there is no error - Etsy is postal holiday blind and never considers them in calculating the scheduled ship by date. It is a shop's responsibility to change the ship by date if they cannot ship on or before that date (be it because of a postal holiday or any other reason).

[bradgoodell · Accepted solution]

Etsy doesn't take any country's holiday into consideration.  Instead, Etsy provides sellers with 2 tools:

1. Extend your turnaround time prior to holidays
2. Extend your ship-by dates after a sale

Either works with Star Seller.

[moonbeamgifts]

This is how Etsy calculates - they don't take into account each country's postal holidays.

And for anyone who might not have checked your settings, they also opted some people in to 7 day/week processing so it's a good time to review your settings.

From the dashboard, go to Settings/Shipping Settings - check to make sure the box says what you want it to.     Some were opted in to 7 days, some were overridden on their previous preference - I never noticed because I generally ship before the commit date but I had an order due on a Sunday.  Not how it was supposed to work either but it was good since it triggered my investigation on why.

[AAANativeArts]

You can't. It is your responsibility to keep track of Ship by dates, and if you can't ship before July 4, knowing it is a national holiday, you should have clicked the three vertical  dots and selected Update Ship by Date. You have to do this at least one day before it is due, because once that date arrives, it will no longer let you change it. And you can only change it once, so be sure to extend it enough the first time. I usually pad the new date by a few days just to be sure. It won't count against you if you do that.

[BeaconwoodDettman]

I would recommend contacting Etsy to see if you can have that updated so it doesn't impact Star Seller. Others have shared workarounds but the  root cause is a defect in Etsy's system - that they can take into account Sundays but not postal holidays makes no sense. This is something they need to update. 

[bradgoodell]

@BeaconwoodDettman Support won't fix what they view to be a seller's error.  Star Seller is clear, and has never taken holidays into consideration.  

When people contact support for things like this, it merely slows the process for people who legitimately need help.  

[NoFrogsAllowed]

That is an invalid argument.  Sunday is one day and everyone in the world knows when Sunday is. There are lots and lots and lots of holidays, they are on all different days of the week, some are on different days each year  and some are even in different months.  Could Etsy take care of this?  Probably.  Could they take care of it without screwing it up?  Probably not.

Last I knew this was a business platform, not a preschool.  Take a little responsibility.

[dippeldiundscribble]

@BeaconwoodDettman 

"that they can take into account Sundays but not postal holidays makes no sense."

Etsy is a global site.

Comparing 52 Sundays in non-leap years (which are the same all over the world) with over a thousand of different global holidays (which can even vary within a country per state, city, region or community) makes no sense.

[mopata]

Fixing issues like this would require actual effort by a person with some knowledge of how websites are supposed to function.  Ebay seems to have those people on hand.  Etsy, not so much.

[bradgoodell]

@mopata Ebay has 25 separate websites for different countries/areas.  Amazon has 20.  If you sell on the US site, you have deal with US holidays regardless of where you are shipping from.  If you sell on the UK site, you have UK holidays even if you are in the US.

Etsy, on the other hand, has one website with sellers in over 175 countries. 

Therein lies the difference.  

[BeaconwoodDettman]

@bradgoodell Hi Brad, do you have a reference for what you are saying about how eBay, Amazon and Etsy's websites are set up and why it is not possible for Etsy to build in postal holidays for different countries? Is this what someone at Etsy told you?

[secondarycreations]

eBay International Sites

IN: INTERNATIONAL

7May2009

To better participate in marketplaces outside the United States, eBay has established separate sites for 25 foreign countries. Each of these sites lists items in the country’s native language, using the local currency.

The list of eBay’s international sites includes the following:

• Argentina (www.mercadolibre.com.ar)

• Australia (www.ebay.com.au)

• Austria (www.ebay.at)

• Belgium (www.ebay.be)

• Brazil (www.mercadolivre.com.br)

• Canada (www.ebay.ca)

• China (www.ebay.com.cn)

• France (www.ebay.fr)

• Germany (www.ebay.de)

• Hong Kong (www.ebay.com.hk)

• India (www.baazee.com)

• Ireland (pages.ebay.com/ie/)

• Italy (www.ebay.it)

• Korea (www.auction.co.kr)

• Malaysia (www.ebay.com.my)

• Netherlands (www.ebay.nl)

• New Zealand (pages.ebay.com/nz/)

• Philippines (www.ebay.ph)

• Singapore (www.ebay.com.sg)

• Spain (www.ebay.com.es)

• Sweden (www.ebaysweden.com/)

• Switzerland (www.ebay.ch)

• Taiwan (www.tw.ebay.com)

• United Kingdom (www.ebay.co.uk)

Although these sites were designed for trading within a specific country, there’s nothing keeping you from searching them for items to buy which will put you on the opposite side of the international buyer/seller argument!

• Tags: International

Comments are closed.

[bradgoodell]

I'll explain this as best as I can so you can understand.

Etsy has one website.

Ebay has numerous websites for different countries.

Amazon has numerous websites for different countries.

If you sell on Amazon US, it has US holidays only.  If you sell on Amazon France, it has French holidays only.  It doesn't have holidays for every country accounted for.  No marketplace does.

Etsy is one website for all countries.  If Etsy accounted for all the various countries and regions selling on Etsy's one site, that would be thousands of holidays every year.  There would be hundreds of postal holidays that would be irrelevant to shops other countries or regions. Pretty much every day of the year would be a postal holiday.

Neither Amazon or Ebay do what you want Etsy to do.

Etsy would need to split it's site into 10-20 different websites to do what eBay and Amazon do.  

Hope that helps. 

[BeaconwoodDettman]

@bradgoodell It helps, thank you, but my question was about references to support what you are saying.

Overall, is what you explained your theory and something you believe to be true? Or is it based on any other reference, like a statement from Etsy, an external website's explanation, programming standards? For example, when you say that because Etsy has a single website, it is impossible to program holidays (or they would have to split their website into multiple ones), what are you basing that on?

I'm trying to separate what people think is true from facts that can be supported with references and data. 

[bradgoodell]

"I'm trying to separate what people think is true from facts that can be supported with references and data."

I am too.  Good luck with your quest. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@BeaconwoodDettman: "I'm trying to separate what people think is true from facts that can be supported with references and data. " The fact is that Etsy has decided, for their own reasons, to be postal holiday blind when calculating scheduled ship by dates. I interpreted @bradgoodell 's comments to say that anything can be programmed but there is always the cost / reward ratio to be considered. Just because a number of sellers are unable to manage their own local postal holidays does not mean that I want Etsy intruding even more into how we run our business. 

[PrimFun]

@BeaconwoodDettman   It is not a theory.  Amazon has at least 5 different websites.  Each selling from that part of the world.  Sellers on Amazon can cut across to sell on the other Amazon sites if they want.  US buyers cannot see what is for sale in the UK unles that UK seller also sells on Amazon US.  (Just a small example) 

Etsy has only one really overall that is truly global.  The finances/legal are handled byt Etsy and Etsy Ireland.  but the site itself is global

And SecondaryCreations gave the list of eBays.

Is it possible for Etsy to create such a program to account for holidays?  Sure they could but it would involve massive undertaking and skills beyond what most programmers have.  And then there is always the possibility of offending someone because there holiday is not deemed important enough.   Amazon US can account for US holidays because it only serves the US.  Same with UK or the EU.  

Oh I agree with data and references.  One reason I type slow is I doublecheck my facts to make sure my memory is correct.  However forums are not designed for in depth analysis so wanting that may be best to do that individually to verify anything said.

And through the years I have come to realize that @bradgoodell  is a reliable source as are others.  Me well you can take my ramblings and toss them. 

[mopata]

One thing I have noticed when I ran into this a couple of times in the past.  I would make a sale on a weekend before a Monday holiday and forget that the P.O. was closed on Monday.  I printed the label showing a Monday shipping date only to remember that the P.O. would be closed.  The shipment was taken to the P.O. on Tuesday.  The Etsy system did not show the shipping as late in these cases, probably because the items were still delivered on time. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@mopata: Star Seller et al is based on when a package is shipped not delivered. Your system works because you marked the order as completed / shipped on a date when you did not actually ship.