Shipping stars affected by customer requesting way later dates than the “ship by date” Etsy offers

[GourmetBones]

My shipping stars are affected because Etsy thinks I shipped out my orders late, I sell doggy birthday cakes and sometimes customers request an extended delivery date way past the 21 days Etsy allows me to change the “ship by date” to. There should be an option to change the ship by date to as far ahead as possible. The 21 days isn’t enough sometimes. It’s not because I can’t get my orders out on time, it’s because the customer requests their order arrive way later than Etsy offers 

[KGarnerDesigns]

The Star Seller program is very unfortunate in situations like this. We have to choose between canceling and order and asking the customer to order later - highly unprofessional in my opinion and an annoyance for the shopper - or taking a hit on our star rating. The Star Seller program is half baked at best.

[GourmetBones]

It’s very frustratingand embarrassing to try and explain to a customer that I’m going to have to cancel an order and for them to set a reminder to re order again. It’s honestly an easy fix on behalf of Etsy… extend the ship by date for 60 days.. when I asked customer service if they could resolve me losing a star, they said unfortunately they couldn’t. But what I don’t understand is a customer didn’t even complain that their order was late, they are just going by their timeframe for me to ship it bye.

[CostumeCoutureNaomi]

What is the ship window of your original listing?

Can you set up the listing ship profile so the range of the processing time is 1 week to 10 weeks?  Then, select "other" for your shipping carrier.   Put your delivery window from the earliest potential time, such as 3 days, through 45 days.  This gives you 13 weeks total (10 weeks plus the 3 week extension) giving you the ability to take orders 3 months in advance, and the longest possible delivery time to protect you from shipping issues.

Put a variation in your listing where customers can select the week needed via a drop down window.  Or a customization box so they can enter the event date manually.

I wish those of us who create for events had a longer or more flexible processing time availabe. I suspect this shorter processing time is based off the 6 month credit card charge back window.

[GourmetBones]

My ship by window is 3 to 5 days, I’m scared to change that because people who want their orders quickly might see a longer ship by date and be hesitant to order. But what I’m not understanding is, if I put a longer ship by date does it extend my shipping options on Etsy‘s behalf? Like will it let me extend further out than three weeks? 

[TonsOfPaper · Accepted solution]

Hello @GourmetBones,

We understand that this is a pain point for sellers. While we’re working on finding ways to improve this, for now you can only extend the ship-by date for an order up to 21 days before the original ship-by date has passed. Which will then update your shipping calculation. Otherwise, if the buyer is looking to request a ship date that exceeds 21 days, as of now this will negatively impact your on-time shipping & tracking, but please be assured that Etsy is aware of this issue and we’re working on solutions to address this.

Thank you very much!

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[VanessaThormanStudio]

What about a situation where a neighbor buys from me on Etsy, and I hand deliver the item to them. A 5 star review has been left in this case, yet i was docked for my slow shipping! Can't hand deliveries be exempt from the on-time shipping rating??

[BagmakerSupply]

@VanessaThormanStudio: Undoubtedly we are paying the price for the few bad sellers that would mark everything as a delivery and then either ship late or not at all. We don't know how orders marked as a delivery or pickup affect a shop's quality score behind the scenes, but clearly Etsy feels the simplest way for them to protect themselves is to require tracking for virtually all orders and set that up as a Star Seller metric.