Star Seller Issue - Counting items not shipped on Labor Day as a late shipment. No mail that day.

[PaperBuiltShop]

I shipped out several packages that were due to go out on Labor Day, Sept 5th, the following day. USPS, UPS etc were closed on the Sept 5th so there was no way to ship anything out. But all the shipments were marked as late shipments and counted against my percentage.

I had a 4th of July shipment that shipped the day after the holiday as well. In July and August that shipment was not included in my tally. I assumed that Star Seller made allowances for holidays. As of September that Jul 4th shipment is also showing as late and counted against me.

It seems the only solution moving forward is to make a label to ship on the holiday even though it will not actually ship. That of course seems very dishonest. 

Even better would be for Etsy to account for holidays that are set well in advance and project more accurate ship by dates. If that is not possible, then Star Seller should not penalize for not being able to ship on a holiday when there is no way to ship on that holiday. 

[CatsBeadKitsandMore]

I changed my processing time to 1-3 days because of this issue. If there is a holiday you will need to extend your processing time to accommodate for it. That's the only solution.

[ReginaldSpleen]

You just need to extend your shipping date sending a message to the customer to explain why. There are sellers from hundreds of countries selling on Etsy.com each with a variety of bank or postal holidays which Etsy would need to take into account. It doesn't do this because, I imagine, some of the religious holidays are fairly fluid.

[CraftyCornishMaids]

you have over 40,000 sales and have been here since 2012,

didn't you realise you weren't shipping on time before?

You need to ship on time, so when holidays are coming, put out your processing times to cover them - this is what you should always have done, it's nothing new.

It's about customer service - ship on time

etsy is a worldwide site, if they accounted for holidays, there would never be anything else except holidays (india alone has more than 77)..... etsy has always used weekdays for calculations, and I expect always will

[PaperBuiltShop]

Thank you for your snarky reply. And thank you for taking time out of your busy day to not be helpful at all. 

[CraftyCornishMaids]

I was helpful, I said  to put your processing times out, because etsy doesn't count holidays, just weekdays

it's a fact - shoot the messenger if you want

[JackisJustVintage]

Etsy does not take holidays into account for shipping. It has always been that way. As stated above, change your processing times or move your ship date out.

[GieseDeseiGns · Accepted solution]

Etsy has never made allowances for holidays. They leave it up to the seller to ship early, or have their days set out to accommodate sales 1-3 instead of 1 day. They also give you the tools to change the date out to the Tues. before the item is set to be late. This has always been around before the SS. There was also a PSA announcement for a few weeks in the forums here, as a reminder to make accommodations. There are two more, Mondays, Oct. 10, and  in Nov. Veteran’s  Day. Etsy would have to account for every holiday world wide, many are regional, or set by lunar calendar (which would change every year) I would rather just take care of my measly 11 US holidays myself, than have them try to micromanage the worlds holidays.

[SewPurrsonalcrafts]

Good to know .. I don't often check the forums.. but now I am   glad that I did  .. Thank you for that information! 

[PaperBuiltShop]

Live and learn. Since I am typically working on holidays I usually just prepare the package and label and set it in the USPS box. This year I actually happened to take a vacation during the holiday.

I do realize there are different holidays all over the world but Google can list them on calendars. Seems like Etsy could factor that into their algorithms. When you have pages of orders shipping on a holiday, it is needless work to go in and extend the ship by date. 

[JDTotesnDolls]

@PaperBuiltShop   Etsy never has and it appears never will.  There are far too many holidays for Etsy to accomodate.  Therefore they made the decision to not do anything special with holidays.

Wit 10 years of experience you must have come across this before at some point.  It's hard to sympathize with individuals who have had open shops for years about these matters.  Sorry if I sound snarky too but honestly the information is present.  And you have an adequate processing time frame that you did not need to post on Labor Day.  

Also there were several in the forums that regularly post reminders about holidays.

So mark the 11th of November for Veterans Day.

And yes since USPS did not pick up and/or scan that day, it counted as late. With the number of sales you should be able to overcome this for the badge. 

[vintageNCtreasures]

And @PaperBuiltShop 
Don't forget there's a holiday before Nov 11th.

October 10th is Columbus day.
Post offices/banks will be closed.

There's a list of holidays on the USPS site.

[BootifulLabels]

Google only has to list the holidays, and some days my Google calendar has a dozen different holidays listed for the same day (in fact it is rare to see a day without a holiday listed). Etsy would have to reprogram their site to ensure that sales to and from each country are never programmed to be shipped on any of the days in question.  Not all holidays are observed in all countries and all countries have their own unique holidays.  If they did a general sweep and eliminate all holidays as shipping days, we would have precious few shipping days left.

You know which holidays affect you specifically, you are in a much better position to make adjustments for your orders.  

[CraftyCornishMaids]

And some countries don't all follow the same holidays in all parts of the country,

the cantons in Swizerland have different holidays, Scotland and England have different holidays, Indian provinces have different holidays .... and sometimes even google is wrong, if you country moves holidays during the year

[1960sDollHouse]

My normal ship time is 2 business days, but just in case, I changed to the 3-5 business days option on all of my listings. This change has had no effect on my sales  at all. Not only does Etsy not recognize any holidays, many have weather and life issues too. Better to be safe and add the extra handling time. 

[PiecesOfMePaperCraft]

My processing times used to be 1-3 business days but I changed it to 2-4. It's not that much of a difference but it gives me some breathing room. Sometimes I can't get all my orders out the next day.

[dippeldiundscribble · Accepted solution]

@PaperBuiltShop 

Processing times and “ship by” dates are determined using business days and don’t include weekends, but may include holidays. If a “ship by” date falls on a holiday, you can update the date once per order.

https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015588087-How-to-Set-Processing-Times-and-Ship-By-Dates?s...

[artbyjocelyn]

Anything could conceivably be coded, not that everything is easy breezy to code, but Etsy does not factor any mail/Govt holidays into ship by dates on sales. I had it affect me once, I just shipped one day later and told the buyer but it was Way before SS status stuff.

I think it would be awesome, if Etsy could have preset Holiday profiles that Shop Owners could apply to their shop, like Shipping Profiles, but, I know that that even can get complicated as diff States even have differing holiday days too though not sure they affect mailing. 

Though, yes, we can just keep track ahead of time what is slated to ship on a postal holiday date and rectify the Ship By Date right away, either push out or ship before due.

[CraftyCornishMaids]

That won't happen, give some sellers days they can block out for holidays, so they won't have to ship on time, and they can block out whole swathes, it's a recipe for disaster

... etsy only gives calculated shipping to two countries currently,
they have an awful lot of things to do first, before messing with thousands of holidays through different countries .... when people can adjust their processing times fairly easily

[artbyjocelyn]

I didn't mean block out, I meant pick a profile that is set up to be for holidays for a country, the one a seller ships from. Kind of what is possible when you create a calendar, you can pick it to have printed with Can or US or UK, etc., holiday dates, region specific.

[CraftyCornishMaids]

@artbyjocelyn 

sellers ship from multiple countries,

pod is a massive market here,

each listing can be shipped from a different country, it's nothing to do with where the seller is,

every day will be a holliday, nothing would be shipped

[artbyjocelyn]

yeah,  know, you are very correct. It would need to be part of the shipping profiles we assign to our listings. I am a shop that uses US partners but am in Canada.

[PersonalizeStation]

It seems to me that many sellers just prepared packages and labels for orders due to ship on holidays and shipped the following day prior to the SSP roll out. 

What didn't seem to matter before to many sellers does matter now with SSP. 

I am not down for Etsy even attempting to mess with holidays in regards to dispatch dates. It would be a hot mess (we all know it) and I'd prefer Etsy do less to try and manage my shop. 

[RustyCrustyRepurpose]

But if they did do it, it would reduce stress on those who are striving to be Star Sellers which is what etsy is pushing.

[PriddeyThings]

But that stress is entirely self-created when the tools are there to ensure late shipping doesn’t happen. If sellers choose not to use them, that’s on them.