How to Handle Shipping Nightmares on Etsy

This post has been a long time coming! Ever since the Christmas rush, I’ve had shipping on my mind. It was finally Ryan, my husband, who suggested I write a post on this. Since I’m finally moving on from my PTSD, I think I’m ready to talk about what happened.

In the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I experienced my own shipping nightmare. It’s been the toughest Etsy challenge I’ve had to face thus far. I sold more prints than I ever have this past holiday season, and I just wasn’t prepared. Between the number of orders that came in and the challenges Covid brought, it was the perfect storm.

Let’s rewind to 2019 for a second. Etsy suggested sellers offer free shipping as a way to entice buyers. Smart. It’s a great way to compete with Amazon. That means charging more for products, and having your shipping come out of that. I hopped on board, which was definitely the right choice.

To accommodate this change, I raised my prices as little as possible by going with the cheapest carrier. USPS First Class (2-6 Day)was around $4 to ship an 8x10 print. $7 for USPS Priority (1-4 Day). UPS was a little more expensive than that, and FedEx Ground (1-7 Day) was a whopping $14. NO THANK YOU.

Obviously, I went with USPS First Class. I began to experience a lot of delays, and thought, “Hey, what’s an extra couple dollars? I’ll ship Priority instead!” For 2019, and early 2020, this worked out just fine. Once in a while, I’d have a package get lost. However, the good thing about art prints is that they can easily be replaced (at a cost, of course). I can’t imagine if I were shipping one of a kind antiques or valuables.

Then Covid hit. The first signs of trouble were with International packages. They were taking as long as a month to arrive!! Some took even longer! I even had an Argentina package never arrive, because they completely blocked incoming packages into the country! I ended up turning off International shipping temporarily, after many sleepless nights and apologies. Most of my sales were domestic anyways, so this wasn’t too big of a hit.

Then Thanksgiving of 2020 rolled around. All of a sudden, tons of orders were coming in per day. I was thrilled! I was spending hours packaging orders DAILY. I was on cloud nine. As the orders went out, I started to notice they were taking longer than usual to arrive. Closer to Christmas, I was seeing delays similar to what I was seeing from International shipments earlier that year. I had customers purchase prints December 3rd, and they didn’t arrive until January!! And I was paying extra for USPS Priority (1-4 days)! 1-4 days was a joke! More like 1-4 months!

The messages began to flood in with people asking where their prints were. A lot of them were gifts, so I felt terrible. Most people were extremely nice, but there were a few buyers who weren’t. I was so frustrated by these messages, because it felt like things were completely out of my hands. I know a lot of sellers were experiencing the same issues. Often the response is, it’s not our fault so deal with it. While I respect the honesty, it kind of is our fault as the sellers. It’s not our fault that it’s late, but it’s our fault if the customer isn’t happy.

As a big shopper myself, I try to put myself in the consumer’s shoes. With this perspective, I couldn’t blame people for being upset. I WAS UPSET at all the things I ordered that weren’t arriving on time. I too blamed the stores for their delays. Bad shipping reflects badly on the shop, no matter what the circumstances are. If someone doesn’t sell their own products, we can’t expect much sympathy. They have no idea what sellers go through. After what I’ve experienced, I’ll never blame a store again for late packages!

Throughout this crisis, I saw shops getting horrible reviews about shipping. I felt terrible for these sellers, because I knew it wasn’t their fault. I too was waiting for my first bad review to come in, but it never happened. The thing I’ve realized about customer service is that it’s all about accountability. Mistakes will happen, and buyers can understand that. What they can’t understand is a response saying it’s not your fault (even when you’re not to blame). To the customer, everything that goes wrong with the shopping experience is your fault. Who else would they blame?

Once I had this revelation, I decided to change my tune and take accountability. I went above and beyond to make things right. I put customer service over profit, because you can always make more money. It’s a lot harder to fix your reputation.

I began checking shipping statuses daily. If I noticed a package was taking longer than a few weeks to arrive, I would message the seller before they messaged me with a heartfelt apology. Then, I would ship them a new print through FedEx or offer them a partial refund (depending on the situation). For gifts, a partial refund was best because you don’t want the recipient to end up with two prints. If I did a reship, I would include some extra prints for their troubles, along with a handwritten apology note. Everyone seemed more than happy with this approach. I even got some incredible reviews from people who you’d never expect - people who’d experienced the worst delays, and who didn’t owe me anything! I was so touched by how kind people were.

Ryan pitched in when I needed him, and really helped me keep it together through the holiday season. We just kept saying, “Let’s just make it through Christmas, and then come up with a new game plan after that.” We both new this madness could not continue. Mid-January, all the prints had arrived. THANK GOODNESS. Throughout this process, we noticed how awesome FedEx had been. It was significantly more expensive, but every print got there when it said it was going to. We started to ask ourselves why don’t we use FedEx all the time?

It was because of cost. The thing is, that in order for buyers to have an awesome shopping experience, shipping is a huge part of that. I decided it’s not something I should be skimping on. So guess what? I raised all my prices by $10 and haven’t received any fallout since. In fact, sales have increased. In turns out an extra $10 was not as big of a deal to buyers as I thought it was. And now I can sleep peacefully at night knowing my packages are in good hands.

So that’s my little cautionary tail. Hopefully you learned a thing or two by hearing about my experience. I think the main takeaway is that it’s all about accountability and apologizing for things you don’t need to be sorry about. Shipping is important. When I think of the best shopping experiences I’ve had, it comes down to shipping.