Just curious how everyone feels about shipping when ordering items.
If you pay extra for expedited shipping, do you expect the company you ordered from to honor that even if the shipper doesn’t?
For example you pay extra for priority shipping (2-3 days and most of the time double) but it gets delivered in seven days.
I see. I look at it like this: if I shipped something to someone (like when I sell stuff on eBay) the customer paid me to ship, I then pay the shipper (ups,fed ex, usps) for a specific service and if they don’t deliver, then that’s between me and the shipper. I would contact them for not providing the service I paid for.
Maybe I’m too customer focused.
The way I look at it is that there are two aspects to this – the company or person that I purchased the item from (vendor) and the shipping company (shipper).
When I purchase from a vendor, I’m not really paying them for shipping, I’m paying the shipper for the shipping and the vendor is really just facilitating the transaction for me with the shipper in that they are collecting the money from me and paying it to the shipper on my behalf for shipping my package.
So, if I paid for expedited shipping and didn’t receive it on time, the things I’m going to check first are:
- Did the vendor ship it within their stated shipping timeframe?
- Did the vendor ship it by the correct method that I paid for?
^^^ If yes, then I would never blame the vendor because they did their part. They don't have any control over whether USPS/UPS/FedEx does their job correctly and delivers it on time.
If the answer is no, then I would view it as the vendors responsibility because they made a mistake.
If the vendor did their part correctly and the issue was the fault of the shipper, I would ask the vendor to see if they could file a reimbursement claim with the shipper since it wasn’t delivered to me on time, and if so, if they would credit me if they were reimbursed; but wouldn't expect them to if they weren't.
The problem is that most of the time these types of claims are denied because USPS/UPS/FedEx are going to point to the fine print that delivery times are estimates and that they don’t guarantee delivery dates unless a guaranteed delivery date service is paid for (for example: overnight delivery).
If the claim is denied, I wouldn’t expect the vendor to credit me, because that wouldn’t be fair to them to lose money because of something that isn’t their fault.
Example - what you said here:
I look at it like this: if I shipped something to someone (like when I sell stuff on eBay) the customer paid me to ship, I then pay the shipper (ups,fed ex, usps) for a specific service and if they don’t deliver, then that’s between me and the shipper. I would contact them for not providing the service I paid for.
^^^ What you mentioned here is the way I would ask the vendor to please handle it – to try to take it up with the shipper. But you would almost never have any success with that because they’re going to say that it was an estimate and not guaranteed delivery, so I wouldn’t be upset with you as the vendor or want you to lose money just bc the shipper screwed up.
Now, I’m not saying I wouldn’t be mad, but I’d be mad at the shipper or the situation, not the vendor, or in your case you as the eBay seller, because you did your part correctly.
