Once you rule out the Nigerian fraudsters, free product requests, and those who want us to sell our packaging separately … what type cases does the helpdesk desk get most?

Well there are two definitions of “most” : the most cases and the most time.

As far as ‘the most cases’ it would be address changes or date changes. A lot of people ‘catch’ address errors after they place an order or find out later that the recipient will not be home on that day. We’d much rather deal with these types of changes before the order hits the factory floor than deal with the messy aftermath if the changes are not made in time.

Occasionally we need to reship or refund and those type cases are handled during the business week, it’s rare but happens most often when we are overwhelmed with a major holiday: people who have been working for 20 hours straight make packing mistakes and we refund or re-ship as warranted.

Now the other side of the coin are the functionally illiterate (those special few that don’t understand basic of business hours, the days of the week, or calendars)

Here is an example:

A person places an order after business hours on a Wednesday night and selects the first available delivery date which is a Friday. Based on the delivery date we make the product when we reopen the next day (Thursday) and give it to FedEx/UPS that night, keep in mind that the order was placed after business hours on Wednesday night.

The product is made and shipped as scheduled and delivered on the date selected during checkout. As shown below:

Delivered on time and on schedule

FedEx picks the package up on Thursday and it is delivered, as requested, on Friday.

Being functionally illiterate, the person who placed the order and selected the delivery date said it was not delivered overnight, he ignored the delivery date on the screen, the confirmation screen, his order confirmation email, and shipped email. The package was delivered on the date he requested.

Nothing in the world is going to get a package delivered before the delivery date selected because, for freshness reasons, we don’t start making it until the day we give it to FedEx/UPS. Perishable products have to be shipped with overnight service because if we shipped them with ‘ground’ nationwide it would take several days to arrive and be a melted/rotten mess. For that reason every perishable shipment, no matter how far in advance it is ordered are made and sent so that they should arrive the day after we give it to FedEx/UPS. It is not that complicated.

Some people don’t understand this, but after a while you realize that there are some people who leave ice cream in a car’s trunk for a few hours and then blame the grocery store. Those helpdesk cases are the ones that consume the most time, some people read and learn but a select few are unable to understand the basics, they are the ones who eventually reverse the gift cards when sending packages to both their wife and girlfriends, we let Darwin thin them out, but if they are exceedingly rude we do block them from the site as it’s not fair to the staff or other customers to have our people deal with them when they could be doing something productive.

Helpdesk cases are also handled on a business day basis, like all businesses we have hours that we are opened and closed. It’s just like when you leave a voicemail at a company that is closed for the day: you would not expect an answer until the business reopens on the next business day. Since FedEx/UPS do not have Sunday pickups or deliveries our business days are Monday through Friday: the actual days we can make and ship things for next day delivery. Occasionally our staff will answer some after hours or weekend helpdesk cases from home, it’s entirely up to them, it’s not required, and they do it on their own time.

For some request special authorizations are needed: clearance from the factory floor or refund/reship authorizations have to be approved/processed and those only happen during the business week. Since the banks and carriers are closed on the weekends this actually does not slow anything down. The functionally illiterate don’t understand this and expect that we are going to bring in everybody (and open the banks/FedEx/UPS) just for them, it’s just not the way the world works. Unreasonable expectations are one of the hallmarks of someone who just does not respect other people’s time or normal business operations. These are the people that every sane business would run away from, you see them on the internet trashing companies, exaggerating their order value and basically ignoring the real world. Darwin normally takes care of them. Out of the thousands of customers we deal with each year only a few functional illiterates actually place orders, most end up going with the “easy saver“ companies  which is just fine with us.

Here is an example of a right and wrong address.

Wrong:

Grandma Mary
134 Peachtree
Coral Gables, TX 60609
305-999-9999

Right:

Mary Smith
Shady Rest Home
1234 SE Peachtree Rd
Room 512
Coral Gables, FL 33146
305-555-1212

How each wrong entry affects the delivery.

1) Since Grandma Mary lives in a retirement community there are probably more than one “Mary” there.

2) Missing company/school/retirement home names effect the shipments in two differnt ways

a. The drivers may know the business or school so if you transpose a number in the address it could still get to the right location.

b. When you leave off the business name you put the package on the residential delivery schedule, which may mean the driver will attempt to deliver the package after the business closed

3) The street number is very important, a wrong number can put a package miles from the correct destination and the unintended recipient will really enjoy your gift.

a. We have had actual shipments where the address we were given was about 3 miles offshore in Miami. (we caught it so the address got changed before it left the building)

b. We’ve had a shipment where the son sent the package to “12 Thunder Way”, but the mother lived at “21 Thunder Way”, the people at “12 Thunder Way” ate the shipment.

4) The street name needs to have the correct street, avenue, road, lane, or court designation. In a lot of cities there are multiple roads with the same name with only the St., Ave. Rd… to separate them. It lets the drivers know which of many roads with the same name to deliver the package to.

a. In Atlanta there are several roads named Roswell, and dozens named Peachtree, this same problem happens all over the country.

5) Missing Apartment, Suite, room numbers

a. A missing apartment number can ruin a shipment if there is no directory or apartment manager to accept the package, and many apartment managers no longer accept packages for residents.

b. We’ve had customers send packages to 100 story buildings without a company name and no suite number, it didn’t go well.

6) The City, State and Zip code need to match, Coral Gables is not in Texas and “60609” is for Chicago.

a. Most of the time UPS and FedEx will not let a package ship when the zip code is not in the correct state, but if the zip code is in the wrong section of a state it may take several days to correct the problem.

b. We’ve had customers put in their (up-state New York) zip code when the package was going to New York City, the packages are sent to the sorting facilities based on the zip code given, so once a misaddressed package is found the planes are gone and delivery is pushed to the next day.

7) When all else fails UPS & FedEx will call the phone number you give us for the delivery address, a fake phone number guarantees that the driver will not be able to fix any address problems while on his route. It should be the actual phone number of the person or business the package is being shipped to.

Addressing a letter or package correctly is something we all learned in grade school, and while a misaddress Christmas card will eventually get there a perishable package (like chocolate covered strawberries) can be ruined as the result of the delay. The delivery address is always your responsibility and taking the extra time to double check it is always a best practice. (plus then you are not telling others that it was our fault that the package was not delivered)

Some flowers are very fragile but not all are fragile in the same way. The shape of the flower also comes into play, as a large flat flower, such as a sunflower or a daisy, would need different protection than an aster or pom.

The picture below is an actual shipment in the mist of being unpacked.  No professional photographer was involved. You can see some of the special protection for individual stems below. The yellow flower heads are individually wrapped  which keeps the peddles from catching on the other flowers during the vibrations that come with nationwide transport. The protection on the purple aster is a flexible net that closes the flower just a little bit and also protects the delicate pedals.

Picture of a floral shipment showing extra protection

Some sturdy flowers don’t need individual protection. For example our rose bouquets are shipped with the roses, ready to bloom, packed in two layers (one row of blooms above the other), so the blooms are held in place by each other having no space for them to get into trouble.

Protection of the individual flowers, when needed, are not the only steps taken. Below is an example of the pack-out for our wedding  package.

Wedding Package example of floral packaging

You’ll note that the bouquets are supported by cardboard inserts,  these prop up the heavy bouquet tops to prevent stem breakage. The bouquets are also tied down to these cardboard supports which prevents the bouquets from shifting or crushing the flower heads on the sides of the box. If you look closely at the bouquet on the right you can see where it’s tied down near the two visible holes. The corsages and boutonnières  are individually boxed to the left.  Currently we only offer this collection in white but we plan to offer it with other rose colors in the future.

You can tell from the pictures that the bouquets are going to be beautiful, but like with anything “nice” you have to take care of it correctly in order to keep it that way.  Each of our packages come with care instructions which include when and how often to cut the stems, change water and  to keep them in a cool place (and not to freeze…)

To understand what is happening you have to look at how they are shipping it and what they are shipping.

For the first example lets look at a purchase of a book. A book it not time sensitive, it can take a week or two to get to where it needs to be and it’s still a book. Places like the larger book stores have warehouses around the country and the book is shipping using the least expensive way possible. In this case the shipping may actually be less that a dollar, no big deal.

Next lets look at a clothing purchase, some jeans, a few t-shirts… again it is not time sensitive, it’s shipped by the least expensive method possible and the shipping was probably less that you would have gotten last year with a discount coupon.

So basically shipping things by slow/ground methods are pretty inexpensive but it’s not for time sensitive items. Perishable items need to be shipped so they arrive before they melt or go bad and that pretty much rules out the really cheap shipping. You could guess what a shipment of ice-cream would look like if it took a week to arrive.

All the ‘free shipping’ offers have created the impression that all shipping should be free, but when you are comparing ground (slow) and express(overnight) the shipping is not in the same class. When you ship a package using an overnight service it is sent by air and jet fuel is not cheap.

In an age when the airlines are charging $50 to check luggage, the undiscounted rate for sending a package cross country is about the same. If you ship a lot of packages (like we do) you get a discount from the base rates, but past a certain point there are no more discounts from the carriers.

Everybody has heard the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, and in the case of overnight shipping and perishable products it’s true. In the perishables industry the various companies are “simulating” free shipping in one of three ways:

1) Raise the prices, yep when the cost of the product price has been raised to cover the cost of the shipping the shipping is then ‘free’. You actually don’t save any money this way, it may even cost you more because now that the product cost includes the shipping you may end up paying tax on the price including shipping.

2) Cut the cost of the product, packaging and the shipping cost by using a 2 day service rather than an overnight one. Cheaper ingredients and shipping so that it arrives later gives the product a extremely short shelf life and no ‘cushion’  in case of carrier or weather delays.

3) Changing the product mix or limited item free shipping, the ads say ‘free shipping’ but it’s on limited items, those items may only be shipping by the less expensive methods or already have the cost of the shipping built in.

When shipping chocolate covered strawberries you need to protect the product from heat and keep them chilled to keep them fresh. Some companies are leaving out the gel pack and shipping the strawberries using a 2 day service. Leaving out the gel pack reduces the shipping cost in two ways, the weight is less and the box does not have to be as big. Without a gel pack to keep the box chilled the strawberries are going to start to go bad very quickly. Would you want to eat strawberries that have been sitting on the kitchen table for two days? Of course not, but that is what 2 day shipping without gel packs is.

So you  can see that ‘free shipping’ really’ is not free someone always pays the UPS/FedEx bill.