Late

[fayestap]

I have a whole slew of late orders. In fact, I ALWAYS have at least a few orders that are showing as late. It’s really starting to get on my nerves. I’m waiting on packages or dealing with customers who order extra fast delivery to add value to their order when they don’t actually need extra fast.



I’m running between 75 and 100 projects in my queue at any given time. With that volume, I’m always going to have some order that has issues. It seems unavoidable to me. I wish there was an option to mutually suspend, or mutually set the delivery date out. I have customers who place these big orders and say, “take your time. I don’t want you to rush this.” And yet I’m staring at a red warning every time I open my sales page. How do handle this?

[fayestap]

It’s really not a matter of delivery time. When someone sends me a package from Australia, it’s going to take a couple weeks. When someone orders extra fast delivery just to add the $40 to their order, even though they don’t need extra fast delivery and aren’t really paying for it, I have two choices: cancel (most buyers get really annoyed when I try this), or let the order go late. When a buyer ships the wrong product to me and has to reship, the order is going to go late. When a buyer fails to provide adequate information and doesn’t respond until the day the order is due, the order is going to go late.



The point I’m making is that it is unavoidable.



I’m not working on an assembly line. Sure, I could refuse to take on specialty projects, and do one thing, working only in batches. But that’s not the kind of business I’m running. So…it’s sacrifice customer care in order to shove every project into my cookie cutter standard (and reduce my income substantially), or let them go late in order to accommodate buyers who have some special needs or make mistakes.



Standard orders, don’t end up late.

[fayestap]

For instance:



Someone might purchase my voiceover gig–which has a three day delivery–by mistake. What they really want to do is ship me a product and have me demo it on camera. So, do I cancel the order and ask them to buy the right gig? Sometimes. But 9 times out of 10 they will decline the cancellation and say, "No. No. Don’t worry about the late. I don’t want to wait for a refund. Take your time. It’s fine."



That’s just ONE issue that crops up.