Unlike other sellers, I compulsively monitor the progress of my outbound parcels so I can think immediately of four times in the past six years that a package waited long enough for pickup to show that ten-day final notice warning. The first time I saw it, I freaked. I messaged the buyer, worried. They said thanks and got it two days later. The second time this happened, the buyer was very appreciative that I made contact since they’d not been given a card to pickup and even when they went to their post office to get it, they instead got some runaround saying nothing was there from their postal agent (small town Quebec) at which point the buyer reported back to me and I called the 1-800-CPC number and squawked, and then the small town postal clerk found it and my buyer had it delivered in the nick of time. The third time I saw the ten-day warning it was a regular buyer so then I was worried something had happened to her or the family but it was just that they were on a trip than ran overtime. So. Sometimes it pays to intervene and contact the buyer. Other times? Not so much. The last time I saw that final notice on an outbound parcel was about a month ago. The buyer was in a small town in BC and just slow after Christmas to pick it up. I did say anything, I didn’t need to.
It all depends. I worry less when I see Final Notice today than I did six years ago but, in retrospect, there was once where my concern and subsequent message to the buyer created positive results that would not have occurred otherwise.
It’s hard to know what to do.
Early on, I used to make a point of sending messages to every buyer after a sale to say thank-you. I don’t do that anymore. And, to be honest, I don’t appreciate the thank-you messages from my sellers when I’m a buyer. As soon as I see a follow-up message from a seller for a purchase, my heart leaps into my throat and I assume they’re contacting me to tell me something that I don’t want to hear. Broken, late, out-of-stick. So. Then I read it’s a polite thank-you and I don’t even feel better because I’m already in panic-mode because I thought there was a problem. Like if there’s a call from school during a weekday: I’m going to fear the worst has happened to one of the kids as I reach for the phone even if it’s just a call avout something dumb that I did that week like I sent in a cheque for the book order but forgot to sign it.
Results may vary. You know the demographics of the buyers in your category best. Go with your instincts.
