I always hope for the best when it’s time for my journals to make that dangerous voyage across unknown terrain to get to the homes of those who have ordered them. There are so many things to take into account — what if the postman drops the package, or leaves it on the porch where it’s raining or snowing, or crushes it accidentally by putting someone’s microwave shipment on top? What if the package is delivered to the wrong address, or disappears into the oblivion where all missing packages go?

I do my best to counter each of these scenarios with a generous supply of protective packaging, bubblewrap, envelopes and boxes. For smaller orders, I’ve found that the USPS Priority Mail service is pretty reliable — it’s a flat rate envelope so I can fill it with as much protective packaging as it will hold, it’s delivered quickly, and I can track and insure it for a small additional fee. I always put tracking on my packages — so I can check if they’ve arrived at their destinations.

Despite all the care and time you put into preparing your packages for shipping, after more than a hundred orders have arrived safely at their destinations, the inevitable does happen —  an order is damaged, a delivery goes astray. 

I had one customer tell me her journal arrived completely ruined, looking like it’d been run over by a truck! I was so sad imagining a destroyed journal — after all, I put so much time and care into making each one. I checked with the other customers whose journals were shipped at the same time and heard that their orders had arrived in pristine conditions. I knew that the “accident” had occurred on the delivery unit’s end, only the customer wasn’t very empathetic about it and demanded I be liable for the damages. I learned my lesson and put even more protective padding around each order and wrote out “ordering terms” on my store site to prevent another misshap like that.

I’ve also learned that international shipping is a precarious journey. USPS only offers tracking and insurance on it’s very-expensive international express service. The other option, global priority mail, gets there in about a week’s time, but you’ve got no way of knowing where the package is in-transit, so you can only hope it’ll get there eventually. My Canadian orders shipped through USPS global priority have all arrived safely, so I do offer that option for people who order online, but things can go awry with foreign-language addresses. Specialized shipping companies like UPS or FedEx can handle those types of deliveries for me, but international fees are even higher than the cost of one journal. Very few people are willing to pay for that, and it’s too much to absorb those additional fees myself. So after two seasons of tackling with it, this year, I’ve decided to let the retailers who carry my journals handle int’l shipping. They’re much more experienced dealing with overseas orders than I am! Perhaps later on, when I’ve gotten a bit wiser, I’ll make that option available in my online store again.

For big packages (like the batch of journals shown in the photo above, that I’m shipping to a retail store), I’ve been using UPS (the brown truck fellahs) because their prices are really affordable for ground or 2nd day shipping, they can pick up the shipment directly from my studio, and there is full tracking and delivery confirmation. I had a little incident recently where they misdelivered one of my packages and I was yelled at on the phone by their customer service rep, but then they did safely redeliver it, and a separate customer service agent wrote to apologize. I might still stick to UPS because the convenience and efficiency of how they handle shipments remains pretty impressive.

Despite the little incidents that I’ve encountered, I must admit that packing things up and getting them ready to ship is one of my favorite moments. At the end, it’s all about getting the order to its destination safely. And it’s all worthwhile when I hear back from someone saying that their package arrived safely, that they like their journal, and they can’t wait to start writing in it.

February 13th, 2007