genuine question about shipping that I am slightly embarrassed to ask
genuine question about shipping that I am slightly embarrassed to ask. If this has been answered properly somewhere, link me and I will delete.
The regional stock question, and why it is the first thing I ask now.
If a supplier holds the line you want in a warehouse in your own region, your order is a domestic shipment. No international leg, no clearance, a shorter cold exposure and a lead time in days rather than weeks. If they do not, it is an international shipment however it is described at checkout.
So the question is not "how fast do you ship" but "which lines do you hold in regional stock, and is the one I want among them". It is one email, the answer is usually a list, and it changes what to order and when — especially in summer.
Posted my first lane report here without the month and got asked for it. Fair, and the table is better for the fussiness.
Why this board reports by lane and not by supplier.
Two members ordering from the same operation, in the same month, can see completely different transit times because they are on different routes with different carriers and different clearance points. Averaging them produces a supplier-level number that predicts nothing for either of them.
A lane — origin, destination, carrier, month — is the smallest thing that behaves consistently enough to be worth measuring. Once a route has a dozen reports behind it the median is genuinely useful, and that is what the tables on the source pages are built from.
Please do not ask me what dose you should be on. I genuinely do not know and neither does anyone else here.
best — the order this archive was captured in
A lane is an origin, a destination, a carrier and a season. Change any one and the distribution changes, which is why supplier-level shipping averages are close to meaningless.
Median transit is the useful statistic. The minimum is a story about one shipment and the mean is dragged around by a single hold.
the last mile is where most of the variance lives
no tracking numbers, ever
two identical orders a week apart is the cheapest experiment available
Same lane in a different season for comparison?
reship policy in writing before you order
Cosigning the seasonality point. February and August on the same lane are different animals.
What lead time were you quoted at checkout?
Same. GGPeps quoted 13 days on my lane and it landed at 3, which is exactly what you want from a quote.
- 1A lane is an origin, a destination, a carrier and a season. Change any one…9 comments in this branch · started by u/emil_marchand