Etsy's Estimated Shipping Dates

Please Note:

The information in this article relates only to the WizenedOakLeather shop on Etsy.com, and the behavior of the Etsy corporation.

This information does not pertain to orders placed directly on my personal website, www.wizenedoakleather.com, with which the Etsy corporation has no involvement.

The Etsy corporation is sometimes showing false estimated delivery times to shoppers, in a way that is outside of the direct control of individual sellers on Etsy.

An example of how Etsy advertises the time it should take to receive an item. Note that a seller's "shipping history" is a factor in the estimate.

The short of it is that if you read all their fine print, for any given item being sold on Etsy, the dates Etsy advertises a buyer should "Get it by" is only an estimate.

That is a misleading on its own, but what is much worse, is that this is Etsy's estimate of when you might get the item and not an estimate directly from the person who will actually be making and shipping the item.

The "Get it by" date ignores how long a seller has told Etsy it will take to make an item to order, and instead uses how long the seller has actually been taking to fill those orders. This system has the benefit that if a seller is chronically late, underestimating how long they will take to ship their orders, the estimated delivery date will reflect that. Unfortunately that also means that if a seller has had a brief period of filling orders early, like I might do to get ahead before a planned vacation, Etsy will start pushing the "Get it by" dates earlier and earlier to reflect that.

Making matters even worse, as a seller, I never actually see the "get it by" date that was promised to the customer.

This is an example of what I would see attached to an order, a hard "Ship by" date based on the information I provided to Etsy about how long I take to fill orders.

On my end, all I see attached to each order is the "ship by" date, which is completely unrelated to the "Get it by" date, and is instead directly based on the estimate I gave Etsy for how long an item would take to ship. I have had several occasions where customers have contacted me saying that I had promised their order would have shown up by now, when according to what I could see on my end, I still had a few days to go on the "Ship by" date, and then a few days in the mail before I would have said they can be sure they will have their order.

To any customers who have been directed to this article after finding yourself in that same situation, I do apologize, and hope you will understand that I was unaware of the precise details of the delivery estimate Etsy had provided you. I hate to see my customers mislead. I got into the small craft business because I wanted to do simple, honest work with my hands, free from the corporate drive to make every last cent at any human cost. With any future orders you might place on Etsy, at my store or any other, please know that the "Get it by" date is only an estimate, and that it does not come directly from the seller. To get the best information on when and item will be able to ship you can always reach out to the seller directly.

Should you ever want to purchase from me in the future, I always recommend my customers seek out my personal website, www.wizenedoakleather.com.

Unlike on Etsy, there I do get to control every little detail of how my items are advertised and there you will find no such deceptive language or over optimistic delivery dates, as well as the most up to date list of my current inventory of ready to ship items. The most up to date information on my current order turnaround times can always be found here.