More On Inbound / Outbound Shipping, How It All Works, & What To Expect

This is an article that has been in the pipeline for a good deal of time and is long overdue. Every single day we get emails asking "Have you received my watch yet?". We have updated much of what happens in terms of S&H at RWR now that we are in our new facility and I want to clarify a few things that come up all the time.

  1. We use a receiving service to accept and sign for packages. Doing so allows us several benefits, including:
    1. We always have someone available to sign for and accept inbound packages daily, during extended business hours, including on the weekends. We keep varying hours at the shop and we are not always here during the day. We are also not here everyday, each one of us sets our own hours. I personally prefer late afternoon through about midnight.
    2. It allows us a means of digital bookkeeping for received items. We receive a manifest monthly that helps us behind the scenes with things like CS related items and growth metrics.
    3. It also allows us to handle inbound packages at specific times (see #2 below), freeing up time for other tasks.
    4. Most importantly, it allows us to pick-up packages outside of normal business hours, which we often do!
  2. When your tracking number shows that your package has been delivered, it does not mean that we have it in our possession. It means our receiving office has it and it is awaiting pickup. We pickup packages on Tuesday and Friday each week. We DO NOT pickup daily. This means that if your watch arrives on Friday after our pickup, it will be retrieved Tuesday the following week, etc, etc.
      Important: It takes 24-48 hours for a package that was A) delivered to our receiving office AND B) retrieved by RWR on one of package pickup days to actually be accounted for in our online tracking system. This means that until the package is opened, and your customer ID identified and logged into our system, you will not see a change in status. For Friday pickups, this could be Monday or Tuesday the following week.
  3. We ship packages out on the same days we pick-up, Tuesday and Friday each week. If your label is printed on a Wednesday, your package will not actually arrive at the post office until Friday, etc, etc.

  4. Your tracking number is emailed to you via PayPal. We print all tracking, for all carriers, using the PayPal interface. After you pay your invoice, we receive notification of payment and a ship option appears. When that happens, 3rd party software we use for the actual shipping is updated and the order enters daily batch, which is processed each night before we close. That means you will often have a tracking number before your package is actually mailed; Sometimes by a couple of days. That also means that if you made a payment today and we already batched today, you will not see a tracking number until tomorrow, assuming tomorrow is a normal business day (Mon-Fri).

  5. Finally, sometimes the cart gets in front of the horse. There are times when payment is made and a label has been generated but the watch simply isn't ready to ship just yet. We try very hard to invoice only when the service is 100% complete but it doesn't always happen that way. Things like re-regulation or waiting for glue to dry literally can be the difference between a label being generated today, or being pushed to tomorrow.

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