Much Ado About Nothing (kind of) ...

After spending much too much time virtually chasing my tail yesterday trying to track down an international package mailed April 3rd that had not arrived, I've been forced to make changes to my shipping policy yet again.  If you've read some of my other posts you know this is not the first time the US Postal Service has let me down.  Every shipment is important, my jewelry designs are like my babies.  I imagine, create, give birth to, and nurture each piece, but some are more time sensitive than others!  Many are for baby showers or weddings and though they've been ordered in plenty of time, it ends up being a close call once they leaves my hands.  The good news is, she received the package today.  The bad news is, international shipping with the US Postal Service is a crap shoot at best!  I understand that we shouldn't really expect them to be held responsible for a package once it leaves their facilities and enters customs, but at least claim some accountability!  If you're gonna charge $18 for priority service, and the word service should be taken with a grain of salt here, we should at least receive something for our money.  This is precisely how the USPS is putting themselves out of business, but then what are our alternatives!?!  Fedex and UPS prices are double and triple or DHL, no thank you, they can't even find my house (call me for directions, hello ever heard of google maps) and I live in a large development!  The point is, we need more and better shipping options!!!  I'm not going to bore you with all of the details.  What I will say, is that I haven't had a lot of overseas sales, but I appreciate my international customers and I hate that I have to punish them by only offering express service, however I need to have some recourse.  If she hadn't received her gift, I would have been out the money to make it, ship it, make it and ship it again.  And as a small business I don't have those kind of margins!!!  At least with express international packages can be tracked and insured, but the cost is ludicrous at $38.  Anyway, as you can see, I have not come this decision lightly.  I'm just doing the best I can do with the tools I've been given, and these tools should be reinvented : (