Hello friends and customers!
For full transparency, here are some detailed updates regarding the status of all orders, as well as the status of our customer service team.
DELIVERY / CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATES (as of 12/31/2020):
There are still many orders from early December and prior not delivered, and our team is working to replace any orders that were lost, and do anything they can to make these customers happy.
Additionally, we are experiencing an issue with our order processing software, and many orders that were in transit and had tracking numbers associated with them, no longer do. The team is working to update these orders again, but this is a manual process and we expect it to be completed tomorrow.
Our Customer Service team is still within a 24 hour response times, and we plan on opening phone lines on the evening of 1/1. Please understand that because we had to staff so quickly, and most of these agents are new, so some mistakes may be made.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
DELIVERY / CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATES (as of 12/28/2020):
This weekend, orders from December 14th and December 15th shipped out. By the end of this week, we expect to be able to decrease our current estimated delivery times of 14-20 days back to our normal delivery times of 10-14 days.
We are having issues with updating the tracking on many orders still showing the “Info Received” status that were re-printed and re-shipped, but can confirm that the majority of these orders have been delivered.
Additionally, there are still some orders in “in transit” status that appear to have been delayed with FedEx, but all of these orders do have confirmed FedEx delivery dates.
There are still some orders that have not been delivered that had an estimated Christmas delivery date, and our team is doing whatever we can to make sure these customers are happy.
We have temporarily paused the majority of our advertising so that we can ensure we taking care of all of our current customers.
We have more than doubled the size of our customer service team, and we are finally back within our typical 24-hour response times. We will be opening phone lines back up soon, as ticket volume is finally under control, in order to better serve you.
We thank everyone for their patience, as we know this has been stressful for both you and our team.
DELIVERY / CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATES (as of 12/24/2020):
As of today, over 30,000 customers have been received their Christmas orders this December, but there are certainly some who have not yet received their orders.
As you may have seen on our site, we lost a large volume of shipments that backlogged our holiday order processing in early December. This unexpected situation prompted us to look back to previous orders to identify where the issue may have occurred. While reviewing previous orders, we also discovered some missing shipments dating back through October. We have addressed this error by changing our transportation company, reprinting and reshipping these orders affected, and upgrading shipping, at our cost, trying our best to meet Christmas delivery.
As a small business, losing such a large volume of shipments backlogged all of our teams and our customer service response times. We have been working night and day to reprocess all affected orders and answer any accompanying questions. We sincerely apologize for the lack of timely response; this is not our standard.
We are committed to improving our delivery times as we enter the new year. To serve you better and faster, we are in the process of significantly expanding our support team to respond to your questions within 24 hours as our business standard.
Thank you for your patience and understanding during this difficult time.
DELIVERY / CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATES (as of 12/20/2020):
1. We are still committed to getting everyone who ordered by our Christmas deadline of December 8th their orders. This weekend we have shipped out the majority of orders from December 8th and prior. Many of these orders were upgraded to Fedex Express Saver shipping, depending upon location, which has a Christmas delivery deadline of December 21st (https://www.fedex.com/en-us/holiday/last-days-to-ship.html)
2. There are still a few remaining batches that we will be shipping out tomorrow, and we are upgrading these orders to FedEx 2 Day Delivery at our cost, to ensure they are delivered on time.
3. Fedex issued an update on December 18th that the Winter Storm in the Northeastern United States is causing shipping delays. You can check on any Fedex updates here: https://www.fedex.com/en-us/service-alerts.html#weather
4. Customer service response times are still averaging around 4 days, but we have been prioritizing urgent tickets and paused responses on social media in an effort to respond to the most critical tickets. I understand this is not acceptable, and we are still in the process of doubling our CS staff to help decrease our response times. We are working to respond to tickets as fast as possible, but the volume of tickets we are receiving now is unprecedented. Please keep in mind that multiple messages through different platforms only increases the workload for our team. We are responding to all your messages as quickly as possible, and appreciate your patience as we navigate through this busy time.
DELIVERY / CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATES (as of 12/16/2020):
- Production has been slightly delayed, but we are still committed to delivering orders from our cutoff of December 8th, before Christmas. Our team is providing complementary upgraded shipping for thousands of orders to ensure a timely delivery. We are continuing to ship orders, and working through the weekends to make sure that we can fulfill as many of the affected orders as possible. Orders from December 9th – 12th still stand a good chance of arriving prior to Christmas, as they will be part of these weekend shipments as well.
- We are starting to see lots of tracking movement on the orders we re-printed and re-shipped, that occurred as a result of the incident with our transportation company. If your order was from December 6th and prior, this pertains to you. As mentioned previously, in an effort to save time, Fedex is not scanning many items until they reach their final hubs, so seeing movement is a really good thing!
- Our Customer Service team is still overwhelmed, and our average response time has increased to 4 days. We are working on increasing the staff that we have available to respond to your messages, and our goal is to return to the previous response time of within 24 hours. Please keep in mind that multiple messages through different platforms only increases the workload for our team. We are responding to all your messages as quickly as possible, and appreciate your patience as we navigate through this busy time.
Updated Shipping Schedule:
12/13 (Weekend): Shipped out all items "info received" items with order 12/4 and prior
12/14 (Mon): Shipping all items ordered 12/5 - 12/5
12/15 (Tues): Shipping all items ordered 12/5 - 12/5
12/16 (Wed): Shipping all items ordered 12/6 - 12/6
12/17 (Thurs): Shipping all items ordered 12/7 - 12/7
12/18 (Fri): Shipping all items ordered 12/7 - 12/7
12/19 (Sat): Shipping all items ordered 12/8 - 12/8
12/20 (Sun): Shipping all items ordered 12/9 - 12/12
12/14/20
DELIVERY / CUSTOMER SERVICE UPDATES:
- The Family Gifts Co. team has been hard at work re-creating all lost orders. We are providing the below shipping schedule as a reference for when orders will ship out. We are working on sending new tracking #’s to all affected customers, as this is a slow, manual process.
- Fedex is currently not scanning many items at pickup in order to save time, so while these dates are the expected shipping dates, tracking updates are expected to be delayed a few days.
- Our CS team is still very overwhelmed, and we are answering tickets as quickly as possible. Please be patient with us, as we are hiring new staff as quickly as possible to address all tickets within our normal 24 hour response times.
Updated Shipping Schedule:
12/13 (Weekend): Shipped out all items "info received" items with order 12/4 and prior
12/14 (Mon): Shipping all items ordered 12/5 - 12/6
12/15 (Tues): Shipping all items ordered 12/7 - 12/8
12/16 (Wed): Shipping all items ordered 12/9 - 12/10
12/17 (Thurs): Shipping all items ordered 12/11 - 12/12
12/18 (Fri): Shipping all items ordered 12/13 - 12/14
We wanted to reassure you that we are aware of the shipment and delivery issues that we have had this holiday season. We are working to ship out your purchases as fast as we can and are committed to delivering orders that were placed before the cutoff of December 8th, before Christmas.
With the delivery delays, we are also experiencing an increase in our customer service response times. Rest assured that we are still receiving your messages, and are replying to them as quickly as we can. We thank you for your patience as we work to respond to the thousands of messages we have received.
12/9/20
Dear valued customers, I want everyone to know that my team is aware of the tracking and delivery issues with many orders. Originally, we thought these problems were technical due to a busy holiday season. But, upon further investigation, it appears that multiple shipments were lost by our transportation company after their label was created, and before reaching Fedex, affecting thousands of orders.
This morning, as soon as I found out what happened, I instructed our fulfillment team to create a new replacement order at our expense for all affected orders. We have a huge backlog now due to this, but we are committed to delivering these orders prior to Christmas. Although with the current shipping environment, FedEx may experience some delays, we still expect prior to Christmas deliveries.
Thank you for your patience and understanding of this matter. I have seen a lot of hurtful comments on Social Media that we are a scam because of these issues. Let me be clear – Family Gifts Co. has delivered over 200,000 orders flawlessly over the past year and a half, and we have stellar reviews on all review platforms. Please know we are working tirelessly to get your order out as soon as possible, and thank you for your patience.
-Kyle Hunt, CEO of Family Gifts Co.
