Losing Packages is Stressful - Ways To Prevent This from Happening

It's inventory day. You're checking your sales and shipments. You've shipped out 30 orders, but only 27 got delivered. Two shipments got returned due to wrong addresses, while one shipment just went missing. What a stressful situation.

This is all too common of an occurrence for ecommerce businesses here in the Philippines. Fortunately, there are things you can do now to prevent this from happening again. But first, you will need to understand the causes of how a package can get lost, delayed, or returned.

Lost Package

Lost packages can only be attributed to one reason – human error. Whether the processing center misplaces your package or your package goes to the wrong recipient, losing a package is stressful to deal with for both you and your customer. Although most lost packages can easily be fixed by contacting your courier, it will take time for them to rectify the problem and you could lose the trust of your customer in the process.

Bad Weather

Especially during the “ber months”, the weather in the Philippines can get unpredictably bad. This may cause packages to be delayed or be misplaced at the courier’s processing center depending on how bad the weather is. Typically, delays due to bad weather are unsolvable and is out of your hands. Couriers will just notify you of how long your package will be delayed.  

Wrong Delivery Address

This is a common problem for deliveries anywhere you go. Sometimes, customers can unknowingly give out the wrong address, or alternative addresses where they're not always present. Even worse, they could be a bogus buyer. There are ways to be sure that you’re not sending a package to the wrong delivery address. You can do it manually by checking Google maps or have your courier do it for you.

Missorted package

There are times when packages can get lost in transit or at the processing center. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot you can do about this except to contact your courier. Hopefully, they can immediately track the package for you and deliver it to the right customer as soon as possible.

Lessen the packages you lose with Shipmates

With our systems in place at Shipmates, we always aim to reduce the packages that are lost in the system. For starters, our courier platform gives you the ability to check whether or not the delivery address is valid. On top of that, our platform lets you ship via multiple couriers that allows you to track all your deliveries under one dashboard. This is great feature as it allows you to see everything in one place and avoid any confusion. If a package does get lost in transit or at the sorting center, you can easily file for claims within the Shipmates Tracking page.