Pre-Consolidation/Shipping on Non-Mailbox Orders
under review
Alice Jones
Hello Japan Rabbit,
One of the largest issues that I have with your service is how you handle multiple item consolidations.
We have to wait for the times to be in the mail box to request the consolidation and there's no way to auto-approve the PayPal charge.
EXAMPLE:
I am in North America so I will typically get an email while I am asleep here at like 3am (my time.) By the time I am awake, it's like midnight your time so you are closed. I send the request, which has to be approved so this is essentially another day lost.
The purpose of ordering via you and not some company reselling the product is to get it faster... which doesn't happen when we have to go through this BS juggle.
I want the ability to flag ORDERS that you are waiting on AND/OR in the mailbox to be immediately consolidated when they arrive so in the same work day on your end... my combind packages shipped.
I just want to see the PayPal invoice was charged to my PayPal for whatever the final shipping amount (so obviously we would be picking courier method in advance.)
I should be able to set things up with your service so that once you have it... you just get it immediately out to me and/or immediately consolidate orders for me without having to do more.
Max Hodges
Alice Jones
Dear Alice Jones,
We appreciate your detailed feedback and suggestions concerning your experiences with Japan Rabbit. Your insights are invaluable, and we are committed to improving our services. Below is a summary of the critical issues that you have raised. First, I’d like to ensure I understand each issue. Then we can discuss them individually.
Consolidation Process: You find our current consolidation process inconvenient and time-consuming due to the necessity of manually approving each step, the absence of an auto-consolidation feature, and the issue of time difference that creates further delay.
As a solution, you pitched what I'll call "Auto-PIlot": a set of features that allows customers to designate packages to be automatically consolidated on arrival, including setting preferences for packing options, shipping method, and payment options in advance, thus making a consolidate-and-ship process more efficient.
Website Terminology and Process: You raised concerns about our website's terminology and separation between 'Orders' and 'Packages', and 'Received' and 'Unreceived' packages. You also pointed out the redundancy of multiple request steps like 'Requests' and 'Ready-to-Ship'.
Communication and Timing: You highlighted the inconvenient timing of our email notifications and the absence of staff during EST time zone working hours as a problem, causing additional shipment delays.
Customer Service Interaction: You expressed dissatisfaction with your recent interaction with our customer service, where your proactive efforts to expedite an order seemed to have been overlooked.
Please confirm if we have accurately captured your concerns. We are open to more discussions and feedback to understand your needs better and refine our services accordingly.
Max Hodges
What do you mean by "non-mailbox" orders?
Alice Jones
Max Hodges:
I will fogive you for forgetting the terminology used on the previous iteration of your own company's website.
The current iteration of the website separates customers purchases into two key stages: "ORDERS" and "PACKAGES". At this point in time, your company pretends that first stage of "PACKAGES" is "RECEIVED, however, this is extremely inaccurate.
Once a purchase is made it becomes a PACKAGE however its not "RECEIVED", it is: "UNRECEIVED".
Furthermore, you waste customers times by adding multiple redudant steps called: "REQUESTS" and "READY-TO-SHIP" in which due to your website not acknowledging "UNRECEIVED" packages as real, you force customers to wait for items to be "RECEIVED" to make to select packing options and payment options respectively that a customer could make in advance.
Want to Consolidate? Want to add extra tape? Want to ship with FexEd? This is a line of question that does not in any reality require a customer to wait for the package to be received. In reality, retail websites all ask for this inadvance.
There's no reason other than limitations imposed on your company's website by programming which should prevent customers from having preferences setup and being able to make all these decisions in advance (like your competitors.)
The issue is your company's process. By denying the reality that "PACKAGES" exist in an "UNRECEIVED", your company's website does not even separate unreceive packages into pre-orders versus non-preorders on a customer's purchase.
If your company was to fix the back-end of your website's programming, suddenly, the "PACKAGES" section drops the "REQUESTS" and merges it (along with "UNRECEIVED") into "RECEIVED" to something like "YOUR PACKAGES"
At this stage, logiccally, you have the freedom to start adding options to the customer to select all these pointless decision tree steps into one single client pre-approval process BEFORE your company even receives the packages.
Suddently, you are shipping the same day as packages arrive because you saw all of the customer's pre-approved choices.
Are you worried that a customers shipping options might come out as a price shock for your customer? Well, you can just add two choices:
* Pre-Approve Shipping Payment (No Limit)
* Pre-Approve Shipping Payment (Set Limit)
Obviously keeping the current method:
* Quote the Amount (For Customer Approval)
With the "Set Limit" you simply have a box for a dollar amount. Suddenly, the customer has consolidation, packing, and shipping options selected... and has pre-approved payment... without a single redudant "HUMAN ACT NOW" email.
Your company currently ONLY processes one of these redudant steps per business day and pushes off sending those redudant "HUMAN ACT NOW" email until the last 45 minutes of your work day.
(I have visual confirmation from over a dozen people when I started recommending your service back in 2021. This workflow has continued into 2023 in spite of how backages it is.)
This backwards approach turns your process of shipping a North American's or South American's into a flucking annoying game of "PHONE TAG".
As a North American, your "HUMAN ACT NOW" emails reach clients while they are sleep (due to time zones) and guarantees you do not receive a response until your work day is over. This means for each step a whole shipping day is LOST due to this stupid delay system. (Given the percentage of your customer base that is in North America... this feels kind of stupid.)
We have established you have no staff operating between 8:00~12:00 EST time to help compensate for this process.
========================
The interaction that I experienced with your company this week was both insulting and a joke.
On Wednesday knowing the earliest a package could arrive in your warehouses, I emailed you KNOWING your company clearly had not read the emails from BANDAI informing you of the date of the pre-ordered items' shipping date.
I requested for the two items received to be consolidated with the one that would be arriving as soon as it arrived. I asked for your company to just "TAKE MY MONEY" to cover shippment to avoid delays.
As per usual your company ignored this request, and sure enough as I sleep. Your staff wait until the last 45 minutes of the day on Thursday to send the "HUMAN ACT NOW" email acknowledging the items arrival.
On your Friday, I hounded your customer service and surprise, surprise, they were magically able to complete the remaining two steps almost immediately (which would had been another two days of waiting if I hadn't.) However, the shipping still did not go out until your Saturday.
=================
The simple truth is I have been asking for an end to all of these redudant "HUMAN ACT NOW" emails since your company insists on leaving them all until between 2:30am - 3:00am my local time (on the West Coast.)
The process is REDUNDANT since I already know my options in advance.
Since I know your competition suchs as "BUYEE" all seem to have no issues understanding the concept of "UNRECEIVED" packages, I do not see a benefit in interacting with a company who cannot figure out how to just take my money and ship my stuff.
The "PHONE TAG" game is not fun and is an insult to my time as a working adult. I see this as no different than ordering food from a restaurtant to be delivered. Instead of asking me all the questions you have about my order... you call me every 5 minutes to ask a single question when you know you have multiple!!!
Max Hodges
Alice Jones: So you're using "non-mailbox order" to mean any open order which for which no packages are received? Is that right?
Alice Jones
Max Hodges: Once again, the post made years ago used terminology based upon the terminology on the White Rabbit website. Terminology your company updated with the new Japan Rabbit.
So, rather than fixate on past terms, simply read the condensed response that I provided you yesterday.
Alice Jones
There's two common scenarios which applies to 95%+ of your customers who have ordered multiple items:
1.) The customer wants to consolidate everything together.
2.) The customer considers one item the priority and needs it right away (and obviously wants anything that arrives before it consolidated with it.)
The two scenarios are ones in which customers know the second they order. However, your website provides no options for a customer to flag items ordered in this fashion. There's no way to request to your team in advance for this to be faciliated.
Due to time zone differences, your current approach is to message customers while they are asleep that one or more items arrive. You force the customer then to have to wait for them to wake, manually request the consolidation, then wait longer for your team to perform the consolidation.
The ability to request this in advance (and your team be flagged from the website's database of these requests) would both expedite your service exponentially and drastically improve the customer service experience.
For example: I am currently waiting on 3 packages across two orders. I am located in North America. Two of the packages arrived at 1:41 AM (my time) and 2:30AM (my time) respectively.
The implication is as follows:
I will only notified about the final package arriving between 1:30am and 2:30am (my time) while I am asleep.
I will not be able to request the consolidation (manually as opposed to proactively via website features) until I wake up. Let's say about 8am my time which is midnight your time. This means your team is asleep while my request is being made.
So, now I have essentially lost 16+ hours for the packages being consolidated solely because you are forcing me to manually push buttons.
Why is there no option in the Orders to flag packages in advance for pre-approved CONSOLIDATION?
There's 3 options that I want added to the website to be able to set up immediately after orders are successfully made:
1.) MARK ITEM FOR IMMEDIATE SHIP
(This would flag this item to ship immediately on its own regardless of other packages. You would immediately prompt for shipping.)
2.) MARK ITEM FOR IMMEDIATE CONSOLIDATION SHIP
(Similar to the above but if there's any other packages awaiting shipping, to have those items all consolidated.)
3.) MARK ITEMS FOR CONSOLIDATION GROUP
(This allows users to create a consolidation group that will wait for all items to arrive then they are all immediately consolidated.)
This would provide your team with alerts to be proactive instead of reactive.
You could even add options to pre-approve shipping totals for these features so the users do not have to lose more time paying for shipping (due to time zone differences.)
I am currently waiting for the last time on a current group of orders... and the fact that I am loosing a day or two on this process is annoying.
Joseph Arcila
under review
Alice Jones
Joseph Arcila:
I just messaged your customer service today (in the last two minutes.)
I requested an automatic Package Consolidation to consolidate two packages in your warehouse with an order you should be receiving from Bandai as soon as today (since they started shipping on May 23rd JST.)
While this service has not be setup officially on the website, I hope they can accomodate it or I think its time for me to just switch to Buyee.
I do not appreciate email tag when with a service when we are operating essentially 12 hours apart ensuring that when I am awake, you are closed and vise-verse. (A method that always loses me two or three days of shipping time with YOUR SERVICE.)
[Due to how staff have handled this order thus far it will drastically weigh in on if I use your service again before this feature is added.]
Max Hodges
Alice Jones: Is it correct that you'd switch back to Buyee because they already have the automatic Package Consolidation service you are requesting?