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Davide

Yeah it can easily take up to 4 weeks if the ring gets stuck at customs or if it gets sent back. I've had things stuck at customs for over two weeks.
You should have received immediate automated answers on your emails looking like this:

Your request (XXXX) has been received.
where XXXX is a number. Can you give me those number so I can get someone to check those requests and post an update on the state of it?

8428
7902
6726
7115
8247
8030
8029
7867

Thanks

Lafunamor

@johnyma22 @NFCringTom can you check this please?

johnyma22

I will only quote the bits we sent, you can probably figure out what he said..

The longest @Davide went without a response to a ticket is 6 days (When we were packing last big batch), obviously this is too long to wait but the reality is his rings are probably on route. Responding to tickets is something we need to fix but the majority of the emails we get are "where are my rings" and it consumes about 80% our day which is killing productivity.

Italy has been a really bad country though for rings going missing.. The sad takeaway from this is we will probably have to increase shipping prices to Italy and implement tracking..

#---
May 29 - Customer changes order
Tom May 29 17:48

will be packed and shipped this weekend

Tom

June 5th, rings are shipped and leave shipping center on June 10th (note that this is over one week late, I can't explicitly remember what this delay was caused by but I think it was part of a larger shipping push we did that week), maybe we hit a bank holiday weekend or something?

#--- (16 days since rings shipped)
Tom Jun 26 01:33

Hi Davide

Yes it should be with you by now, I will investigate this and get back to you

regards

Tom

Note that at this point we weren't aware of the delays with Italy's postal service or any issues with rings going missing so we weren't sure on best cause of action

#--- (18 days since rings shipped)
Jun 28th
An all in caps email saying we must reply immediately etc.... This ticket was closed and merged into 7115.. 8029 was an exact duplicate of 8030

#--- (19 days since rings shipped)
John McLear Jun 29 10:11
it can take up to 4 weeks to arrive due to customs as this is new technology and customs officers can get confused by what it is.

Please be patient.

J

#--- (23 days since rings shipped)
Customer sends 4 emails without response over period of 5 days (these were the days we were packing / shipping the collections). None of his emails are a question or really warrant response. They all say if I don't get the rings I demand immediate refunds.

#--- (27 days since rings shipped)
John McLear Yesterday(6th July) 19:42
Hey Davide, your rings are on route to you, please wait a little while longer and they should be with you :)

Note that my final email was sent in error, it was in response to him saying "Where are my rings" and as I looked him up and saw he was in Italy I knew it might take a little while longer so I gave him that response..

-- Please note I reply on a Sunday to try to keep him assured we will get a ring to him.

End of dialog.

No one wins when shipments go missing, the reality is we made some mistakes here but the rings may end up turning up. We have had some rings that have been registered even when they have been claimed "not received" and that's even some Kickstarter backers, that really grinds our ears but we don't really have any recourse other than to put tracking on all shipments and charge customers more for shipping :(

Ideally we could make these rings for a lot less and get them on something like Amazon where fulfillment is handled at scale and only takes a few days but until our entire setup is stable (factories/suppliers/software/community) we simply can't swallow that bullet..

I think it still sucks that someone like @DavidE can't get a ring in a week or so from us though, we should be at that point now.. My plan from this is to add a tracked shipping option before Friday so if pre-order buyers want to pay for a tracked shipment they can... I'm going to make that tracked option compulsory for Italy. Sorry!

Lokki

@johnyma22 If you do much on ebay you notice Italy being on the 'too hard' list for a lot of sellers, along with some other rather notable countries in Africa and South America. Postage with tracking is always nice - maybe it should be mandatory for all, in the future? It would mean far less lost packages anywhere, cos that happens the world over, and it would mean that upon shipping the purchaser can then watch their ring travelling toward them.

Lafunamor

Thank you John for the clarification

Davide

John ... why not also write the conversation to Tom, in which he says anything compared to what I
write? You and Tom say conflicting things.
Whatever you write these things do not justify the wait more than a month for a package, even when I have purchased from other countries, such as China ... Although he stopped at customs I have never waited more than a month . Also, when you stop at customs, contacts you to pay the customs clearance .... So the package has not stopped at customs. I just have a feeling that the package was sent (if it was sent) long after the communication via e-mail.

shama

@Davide It is obvious you are annoyed, but emailing a company every day - or 4 or more times a week - and just ranting will rarely get you what you want. You'd had email replies from CS on 29th May, 26th June, 29th June and 6th July. In what sense does CS not exist??

Who knows what has happened to your package, I hope it is found soon. It is a shame that Italian postal workers seem to have a reputation for stealing.

Davide

I just received an email for a refund. So the package is lost, John?

johnyma22

@Davide No the rings will probably turn up(Very late) but we didn't want you to feel disappointed so we refunded you. Despite us not agreeing with how you handled your customer service issue we didn't want to leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth.. We can at least say we did everything we could to make you as happy as possible..

@Lokki RE making tracking mandatory, that kinda goes against where we want to go though, we want the rings to be a decent price with minimal shipping costs. Putting 10$ shipping on a 30$ purchase is quite steep. I'd rather see us getting proper distribution in place that can do local tracking or so, that way the rings can arrive in days and not a month.. The problem is also that tracking wouldn't solve the problem of delays, it would improve them though..

We have had to ship 15,000 or so packages within a few months and then handle customer service/bugfixes/relations/returns/replacements etc. for 10K customers.. You can imagine how intense that has been here... At times my frustrations have boiled over onto our community and I apologize for that.. I'm trying to keep my cool and you and the rest of the forum are doing a great job at helping us out, I really do appreciate it, I know I say it a lot but it means a lot to me and the rest of the team!

Lokki

@johnyma22 local tracking from a distribution center would be far better - and here it's just a cheap add-on for registered post on any parcel. A couple of dollars if I recall correctly. I'm a long time ebay hobbyist, hence the lean toward mandatory tracking (you win some, the post loses some).

You guys are doing great, most of us know it!

Lafunamor

well shipping cost depends very hard on where you live. there are some countries (like US) where the government is supporting postal service and it's cheap as hell.
As I sent my faulty ring back to John I had to pay about 2-3 francs to ship and 8 for the tracking. so you guys probably see the dimensions this could take.

Nas

@Davide Your actually lucky your order even shipped. I pledged and ordered back in July of 2013. Its now July 2014, one full year and still have not received anything, not even a shipping confirmation.

Customer support has however responded to emails, sometimes it takes time, but ive come to expect that. Hopefully you will get your order soon. At least its on the way!