Posts Tagged ‘customer service’

Why We’re Minimizing Our Reliance on USPS for Deliveries

Friday, June 27th, 2025

When it comes to your orders, ensuring fast and reliable delivery is one of our greatest responsibilities. After all, modern customers deserve convenience, predictability, and a seamless experience. Over the years, USPS (United States Postal Service) has been an integral part of logistics for countless businesses, including ours. However, challenges such as increasing unpredictability and delivery delays have prompted us to reevaluate our approach.

We want to share why we’ve made the decision to minimize reliance on USPS and how we’re investing in alternative solutions to serve you better.

Understanding the Challenges with USPS

USPS has long played an important role in connecting businesses with customers and facilitating commerce. But in recent years, several factors have complicated its ability to deliver consistent service.

1. Unpredictable Service Times

Delivery schedules have become less reliable due to increasing volumes of mail, limited resources, and operational inefficiencies. Whether it’s delays in handling packages or fluctuating delivery times, customers often face uncertainty about when their orders will arrive.

2. Delivery Delays During Peak Periods

High-demand seasons, such as holidays, frequently overwhelm USPS infrastructure. While delays around these times were once tolerable, recent years have brought lengthier disruptions, stretched timelines, and sometimes even misplaced packages.

3. System Constraints

USPS operates within strict federal guidelines, coupled with budget and staffing challenges. While they’ve worked hard to address these issues, it hasn’t been enough to fully align with the efficiency standards modern businesses and customers expect.

4. Impact on Customer Experience

These ongoing delivery challenges can create frustration for customers. Timely delivery is critical for many purchases, and disruptions can directly impact satisfaction and trust. We understand that waiting for a delayed package is never a good experience.

Our Commitment to Better Delivery Services

While it’s important to acknowledge USPS’s historic contributions to U.S. commerce, our priority remains focused on you—our valued customer. To ensure that your experience with us is smooth and dependable, we’re implementing new delivery solutions designed around speed and reliability. Here’s how we’re making it happen.

1. Diversifying Our Shipping Partners

We’re expanding our network of logistics partners to include private shipping providers known for efficiency and customer-first policies. Partners like FedEx, UPS, and regional couriers offer enhanced tracking, faster shipping times, and fewer service interruptions. By broadening our delivery network, we reduce dependency on a single carrier, creating a more resilient logistics strategy.

2. Investing in Advanced Tracking Technology

Customers deserve transparency when it comes to their orders. We’re adopting advanced tracking solutions that provide updates, so you can always know where your package is and when to expect it. This technology minimizes uncertainty and strengthens trust.

3. Establishing Regional Fulfillment Centers

To speed up the process of delivering orders, we’re creating regional fulfillment hubs strategically located close to high-demand areas. With orders shipped from nearby warehouses, transit times decrease, and delivery reliability improves dramatically.

4. Expedited Shipping Options

For customers needing rapid delivery, we offer express shipping options through high-performance carriers. Whether you need your order in two days or overnight, we’ll ensure it gets to you quickly.

5. Listening to Customer Feedback

Your input is invaluable in shaping our logistics strategies. We actively monitor your comments and reviews about delivery experiences to understand what’s working and what we can improve.

Recognizing the Challenges USPS Faces

It’s essential to approach this decision with empathy. USPS operates under immense pressure, serving not just businesses but millions of households daily. Their service spans rural communities and hard-to-reach areas, often delivering where private carriers do not. These responsibilities come with unique logistical hurdles and constraints.

The hardworking individuals behind USPS deserve recognition for their efforts, even when facing resource limitations and external challenges. While our business model requires a shift toward more responsive solutions, we respect their role in maintaining essential services for the country.

What This Means for You

Going forward, you can expect smoother, faster, and more predictable deliveries when you place an order with us. Our investments in diversified carriers, technology, and localized centers are all aimed at enhancing your experience. Whether it’s better tracking, shorter waiting times, or minimized delivery uncertainty, each change is about exceeding customer expectations.

We believe that better logistics translate into a stronger relationship with our customers. If you have questions about this change or need assistance with your order, our customer service team is always here to help.

Looking Ahead Together

Delivering value starts with delivering your orders, and you deserve nothing less than reliability and efficiency. While we continue to adjust our logistics approach, our mission remains unchanged—to provide you with the best possible service, every single time.

Minimizing our reliance on USPS is a step toward that promise. We’re committed to bringing you a delivery experience that matches the quality of our products and the trust you place in us. Together, we’ll keep raising the bar for what exceptional service truly looks like.

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Do you leave reviews about a business?

Saturday, May 29th, 2021

customer service

 

We receive a steady flow of positive reviews, compliments and thank you notes from customers and work hard to provide all customers with a great shopping experience. Once in a while, we receive a complaint, which can be expected since people have different assumptions about what their experience will be. Thankfully, the complaints are far and few between, which lets us believe we are doing the right thing, communicating well, offering great products, fair pricing and excellent service. In business, a customer that has a negative experience is likely to leave a bad review. This is especially true today with social media and online reviews making it so easy to post. On the flip side, a customer that has a great experience is less likely to leave a positive review. In general, only one in ten happy customers will leave positive feedback.

Since we receive so many positive comments and reviews, it surprised us recently when a customer left us a negative review on a rating site. It was the customer’s first experience shopping with us and we are certain their last. The puzzling piece about this feedback was that the customer never contacted us to discuss the matter or give us a chance to rectify their complaint. Instead, they chose to post and broadcast to the world how bad we are as a company in general.  Because of one issue, this customer labeled all of our products as inferior and not worth the money.  The comment was difficult to swallow considering we have over 100 products and have served over 32,000 happy customers.  If we offer such poor quality products as was claimed, how would we last over 25 years in this business? It simply made no sense to us.

As we read and discussed the review in a staff meeting, it became more obvious to us that this person damaged the robe through their own negligence.  At first, they implied that the kimono arrived with tears in it and claimed that because our return policy was too difficult, they were now stuck with this robe. They also elaborated on being a near-expert on Japanese kimonos because of some life experience. Granted, we are ad-libbing a bit here and everyone, especially customers are entitled to their opinions, but as a reputable kimono dealer for nearly three decades, it became evident after their story changed a few times that this person simply wanted to blame someone else rather than accept their own responsibility for their situation.

We are confident that the kimono arrived in perfect condition, it was worn a few times, they tore it and wanted to pass blame on us. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you have reached out to us to ask for a replacement?  If we ever make a mistake by sending out the wrong color, size, or the robe actually had a flaw, we stand by our reputation and would have corrected the issue at our expense. Our manufacturers have stringent quality assurance plans in place. We receive very few returns and of those we receive, most are simple exchanges. Everyone is human and if we make a mistake, we fix it. Unfortunately today, there are people that just don’t want to accept responsibility for their own actions and instead choose to blame others. We believe this customer purchased a size that was too small and that is how it tore. This would happen with nearly all fabrics. If stretched and pulled with too much force, cotton will tear.

This reminded us of how fragile business review systems are today. With the internet, information is passed at lightning speed and with little recourse. The right thing to do when you are unhappy with a situation is to contact the business and discuss it with them. Don’t become frustrated and paint an unrealistic and untrue picture of someone. We look at all reviews and comments with the utmost attention and seriousness. Negative reviews are harmful to a reputation and can be difficult to overcome. We have made exceptions to our policies and have gone out of our way to make a customer happy. No business wants an unhappy customer. If this person would have reached out to us, we might have been able to do something, but we were never given a chance. In the end we both lost.

Be aware of the importance of good communication and feedback.  If you have a problem with something you buy or a service you hire, give the business a chance to help and fix an issue. You could save yourself money, save your sanity and above all, focus on believing in people and businesses rather than being angry and aggressive. It isn’t good for your soul and certainly isn’t good for anyone around you.  It is a good lesson and one we will remember.  Life is too short, be happy!