[Question] France — has anyone got a straight answer on shipping
Slightly embarrassed to be asking this, but: France — has anyone got a straight answer on shipping.
Ordered from the warehouse in New Zealand instead of origin and the whole customs question disappeared. 6 days, door to door.
Clearance took three days and the carrier took nine. I had been blaming the wrong half for two years.
The rigid outer with no rattle in it was the thing that told me most about that supplier, before I had tested anything.
Corrections welcome, especially the pedantic ones. Pedantry is how this board earns its reputation.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Regional stock replaces an international lane with a domestic one. That is a structural change to the distribution, not a marginal improvement, and it is why the warehouse question matters more than the carrier question.
How many shipments does your figure cover?
rigid outer packaging is the cheapest quality signal there is
Asked QST which lines they hold regionally before ordering and got a straight list back. Changed what I ordered and when.
Disagree. That is a customs hold, not a carrier delay, and lumping them together makes the lane table wrong.
That is the quoted lead time, not the observed transit. Both belong in the report and they are different columns.
Same lane, four orders, 16 to 7 days, all four within a couple of days of the quote. That consistency is the actual finding.
Median transit is the useful statistic. The minimum is a story about one shipment and the mean is dragged around by a single hold.
Median transit is the useful statistic.
sanne_laurent is right about regional stock. It changes the shape of the distribution, not just the mean.
Where did the time actually go — international leg, clearance, or last mile?
Split one order across two months on purpose to compare summer and winter. Four days apart, same carrier, same route.
declared value and description are the shipper’s decision, ask what they use
ask which lines are actually held in the regional warehouse
reship policy in writing before you order
regional stock changes everything about transit
Same. ERP quoted 6 days on my lane and it landed at 10, which is exactly what you want from a quote.
Asked for the month rather than removing. Without it the report cannot be compared to anything.
That is a packaging observation, not a transit observation. Worth posting, worth separating.
Where the time actually goes, which I got wrong for two years.
Total transit is first mile, international leg, customs clearance and last mile. I had been attributing everything to the international leg because that is the part with the exotic-sounding name.
When I finally logged the stages separately, the international leg was the most consistent part of the whole journey. The variance was in clearance and in the domestic delivery at my end — neither of which the supplier controls. That reframed how I read every lane report on this board, and it is why the table separates the stages.
Kept a spreadsheet of quoted versus actual across a year. The quote held; the variance was all in the last mile.
A lane is an origin, a destination, a carrier and a season. Change any one and the distribution changes, which is why supplier-level shipping averages are close to meaningless.
What lead time were you quoted at checkout?
a lane with four reports is not yet a lane
Do they publish a reship policy, and did you read it before ordering?
Right, and the last mile is where my variance has always come from, not the international leg.
Same lane in a different season for comparison?
two identical orders a week apart is the cheapest experiment available
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