Etsy Sellers Can Now Set Holiday Processing Schedules - Check Your Settings!
It's been a long time coming but Etsy has announced sellers in the US and Canada will finally be able to set processing schedules to allow extra time for some postal holiday closures.
The update was announced in the Etsy community today, with Labor Day being first officially recognized holiday for the US and Civic Holiday being recognized in Canada.
We’re introducing a new shipping setting for sellers in the US and Canada that allows you to make your order processing schedule even more accurate by specifying which holidays you process orders on.
You can choose which national postal holidays you process orders on, and leave out the ones that you don’t.
On July 24, your selected holiday processing preferences will go into effect and your ship-by dates will begin reflecting your updated schedule. If you don’t update your preferences, all national postal holidays will be included as processing days by default. Keep in mind—you can make changes to your processing schedule at any time.
The new holiday setting is designed to accurately reflect your schedule. Adding a holiday into your schedule means you’re able to process (package or prepare) orders on that day.
You can customize your processing schedule in Shipping Settings.
Labor Day (US) and Civic Holiday (CAN) are the first holidays this year that will take your holiday schedule into account.
Although this is currently available in the US and Canada, we’re evaluating new regions to expand our processing settings to. We’ll let you know when this setting becomes available elsewhere.
Sellers took to Reddit with mostly overwhelming positive feedback about the change.
I was so excited to see this today! I don’t process orders in any holidays and have always been annoyed that I couldn’t account for that!
This is absolutely amazing and is gonna be great when it's rolled out to more than just the US and Canada. My day job is closed on most major holidays and I rarely do anything to celebrate so I'm happy to process orders on those days, but there are other lesser celebrated holidays I like to travel on (MLK day!) and don't want to count against me.
This is, for once, exactly what we needed
But others were quick to caution that Etsy is automatically opting sellers in to include all holidays as processing days by default unless they specifically go into their settings to opt out - which means some sellers who don't get the notice may not realize they've been opted in and will be expected to process orders on those days.
Some were also skeptical that the move was being done to placate sellers, believing it has more to do with CEO Josh Silverman's desires to show faster processing and delivery times on the platform.
It’s not a “win”, and it’s sad that the platform has gotten so pathetic that people are excited about it. This isn’t pro seller. This is “this guaranteed delivery stuff is costing us a lot more money than we thought”. “Let’s figure out a way to lessen the burden so our robots will do better”.
Ecommerce consultant and Etsy seller Cindy Baldassi chimed in on the Reddit thread as well, confirming 7 of Etsy's largest markets were already excluded from shipping on holidays and providing her own opinions about why Etsy is making this announcement.
Yes, this is all about processing, not shipping. It expressly says that if a ship-by date falls on the holiday you say you are working, they push the ship-by date out a day.
I do not understand why anyone thinks this is a good thing, since 7 countries already were excluded from shipping on holidays: https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/1033992214516 "We factor weekends and postal holidays in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, and the UK into our estimated delivery date calculations so that buyers have the most accurate expectations of when to expect their order." I am guessing most folks here didn't notice that change, even though it started in the US and Canada last Labour Day.
Opting us into working every holiday is just cruel, and is 100% about Silverman promising shorter processing times across the site by 2 days this year.
What do you think of the new Etsy holiday shipping settings? Let us know in the comments below!
