My Gift Will Arrive Late, What Do I Do?

Breathe.

And let’s talk about it.

I can’t count the times someone reached out wondering where’s their order, why it hasn’t arrived yet, why there are no tracking updates, and whether it’s going to make it on time for the birthday or anniversary or holidays. 

And if I want to be completely honest… I have no clear, solid answers. 

I can control when I make your order and when I hand it to the postal service. I can package it properly, address it correctly and give you the tracking number. 

But after that, I am no longer driving the van or flying the plane 🥴

Here’s the brutal, uncomfortable truth: Once a package leaves the shop, it’s out of our control. 

Every seller controls only the part of the journey they are responsible for: making the order, preparing it correctly, and handing it to the carrier. 

The possibility that your order will be late exists, but there is a way to reduce the risk:

Order early enough. 

How early is enough? 

At least 3 weeks earlier, 4 to be comfortable, 6 if you’re ordering handmade from the other side of the world. 

Why that much? Because you need to also include the processing time in the waiting. A package in-transit is one thing. How long it will take the shop to hand it out to the post office is another. Make sure you read processing/handling times of the shop, too.

So here's the rule I use when I'm buying something that matters: 

The Three-Week Gift Rule 

If the gift matters enough that its arrival date matters, order it at least three full weeks before the occasion, especially when international shipping is involved. 

And that can also depend on where the shop is located and what are their own processing times. 

For example, as you can read in my shipping policies, I have a 1-3 days processing time window; I ship twice a week - every Tuesday and Friday and I am in Greece. If you are located anywhere in Europe, you’re way ahead with the 3-week rule.

BuTbUtBuTbUt: If the 4rth day - the shipping day - falls inside a weekend, then I have to ship on my next shipping day: Tuesday.

Most likely you’ll receive you package within a week after shipment, but different countries have different working hours, different holidays, and depending on the package’s final destination, different logistics - so give it that air to breathe.  

If you are ordering from Asia (I have many buyers from Taiwan and Japan), it will take the minimum two full weeks after shipment to receive it. Give the 4-weeks rule here. 

If you are in the USA, international parcels are currently subject to additional customs and duty procedures that can add friction to the journey. That is another reason I'd build a larger buffer into the timeline — around six weeks for a handmade international order. 

I’d give the same for buyers from Australia, Canada, Africa (my orders to Africa have a proven record of a full month until delivery.) 

And if I were you, shopping for holidays, I’d probably add another week. 

These are the buffers I would personally use when ordering from a small handmade shop like mine, but still not guaranteed delivery times – just my own observations by experience. 

Wait, what?? SIX WEEKS. Are you serious?

Well, you need to count processing time, too 😭

There are many shops out there with much slower processing times: a week, or two weeks of preparation. You need to add those as well. 

Because after an order is placed, you need enough room for: making → dispatch → export → transportation → import → customs → local postal service → delivery.

…and every handoff introduces another place where time can disappear. 

Then there are the uncontrollable wildcards: weekends, public holidays, customs delays. 

Or weather, strikes, a pandemic (yikes!) 

Or incorrect/incomplete addresses (please triple check your delivery information!), unusually high parcel volumes during holidays, technical problems, and so on. 

Things you could not possibly have predicted can happen to a parcel after you've already done everything correctly. 

(Do I have to remind us the Covid times?) 

Fun Facts: The Hellenic Post (ELTA) was hit by a major cyberattack on the night of March 20, 2022. (Ah, fun times. It lasted WEEKS. I had to cancel and refund all my orders. Our system was dead.) 

Canada Post workers went on a nationwide strike in September 2025. Orders left my hands, left the country, arrived in Canada, and then sat there while the postal system shut down.

(Everything was painfully late, nothing made it on time. Absolutely nothing.) 

So if the gift has to be in your hands at a particular moment, online shopping cannot give you the same certainty as buying it in person. 

Unless you order it EARLY ENOUGH. 

Still, what matters is not “my order is lost” – it probably isn’t. What matters in such situations is the “I'm going to disappoint someone.” 

Especially with birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, weddings, etc. 

I totally get it. 

But if the gift is genuinely thoughtful, the object arriving a few days late doesn't erase the thought behind it. Right? 

Give them something small on the actual day. Maybe a handwritten note, a photograph, a clue, a printed picture of the gift, a box of candies (?) and tell them the real gift is still on its way. 

That makes the waiting more exciting rather than merely saying “¯\(ツ)/¯ postal services.”

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