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One of the best things about shopping online is that it allows you to quickly scan a wide variety of items and find what you need right away. You don’t have to drive all over town looking for niche items; you can just find them on a site and have them delivered right to your door.
However, lately, it seems like every other website is experiencing long shipping delays that make it hard to anticipate when your package will arrive. What can you do to avoid these delays? Today, we’re going over a few online shopping tips to help you get your packages as soon as possible.
Some sites, like Amazon, offer two-day shipping on some items. Usually, this means the item is coming from a nearby warehouse and won’t need to travel far to get to you. Most of the travel time of the item has already been accounted for, as it’s been shipped to a warehouse in your area long before you ever clicked “buy” on it.
Naturally, this isn’t available for everything you can buy online. Often, perishable items and imports can’t be shipped in this segmented way. Likewise, niche items that aren’t ordered often aren’t the best options for stashing in a warehouse near consumers. In essence, Amazon needs to anticipate what people want to buy before they buy it for this system to work.
One way to avoid lengthy shipping times is to order from stores in your area. While this eliminates one key advantage of online shopping – being able to choose from a worldwide catalog – it also makes it much easier to get your items without waiting for weeks.
It’s also good to support local businesses even when you’re shopping online. Your local economy is mainly supported by in-person sales, so you can make things easier on them by ordering from their online stores.
One of the worst things you can do right now in terms of shipping time is order something that needs to be imported to reach you. International shipping is badly snarled right now, and it’s difficult for anyone to get goods from outside the country. Instead of ordering an import, consider shopping for something that comes from within your country.
While this might limit your options, it could be the difference between getting your package next week or in three months! Hopefully, shipping lanes will clear up soon, but, for now, these helpful hints will keep your packages coming in a timely fashion.
