As of today, I have a positive balance in my business account again (thank you to those who have continued to invest trust in me). This morning, I ordered the candle-making supplies I need to fill the backlogged orders containing candles; with luck they’ll be here by the end of the week and I can start catching up on those.
I’m starting to catch up on soap orders today, as the first new batches since I was able to restock the soap making supplies are now cured and ready to ship, and I have been steadily making soap since last week to get those caught up.
I will be able to ship some packages this afternoon. As of right now, the business account balance is *not* sufficient to ship everything that’s ready to go, but I’ll start with the oldest stuff first and get it out the door, and as funds are available (God willing) I will continue to get packages shipped.
As I’ve outlined previously, I’m aware of the snafu with a batch of orders mostly from around December for which the label was generated but the package not delivered. It’s a long story, and I take full responsibility: assistants can’t be expected to do things they aren’t properly trained to do and it’s my fault for not realizing the error for so long after I got back into town. I am still in the process of manually checking delivery status of *every order* from the time period during which I was not personally doing or overseeing every step of the packing and shipping process, and in cases where orders have not been delivered, I am getting the packages out in cases where they didn’t go and getting them reshipped in cases where they were returned to sender/not accepted by the shipper. It is not necessary for you to do anything except in the unlikely event that your package was shipped and simply disappeared, in which case we might need some paperwork to go through the post office for reimbursement, but this is very rare (I haven’t found a domestic case like this yet) and if it does end up being the case, I will initiate the process and contact you, so you still don’t need to do anything to initiate this. One way or another, you’ll get your order.
Please know that, even in the worst case scenario, if no further orders come in, I get one more paycheck from my old job, so if it comes down to it and cash flow continues to be a problem, I will use funds from that paycheck to fill and ship the orders that are backlogged and/or waiting for labels. (I will shortly thereafter be in the food stamp line and applyling for whatever minimum wage paying slow death I can get, if income from this endeavor simply ceases, but I don’t expect that to happen. I do not expect it to get back to where it was, say, last spring anytime soon – I’ve damaged too many client/customer relationships for that – but I should be able to stop operating in a nearly constant deficit once I can get these backlogged orders out and the damned chargebacks stop coming in.) For the first time in many years, I’ll be able to give this work enough time – it’s been a long time since I’ve *had* enough time to give it.
So please, be confident that one way or another, your order will ship/be fulfilled. Once the backlog is cleared up and I can finally stop hemmorhaging money due to chargebacks, I’ll be moving consultations and reports to the front burner and can start getting those cleared up (and yes, I do still intend to offer phone sessions to those who have been waiting longer than the quoted estimate – I have to get these fires put out re. disputes/chargebacks on orders first, though, before I will be able to definitely dedicate protected time to scheduling phone sessions with no risk of my having to cancel or rearrange bookings – to see my game plan for those, see this post — but I will set up a way for y’all to book your spot via an online calendar).
Big Lucky Hoodoo 