Keep in mind that even though the ship dates might be pushed back by a few days, they are still overall 2-4 weeks sooner than originally estimated.
Why this happens:
- You get a ship date, lets say June 1st.
- I start shipping stuff at a faster than normal rate.
- Your order starts to move forward on the list, shipping sooner than originally expected. Lets say May 1st.
- This continues. Suddenly your ship date is just days away at April 20th.
- Unexpectedly hundreds of orders / products / etc come into stock from customers that placed their orders ahead of yours.
- These orders all enter the queue and push your order back to May 10th.
- I start shipping those other products that came in. Now your order moves forward to May 1st.
Overall its still shipping early by a full month in this example. What happens unfortunately is lots of people will see the 'delay' from April 20th to May 10th and get upset without realizing that the order is still several weeks ahead of the original schedule.
This is one of the reasons why I no longer show an exact date if the order is several months out. I am also considering no longer showing an updated ship date and instead just relying upon the original date that was provided. This prevents customers from thinking the order was pushed back, but also makes it seem more often than not that shipping is super slow.
Elbow pads and Khaki belts are actually coming in stock in the next week, so those will ship sooner than July.