After many long conversations, much number-crunching and several debates, we have finally comes to terms with the fact the combining customer orders free of charge is actually hurting our business.  We have always combined orders placed by the same customer within a short amount of time from one another.  Back when Blue Buddha was a one-woman show and Rebeca was receiving about 4 orders per day, it made sense to offer this service on-the-house — it was just one of those “treat others how you’d like to be treated” customer service choices that was easy for Rebeca to accommodate.

This special touch was something that we kept doing, even as the company grew from Rebeca’s spare bedroom to the ever-expanding small business it is now.  We even had our database developer create special back-end tools to notify us of possible combo orders and reinvented the procedure over and over to streamline it for as long as we could.  The truth is however, that what was once an easy thing for Rebeca to do for her small customer base now can take hours a day due to our increased order volume and an increase in the number of customers who place combo orders.  When our customer service folks are spending so much time sending refunds and processing combo orders, everyone’s orders are delayed.  We knew something had to change.

When we began addressing this issue, we knew right off the bat that eliminating this service altogether was not an option.  It just doesn’t make sense for people to have to pay for shipping two or three times just because they forgot something (plus, it’s not very Eco-friendly to pack these orders separately, print separate labels for them and potentially have them each be carried by different mail trucks!)  It was easy to cross that option off the list.  However, knowing the process was hurting the business and yet wanting to keep it in place put us between a rock and a hard place.

We finally came to the resolution that we would charge a small fee for the convenience of combining orders.  While we dislike charging our customers more money, it seems like the best compromise we can strike.  Basically, for every order that we combine with your original order, we will continue to reimburse your extra shipping minus the $3 convenience fee (updated 3/4/13).  This still saves you money (and helps save the environment) but it should also go a long way to help make up for the time we spend processing these kinds of orders.  And it should speed up the order process for everyone (if we need to hire extra hands to handle combo orders, the fees will take care of that, rather than us needing to overwork our current staff.)

We are also working on creating tools that should help make your ordering process more organized, including customer accounts (which allow you to browse past orders) and wishlists to save and share.  We know what it’s like to click submit and suddenly realize you forgot something for your project and we hope that these new tools will help to prevent that from happening.  And if it still does, you can rest assured we’ll be able to add it to your original order (in most cases) for a relatively small fee.

These kinds of decisions and changes are bound to come up in a growing business (the processes that made sense years ago just can’t keep up with what the company is today) but know that we will always approach these decisions with that same “treat others as you’d like to be treated” mentality that has gotten us where we are today.  We hope you understand why we had to make this change and welcome your feedback about it and how we might better be able to help you during the ordering process so you get everything you need in your original order.