A seller should use caution when quoting delivery time in days for two reasons. First, once the item leaves the sellers hands he has no control how long a delivery will take..but will be held accountable for slowness of the shipper. Secondly, the definition of what constitutes a day is confusing to the point of defying easy explaination.

Case in point. Payment arrived in the daily mail about 4:45 PM on a Friday. The item was fragile and bulky and I felt it best sent via Fedex. There are different classes of Fedex agents. I opt to take items directly to a Fedex staffed facility. This improves delivery time and reduces customer shipping costs. I was at the Fedex facility and the item shipped a little after 5:00 PM. At 5:15 I notified the customer the item was shipped via Fedex 3 day ground. I was proud of a good job done in shipping and contacting in 30 minutes.

Monday was a national holiday. Tuesday morning the customer emailed telling me the item had not arrived. Again that evening and again Wednesday morning I received complaints of nondelivery. Wednesday afternoon he said the item had arrived. He was very disappointed that a 3 day shipping item had taken 5 days.

I returned to Fedex to express my customers complaint. Fedex proceeded to set me straight. All delivery quotes are "business days." A weekday "business day" ends at 5:00 PM for ground and 8:00 PM for express. Saturday is not a "business day" for ground. Sunday is not a "business day"..nor was Monday as it was a national holiday. Given they received the package after 5:00PM on Friday the item was not considered "in the system" until Tuesday morning. By Fedex standards the 3 day item had been delivered in 1 day. By the customer standards it was delivered in 5 days.

That kind of fight is something a seller does not need. Explaining the various definitions of a day to a customer is also something that is too complicated to be appreciated.

I feel the best path of action for a seller is to ship promptly, contact the buyer on when and how the item was shipped and provide the buyer with tracking numbers of the shipment. The seller shoud not tell the customer when to expect the item as the seller has no control over delivery. A buyer can use the tracking information to confirm the item was sent and focus delivery time concerns where they belong..with the shipper.