What my Houndsy taught me about split shipping and customer experience.

My dog has been through A LOT in the last year. So, on a whim, I decided to change her food (not the protein, just the brand/method) and we found out 6 months later she was allergic to something in it. That turned into a journey. She developed bladder stones causing her to throw up. This was followed by some incontinence and, finally, a 3 day stint in the hospital for eating too much of her incontinence medicine (I never said she was that smart). 

This speaks to the well-timed placement of advertisements and how so much about shopping and sales is the right place at the right time. I got an instagram ad for Houndsy and I would say Instagram/Meta is not a platform I find things on that often (although maybe these blogs would say otherwise). The point is, I was upset about my dog being in the hospital and I got an ad for something that would make both of our lives better. Say what you will, but we never really got her on a feeding schedule because she eats when she’s hungry, not when food is there (a vision of intuitive eating). Because of that, we never really had her on a schedule and we fed her when he heard her banging on her food bowl. 

What intrigued me so much about Houndsy, was that we could finally move her dog food out of our coat closet, AND we would no longer need to drop kibble while trying to scoop it out of a less than ideal situation. With just the pull of a lever, she would have a perfectly portioned scoop of food ready for her to eat. 

So, I sent it to my husband:

Ordered. Easy as that… Or so I thought. 

Shipping estimates, timelines, notifications, and multiple packages

When I ordered the white model, I knew it was slightly backordered. The product page said it would ship “mid April”. In addition to the Houndsy itself, I also ordered the water bowl and the silicone mat (this becomes important to the story). I ordered this on April 8th while we were out of town, expecting it all to arrive mid-late April. 

A few days later, I’m getting shipping notifications. Which, in and of itself, is is fantastic news. Things are shipping quickly! However, things shipped in 3 different packages. 1 for the water bowl, 1 for the silicone mat, and 1 for the Houndsy. High-level, this is a common occurrence. If these items are already individually packaged, there is no need to overbox them and I would have to assume shipping rates for the two items together (due to dimensions) would be higher than the individual packages. The issue now moves to UPS because somehow these packages (coming from the same place and going to the same place) ended up with 2 different drivers. Now I start getting emails from UPS about packages not being delivered and packages requiring signatures and I had no idea what was going on. I live in a 4 unit building and someone is always home. Drivers know to buzz all of the apartments to try and get in. 

The oddest part is that one item was delivered! And then the next day I got a notification that another item was delivered to a UPS pickup point near me. My worry was that it was the Houndsy (not a small package) and my nearest UPS pickup point is a solid 8 minute walk. 

I make the trek to grab it and the package is thin and long…so definitely not the Houndsy. What is it? I soon realized it was the Silicone mat that for some reason required a signature? My Shop app and various UPS notifications were all really confusing. I did not know what was in what package and what was arriving when. I contacted Houndsy to see what was going on and they clarified things. The mat and bowl shipped in separate packages and the Houndsy was backordered and had not shipped yet. Ok, that made sense!

What is the lesson here? 

There are various opinions on the best model for packaging logistics. Some people prefer to ship it all together when it is all available (I can tell you 3PLs do not prefer this, but brands do). What this does is create inventory issues because you have committed items sitting in a warehouse taking up precious space that could be used for new inventory. Because of that, most people end up going the Amazon route of shipping whatever you can from wherever is closest in whatever packages you want. If items are in the same warehouse, they will often be packaged together unless there are some dimensional issues (in this case, the silicone mat was longer than a standard box and would have triggered dimensional weight). Ultimately, each brand has to analyze what people are ordering most frequently and optimize shipping policies from there, understanding that some people may get the short end of the stick and hopefully the product makes up for it!