July 2020 - Newsletter #3

Postal Package Deliveries 'Bogged Down' With Delays, Backlogs: Wall Street Journal

This newsletter is about package transit times but please be mindful of our previous newsletters regarding pharmaceutical shortages which are being experienced worldwide. Concerns about drug shortages are being raised by pharmaceutical companies, the American Medical Association, the Department of Homeland Security and pharmacist surveys released in Canada and the United Kingdom.

The Wall Street Journal reports that mail packages are experiencing significantly longer delivery times domestically in the United States as a result of increased volumes of e-commerce purchases by consumers and reduced postal staffing due to the coronavirus pandemic.

One e-commerce merchant, Ivy Kami of Colorado Springs, told the WSJ, "'[u]pdates on locations of almost all of our packages are either not available, they do not get scanned [or are] sent back without notification.'" The WSJ interviewed another e-commerce merchant, Luke Marion in Port Huron, Michigan, who told them, "'[t]here is a whole network that is bogged down' … 'and it's not the [mail] carriers' fault.'"

International Mail Packages Face More Challenges

That is what domestic e-commerce companies are experiencing. But there is an even broader "'network that is bogged down'" when it comes to international mail packages purchased from hundreds of thousands of international e-commerce companies, like NorthWestPharmacy.com, that serve consumers in the United States. These parcels face the additional challenges of getting to the United States in the first instance. With most of the world's passenger flights grounded, so too is the cargo capacity that they once provided for international mail parcels. Not only has this driven up the cost of shipping parcels, it also means it is more difficult to secure bookings of cargo space and there can be delays at air transit hubs where packages need be offloaded from one aircraft and onboarded to a connecting one while en route to the destination country. Once they arrive in the U.S., they face extended customs clearance times. After that, they may experience the longer than normal last mile delivery with USPS of the sort described in the WSJ article.

We've Been Successfully Delivering Orders Throughout the Coronavirus Crisis

Soon after the pandemic gained momentum, two of our primary dispensing facilities were closed for over a month due to the lockdown of the nations they operate in and from where they source drugs from. Flight paths everywhere were disrupted when passenger flights were canceled. Despite all this, our team routed orders to other facilities in our licensed, vetted and trusted network and secured every little bit of the available air cargo space we could and got orders on their way to customers. Though our primary suppliers have opened quite some time ago, we keep routing as many orders as we reasonably can to secondary dispensing facilities that provide the least number of flight connections required to get to your destination, despite the higher product acquisition costs we are absorbing in doing so. This helps minimize the delays parcels would otherwise face at transit hubs. It was and continues to be a significant undertaking to get orders delivered as quickly as possible but day after day we are successfully getting it done, as evidenced by the significant milestone we passed during the pandemic, which surged our total customer reviews well past 375,000. (We are incredibly appreciative of our customers for this.)

We've been informing customers through our newsletter about the challenges in the worldwide delivery logistics system since the pandemic gained momentum in North America back in March. We've also provided forthright disclosures about delivery times prior to ordering from us online and through our call center with another personalized explanatory email regarding delivery times sent upon the placement of an order. We know how important your medications are to you and we want you to be in a position to plan so that you don't run out but the good news is that NorthWestPharmacy.com has been successfully taking, processing and delivering affordable prescription drugs throughout the entire coronavirus crisis and continues to.

How Long It is Taking for Delivery?

The current average delivery time from order placement and prescription submission is four to seven weeks. Please note that these are the average delivery timelines we are observing but some parcels are arriving as quickly as a week after shipping while others can take more than seven weeks.

Our Cost of Shipping Has Skyrocketed but Yours Just Came Down

As the timeframe for delivering packages has gone up during the coronavirus pandemic, so have the shipping rates we've been paying. In fact, they went up once again on July 1, 2020, due to an increase to postal rates imposed by the United States on the last mile delivery - or so-called "terminal dues" - for parcels arriving from abroad. That increase is on top of the Covid-19 surcharges that carriers and cargo companies are charging us.

Despite all that, NorthWestPharmacy.com has absorbed the rate increases and has also reduced its shipping fee for customers down to the pre-pandemic level. We will do our best to maintain the lower shipping fee and product-specific free shipping specials we are offering as another way to help mitigate the impact of the coronavirus crisis on our customers but we do not know what further Covid-19 surcharges or other rate increases we will face in the coming weeks so we may only be able to maintain the lower shipping fee of today for a limited time.

Please take advantage of the potentially time-limited reduced shipping fee and don't wait for more pharmaceutical shortages or delivery systems to experience further delays as the coronavirus is spreading again. We encourage customers who may need medications in the coming months to place their orders now and those whose pending orders await shipping to keep their orders active and in the queue, which ensures they are locked in at the original price quoted at the time of placing the order. That's beneficial to you because we've absorbed much of the coronavirus-related increases in product acquisition and shipping costs that we've faced to date but may be unable to do so for much longer. Also, the limited pharmaceutical supply, available cargo space for transport and customs clearances will all be allocated to customers on a first-come-first-served basis and we anticipate that it may be quite some time before worldwide drug supply and delivery systems return to normal.

With more than 375,000 customer reviews, NorthWestPharmacy.com is the most reviewed and independently five-star rated online pharmacy in the world providing lower cost medications from abroad to customers worldwide. No competitor offering lower cost pharmaceuticals from abroad can match our supply and delivery capacity during this difficult time so please be assured we are successfully leveraging all our capacity to ensure orders reach customers as fast as possible in the circumstances.

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