DogsNDaylilies said:I, personally, liked the arrive-to date because it gives the host a definitive day they can prepare the boxes and the members do have a certain amount of personal liability to get their seeds to the host using a reliable and quick means of shipping. If they wait until the last minute, it's on them to use something like overnight shipping to get it to arrive on time. With ship-by days, it makes things much less predictable. I'm concerned I may not get seeds back out to everyone by the deadline if some people use slower methods.
Either way it's done, you aren't going to be absolutely certain that things will arrive when they should. Even more so if a holiday falls around the same time. Regardless of the shipping method you specify, I'd be inclined to allow at least one, if not two, weeks from the "must be shipped by" date; and even then there may be some that come in later.
Last spring I received a priority mail box containing live aquarium plants that was completely smashed up, with a little sticker from the PO that said "we're sorry your package was damaged during processing"... it took 2 weeks to get to me (and no wonder!) Fortunately, the sender sent me a replacement without any hassle -- despite the fact that it wasn't his fault that this happened, any more than it was mine. And quite a few years ago I was receiving my paycheck from a company in Florida via FedEx (I have no idea why they chose to do that rather than use direct deposit); it always arrived regular as clockwork, until one time it was over a week late... turned out the envelope (one of the letter-size cardboard things) had somehow slipped through the machinery and was lying on the floor for a while
. So -- you just never know.
