Record the buyer’s actual answer to a shipment delay

Preserve the promise that started the delay

Start with one real order and the shipment wording that accompanied it. Preserve the product or checkout statement, order confirmation and any earlier individual promise, with their dates. A policy edited after the order is a different version. It cannot establish what that buyer was told before placing the order.

Record the affected items and quantities alongside the original promised shipment. If only part of the order is delayed, keep that scope visible throughout the notice and response record. An answer about the delayed portion should not be silently applied to goods that have already shipped or to another order. If the earlier promise cannot be recovered, mark that evidence missing rather than replacing it with today’s website text.

Keep the notice and the answer as separate evidence

Save the actual notice, its send time and channel, the revised date it offered, and the choices it presented. Retain any available delivery or failed-delivery record. A prepared notice is not a sent notice, and a sending record is not the buyer’s answer. An internal note that says customer notified should point to the underlying message.

Then preserve the reply in its original context. Record its time, the order or items it concerns and any limit the buyer expressed. If the reply asks a question or makes waiting conditional, keep those words; do not summarize them as unconditional consent. If support recorded a phone conversation, identify the dated contemporaneous note as a staff record of that conversation rather than presenting it as the buyer’s written message.

An unanswered notice should stay labeled no response recorded. Whether that silence has a consequence under a particular provision of the rule is a separate assessment of the notice and circumstances. It is never evidence that a reply was received.

Assign the next action from the response you have

For an affirmative reply, connect the agreed date and item scope to the fulfillment owner’s record. That owner still needs a factual basis for the next shipment representation. If the revised date becomes unattainable, retain the earlier agreement and open a new delay entry; overwriting the earlier date would erase what the buyer actually accepted.

For a cancellation response, identify who will stop the affected fulfillment work and who will handle the required refund through the actual payment arrangement. Keep cancellation, refund request and completed refund evidence separate. A support message acknowledging cancellation does not itself show that money was returned.

For an unclear answer, failed notice or absent reply, assign an owner to resolve the missing communication and applicable handling requirements. Do not let an unresolved label become an indefinite permission to retain the order. Under 16 CFR 435.2, covered missed shipment promises require the specified delay-consent or cancellation and prompt-refund handling; the worksheet does not replace those duties.

Use the record without overstating its legal effect

The FTC rule has a limited-applicability section and does not displace stronger applicable state or local buyer rights. Establish which requirements govern the transaction before choosing a response deadline or deciding what an unanswered notice permits. This record does not supply a universal deadline, establish coverage for every research-only order or determine whether a particular notice is legally sufficient.

The practical result is a traceable handoff: the original promise, the notice, the actual answer, and the person responsible for the next action. If the store’s messages or order workflow make that handoff unclear, describe the specific gap in a Prism checkout-review consultation. Confirm the requested work, responsibilities, fees and terms before work begins. Keep private buyer correspondence out of the public inquiry form; a short description of the gap is enough to start the scope discussion.

Delay response record

Complete one record for one delayed order or clearly identified portion. Preserve references to the original messages in your authorized internal records. An empty response field means evidence is missing, not that the buyer agreed. Use the final rows to assign a concrete next action.

Worksheet entries are not submitted by Prism’s worksheet and are not saved by the site. Use record types, availability, anonymized observations, or match/mismatch results. Do not enter government identifiers, customer names or addresses, customer messages, receipt-access links, card or bank details, passwords, or keys. Send sensitive documents only through the provider’s verified secure channel.

These are temporary notes. Leaving or reloading this page may clear them. Worksheet entries are not sent automatically. If you copy notes into the consultation message and submit the form, Prism receives them as part of your request.