How do you handle shipping options that require buyer phone numbers?

Hello!

For a while, my local post service didn’t have any good shipping options available. A lot of the time the tracking would stop partway, sometimes there would be issues with getting delivered. Other carriers would simply be too expensive, relative to the price of the items I sell.

About two months ago now, a new shipping option was introduced, which finally tracked properly, and mostly eliminated the delivery issues with the previous methods, but it requires the recipient’s phone number when filling out the form. I introduced this option into my shop as well, but I’ve still kept the old ones available for anyone who might not be comfortable sharing their phone number. I’ve tried my best to be transparent about the possible issues with the old options as well.

Right now, I have an info card in the photos of each listing, along with ‘READ LAST IMAGE’ in the beginning of every listing’s title. I’ve also added an optional personalization field to every listing, to ask people to specify their shipping option and provide their number if necessary. I didn’t want to make this field mandatory, since I imagine it would be a pain for anyone buying more than a couple items. Despite all this about half of the buyers still miss the info, and in that case I always message them to ask them to clarify.

So far, most buyers have preferred to use this option, and in those cases it has always worked out well. I think only three so far have actively opted for one of the old options. There have also been a handful of buyers who never get back to my messages, even after I email them. In those cases, I always wait until the last possible date and then opt to use the old method.

Could any improvements be made to the way I am handling this? I’m thinking if to just enter my own number for buyers that don’t respond, since it seems to very rarely actually be used in the delivery process, though I’m not sure what I would do if it does turn out to be important and I get an unexpected call or text message that was meant for the buyer. Does anyone else have experience with using shipping methods like this? How have you handled it?