Eight states
A template needs a state and the fields it reads. This list is authored from the questions owners report; adjust it to your carriers.
- Label created: no movement yet. Fields: order date, label date.
- In transit: last event and its date.
- Out for delivery: carrier, date.
- Delivered: delivery date and the carrier's wording.
- Delivered but not received: hand over to a person.
- Stuck for a set number of days: hand over to a person.
- Returned to sender: hand over to a person.
- Address change asked: hand over to a person.
The check before sending
Before a draft is sent, compare every value in it (status, date, carrier, tracking number) with the live order. If any value differs, the draft goes to a person. This is the control for the failure one poster describes: a confident answer built on an out of date cache of the store.
Dates that matter
GOV.UK says a customer can cancel up to 14 days after the order is delivered, and that you should deliver within 30 days unless you agreed otherwise. A reply that guesses a delivery date, or ignores that a parcel is marked delivered, can touch both. Do not promise a date the carrier has not given.
Which paid job fits
The reply drafts job writes the templates and the pre-send check and proves them on 30 anonymised orders you send, 8 of them traps you plant. The weekly list finds stuck and lost orders from a tracking export. Neither sends a reply.
Sources and limits
- Shopify Community: what's the one customer question Checked 2026-10-12.
- A poster on 24 and 26 Jun 2026, who says they help brands with support automation, lists the usual repeat questions as where is my order, when will it ship, what is your return policy and can I change my address, and says cases such as "it says delivered but I never got it" and "stuck in transit for a week" are order-specific.
- Shopify Community: what's a time AI support gave a confident wrong answer Checked 2026-10-12.
- A poster on 5 Oct 2026 describes an AI answer that was confident but based on an out of date cache of the store.
- GOV.UK: online and distance selling for businesses Checked 2026-10-12.
- GOV.UK says you must tell the customer they can cancel up to 14 days after their order is delivered, and lists delivering within 30 days unless you have agreed otherwise.