Hurricane Nicole Set To Cause More eCommerce Disruption To Florida This Week

Hurricane Nicole is set to cause further disruption to Florida this week not long after Hurricane Ian caused huge amounts of damage to parts of the state. In a storm that has developed very quickly this is not good news for eCommerce businesses across Florida.

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At the time of writing, Nicole is currently a Tropical Storm, however, the National Hurricane Center is predicting that it will be a category 1 hurricane by the time it reaches the east coast of Florida. The storm is due to cause disruption from Wednesday the 9th of November to Friday the 11th of November.

Many schools across central Florida counties have already told parents that Thursday and Friday school will be closed.

This means if you are an eCommerce seller you can expect that couriers and postal services are going to be disrupted through the latter part of this week and just like with Ian it would be wise to begin managing your buyer’s expectations.

Hurricane Nicole Updates

While Hurricane Nicole isn’t expected to be as strong or destructive as Hurricane Ian, it has developed much quicker meaning that at the time of writing there aren’t many official notices from the likes of USPS or eBay.

I expect that on Wednesday the 9th of November we will begin to see statements from various couriers and USPS about service disruptions and I expect we will see the standard seller protections post from eBay.

We will update this post with any developments as they happen.

Amazon: We are seeing firsthand that for Florida residents Amazon is showing a banner on their pages saying “Delivery times include delays due to weather”. Items that are normally delivered next day are now showing as to be delivered on Sunday, clearly showing that Amazon is building in a buffer for customer expectations over the next few days.

Similarly, with Hurricane Ian, eSeller365 is run out of central Florida, which once again means that there is a chance we may be impacted by the coming storm and as such may not have power or be able to get online to keep the site updated. We will get back to posting as usual, as soon as we can if we go offline.

Of course, the main thing is that everyone in the Hurricane Nicole cone remains safe and prepares properly for whatever happens over the next few days.