I came across a Chinese web site selling skirts and then paid for two skirts in different colors. After I had paid for the skirts, I sent a short message to them:
please let me know when you send them to me.
And the Chinese seller made this reply to me: I don't know when will send to you.
I have no idea what is wrong with my simple sentence. Did I make any big grammartical mistakes in the sentence that made the seller think I was asking for the exact date and time when they would start to send the goods to me? I wanted a notification from them so that I could predict when my goods would arrive, I did not rush them. Could it be that they mixed up my message with this one or it was my mistake?
please let me know when you will send them to me.
Answer
Please let me know when you have shipped them is unambiguous but requires the shipper to understand " when you have shipped them".
"Please notify me when they have been shipped" is unambiguous but requires the shipper to understand "when they have been shipped".
Please send a postal tracking number if available, or a shipping notice with ETA uses nouns common to international online retail, so it is more likely to be understood than any sentence whose meaning depends on the verb tense, or on the shipper's understanding a phrase such as "at the time".
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