To be honest, I don't see it as a problem. Let's be real, here. The features in FoE need to be geared toward making players want/need to return frequently to collect their goods. If the devs wanted to be jerks, they could make the produced goods expire at a set time no matter how long they took. Instead, as best I can gather, you have approximately the same amount of time to collect as the items took to produce (goods don't appear to expire at all). I know, from personal experience, that if I set production that takes 4 hours, it will still be there if I'm 3 hours late (7 hours from the time I set the production). If you set a 1 day production, but return 8 hours late (1 day and 8 hours after the production was started), the goods should be waiting for you.