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An update to our Shipping Policy

Skip the intro/ view brief overview of changes that we’ve made. Or view our new Shipping Policy in full.

If we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s been that we need to be able to adapt quickly to situations beyond our control — because problems can arise at any given moment, and sometimes without notice.

A QUICK RE-CAP

In mid-January 2023 we introduced an updated Shipping Policy. In this revised policy we made changes to the shipping options that we offer, along with some changes to the terms & conditions.

This update was introduced following Royal Mail Strikes (our main shipping partner) held towards the back-end of 2022 — and in light of further Strikes potentially being on the horizon.

The Strikes made us realise that we needed to provide customers with more realistic timeframes, guidance, and expectations for the shipping services of which we offer. After all, we’re not hand-delivering orders and therefore if something does go wrong on the carriers side, there’s not a great deal we can do about it other than wait it out until sufficient time has passed.

Whilst we’ve always done our best to be transparent over shipping, events towards the back-end of 2022 seen some customers left in limbo for longer than we deemed to be acceptable. As most of those affected (thankfully) understood – delays in the delivery network are beyond our control and particularly during the Strikes, we too were left helpless in the situation. All we could do was wait until the carrier cleared the backlogs.

Unfortunately not everyone was quite so understanding to the situation of Strikes, and yet being in such a helpless position this left us looking incompetent in some eyes. That didn’t sit well with us. We work extremely hard to get orders out on time every time, and via the fastest shipping services that we’re able to offer.

FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS

Upon reflection we’ve come to the realisation that no matter how hard we work to get orders out on time, and no matter the free (and low-cost) shipping options that we provide, we’re still at risk of disappointing some customers.

Therefore moving forward we’ve came to realise that we should instead be under-promising and over delivering when it comes to despatch & shipping. For this reason we have further updated & simplified the titles and descriptions of the shipping services that we offer.

The services themselves have not changed – we’ve merely updated the titles and descriptions to help clarify the timeframes on offer by those services. Eg. Tracked24 is a ‘next working day’ service, but this only comes with a next working day delivery aim. During busy periods such as public holidays it may well take a few days longer. Whilst Tracked24 provides a very high success rate of next working day delivery (since it is prioritised by the carrier), it does not guarantee next day delivery. Only the Guaranteed Next Day service offers any form of guaranteed delivery timeframe — which is a paid upgrade.

As some of you may have noticed over the last few months, we’ve also been experimenting with a new FREE Tracked UK shipping option (Royal Mail Tracked48) for lower value orders (over £15 but below £25). Whilst this has clearly been a success (we completely understand that online shoppers prefer to receive a Tracking number), our costings just do not allow us to continue with the £15 threshold that we’ve been experimenting with. Therefore, we will be changing this threshold to £16 with immediate effect — but the good news is that this new/free tracked option for lower value orders is here to stay.

And don’t worry, we’re not taking away the FREE Tracked24 option for orders over £25.

In addition, we recently managed to secure better shipping rates for our overseas customers — something that we’ve been working for several years to achieve. We’re sure these new rates will make many of our International customers happy, and it will also allow us to further expand our reach. Some of these new lower prices have been active for a couple of months now, and we’ve already noticed a huge increase in the number of overseas orders — so it’s clear that this has been well-received.

As well as changes to our service offerings, our further-revised shipping policy introduces a clause allowing us to ship via different carriers should we feel the need to — eg. in the event of service disruption or closures we have the option to ship orders via a different carrier, if we believe it will minimise delays.

To clarify — any shipping service changes that we’ve introduced are improvements. Our same-day despatch policy remains in place. We’ve not made any price increases to any of the shipping services that we offer.

We’ve merely simplified the labelling of services offered, and added more clarity/ been more reserved over the descriptions of those services.

As a brief overview…

REVISED UK SHIPPING OPTIONS

  • All UK orders still ship FREE of charge.
  • We have introduced a FREE Tracked upgrade for orders over £16 (otherwise, a £1.50 upgrade).
  • Orders over £25 still qualify for FREE Tracked Next Working Day delivery (otherwise, a £2.95 upgrade).
  • The Guaranteed Saturday service (formerly £9.95) has been removed.
  • Guaranteed Next Day is now available Mon-Fri, for Guaranteed Delivery Tues-Sat (£7.95 upgrade).

RENAMING OF UK SHIPPING OPTIONS

We have renamed our UK shipping options to be more reflective of the services on offer.
Eg. Shipping options have now been renamed to:
ECONOMY, STANDARD TRACKED, PRIORITY TRACKED, GUARANTEED NEXT DAY.

We’ve also updated the description for each of those shipping services, of which you will find a shortened description of each service displayed during Checkout (full details still available on our Shipping page)

REVISED INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING OPTIONS

All International destinations that we ship to now have access to flat rate shipping for parcels which weigh under 2kg.

  • Parcels up to 500g – now just £7.99.
  • Parcels up to 2kg – now just £11.99.
  • Parcels over 2kg also have new improved rates. These will vary based on destination & total weight.
    A full rate card is available on our shipping page, but as a guide — 5kg starts from just £18.99 & 10kg starts from £34.99.

SEE OUR NEW SHIPPING POLICY IN FULL

To view our new Shipping Policy in full, click here.
For reference, you can still view our old (and now expired) Shipping policy here, for a limited time.