We have made the decision not to ship our products outside the UK. We hope the explanation below helps you to understand and appreciate our reasons for this approach. Note: this does not impact virtual download products like our e-books, they are excluded due to the nature of delivery.
Product packaging and miles travelled
We source all our products, packaging and materials from local suppliers as we want to reduce miles travelled and our carbon footprint. All our packaging can be recycled or is made from recycled materials. We do not feel that shipping products to the rest of the world is sustainable and an environmentally sound thing to do.
Shipping time and costs
We use Royal Mail for all our UK deliveries. International Economy would be the cheapest option for shipping and can take 2 – 12 weeks to arrive as it travels by boat. Cost is from £10.25 UK sterling however is only available for orders under the value of £20.
The next option is International Tracked and Signed service which costs from £11.80 and takes 3 – 5 business days to arrive, this goes by air.
This often makes the shipping costs to be 50% of the total order value for most of our orders. Add on top of that our packaging costs. Plus any local taxes and import fees which are payable by the customer upon receipt it makes shipping rather expensive.
Damaged in transit
We rarely have returns, however if items have been shipped internationally returns are expensive and prove uneconomic to return. Likewise if glass gets damaged in transit then this also becomes uneconomic to return them.
Royal Mail Tracked 24
From end of June 2023 we chose to send all our outgoing items via Royal Mail’s Tracked 24 service. We had used Royal Mail’s First Class post service however we went through a spate of parcels not being delivered and/or held back due to erroneous claims of incorrect postage by Royal Mail. This caused our customers inconvenience and delays which was not acceptable. This is why we chose the Tracked 24 service as standard.
Tracked 24 service features:
- Tracking to delivery point
- Photo on delivery
- SMS or email notifications to recipients
- Next working day delivery aim
- Ability to add a safe place to leave if not in
- Sunday parcel deliveries
- Compensation cover up to £150