New shipping policies

Mike, the shipping robot, with a stack of boxes to be shipped.

As we enter the holiday season, we have rolled out some big changes to our shipping policies and rates. Most orders over $79 to the continental United States will ship for free. Exceptions include orders that don’t ship from the store (also known as drop-ship or factory-direct orders) and orders that include items that don’t qualify for free shipping. You can see if an item qualifies in the catalog, but the general requirements are that they are less than 10 lbs. and fit in one of our large standard shipping boxes. See the full shipping policy here.

The shipping charge for orders that don’t qualify for free shipping will be generated during the checkout process, and is now based on the items you are ordering and your shipping address instead of our old tiered pricing system. We have run the numbers and this means that the shipping charge for most small orders and for customers closer to us will be lower than they used to be!

Don’t forget that we also offer same-day delivery to addresses within 20 miles of the store, and even though you can come in and shop in person, we still offer free curbside/in-store pickup.

We are a very small team of five people and these adjustments should help us get your orders to you more efficiently and cost effectively. We appreciate your support and are doing all that we can to make sure we have what you need this supply-chain-constrained holiday season.

Save the USPS!

#SaveTheUSPS

If you have placed an order with us in the last few weeks, you might have noticed that your order is getting to you more slowly than expected. This is because of new policies put in place by the Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, who was appointed in June.

As a small business who does most of their shipping with USPS Priority Mail, this is a potentially devastating turn of events. The normal shipping time for Priority Mail packages was one to three days before the pandemic started impacted service. Then it started slipping by a day or two.

In the last few weeks, packages we handed off to our mail carrier took as long as a week just to get scanned in at the local distribution center. Packages dropped off at our local post office have been scanned in within a day or two. Even once they are scanned at the distribution center or post office, packages are taking several days, if not longer, to make it to the next distribution center on their way to a local post office for delivery.

We have had packages to Oregon and Nevada take nearly two weeks to be delivered after they left our hands. But it’s not all bad! We also continue to have a number of packages make it all the way to New York or North Carolina in four days.

We will continue to drop off packages at our local post office so that they get scanned into the system as soon as possible and you can follow the tracking as they make their way to you. This also seems to avoid them going through the Los Angeles International Distribution Center, which appears to be the biggest local bottleneck.

The American Postal Workers Union has a page full of resources with more information on these slowdowns and how to get in touch with your congressional representatives to encourage them to get the USPS the funding it already desperately needed to manage the impacts of the pandemic, and also restore the footing of the postal system instead of trying to carve it up and privatize it.

As always, thank you for your support, patience, and understanding. Stay safe!