1) Postal shipping charges shown on the cart now include insurance (this is a change). Postal insurance is substantially more expensive than UPS insurance. This can quickly make priority mail shippng more expensive than UPS.
2) If your package is damaged or lost, UPS will process the claim and refund the money quickly, usually within 2-3 weeks at most. Getting a refund for a lost international postal package can take 3-4 months. There is NO tracking for international priority mail.
Thank you for reading this far. Further details below:
General Information: We charge you what it costs us
to ship. Note that UPS rates shown on the cart are for commercial addresses. Residential delivery usually costs about $2 - $3 more depending on where you live.
We prefer to use United Parcel Service (UPS) because of:
Our daily UPS pickup is around 4pm eastern time.
• Orders received by noon will often ship the same day (unless your order is very large or we are exceptionally busy).
UPS shipping methods are: Ground, 3-Day, 2-Day, and Next Day. (If you need Saturday delivery or other special services, please contact us.)
Remember: The UPS charges you will see as you check out are now fairly accurate. The exception is on very large orders. For those the UPS servers don't know how many boxes will be required, etc. and the costs shown may be wildly inaccurate. Contact us if you have any questions!
• Shipping to a commercial address is less
expensive than delivery to your home, so if convenient, have it shipped to your business or your office.
SHIP CHEAPEST WAY: If you'd like us to choose the most
cost effective shipping for you, please indicate this
at the bottom of the Order Info checkout page.
PRIORITY MAIL: There have been recent (May 2007) changes to Priority Mail rates, and some of them have increased drastically. The postal shipping rates quoted on the cart are ESTIMATES from the USPS server, and do not include insurance. We insure all priority and express mail shipments.
We normally use priority mail for shipments to Hawaii and Alaska (depending on the location).
Again, please let us know if you want us to compare UPS ground vs priority mail to see which will be less expensive for your order.
The best UPS shipping method is UPS Expedited. (UPS Express is also available--and is the only option to a few countries--but Expedited is almost as fast and costs less.)
The other option for international customers is postal shipping via Express Mail or International Priority Mail. The International Priority flat envelopes will hold six 250 gram bags of Miyuki beads. We limit the value per envelope to $100. Note that there have been several changes to international postal shipping recently so please contact us with questions, or take a look at the USPS website. While postal 'tracking' exists for Express & International Priority Mail, it is not the detailed sort of tracking offered by UPS.
If an international postal shipment is lost, we have to wait 45 days before we can file an insurance claim. UPS tracking is much better than postal tracking, and UPS settles insurance claims very quickly.
Checking Order Status: To check the status of an order, click the Your Account link in the menu bar at the top of each page and login to your account. Orders that are awaiting shipment are defined as Pending while orders that have shipped are labeled Closed. You can also track UPS shipments from your account on the website. We also enter your email into our UPS software, so you should receive an email from UPS after your order goes out. (Please make sure your email address is correct in our system--check the Your Account Link on the cart to verify it.)