Shipments within the US
Most orders ship from our warehouse in Pennsylvania. The USPS tracking number you receive when your order is shipped should start updating within 24 hours or so.
During the pandemic, any short-staffed depot can cause a bottleneck at any point in the process. So sometimes the tracking may appear stuck.
If it's made it partway to you, it almost always gets itself unstuck eventually. We just can't always tell how long it will take.
If the tracking looks like this for more than 7 days:
That indicates a problem. Let us know and we will put a reshipment in the mail for you.
Otherwise, please give it 14 days after the last tracking update before getting in touch. We don't have any information that the tracking page doesn't, but we can verify the correct address and see if a reshipment seems warranted.
It's just unpredictable out there right now! We can't wait for the situation to improve, it creates problems for us too.
Shipments from the US to other countries
If we have provided you with a USPS tracking number (one that works on USPS.com), then the package usually starts from our warehouse in Pennsylvania, then travels to an export center and departs to your country.
These shipments are almost always to Canada and if so, will be delivered by Canada Post. If so, you can check canadapost.ca with the same tracking number (or your other local postal service, if in other countries) to see if they have any more detailed information there.
Once the package makes it into Canada (or any country), the local postal service is the one to contact with any questions about the final delivery.
We can send reshipments for orders that seem lost in transit, but please allow 30 days after the last tracking update before we can consider it lost.
Shipments to Australia or New Zealand
AU and NZ shipments are sent from our warehouse in China.
We provide you with a local (Aus Post or NZ Post) tracking number, but it won't start working until it actually enters the country.
So once the package is shipped, the local tracking looks like nothing is happening for a while. But meanwhile the package itself is crossing the ocean from China toward Australia or NZ.
Once it enters the local postal system, the local tracking starts updating, and once that happens, you'll get a better indication of when it's actually coming.
Generally speaking it takes about 20-30 days for the shipment to get to the point where it's active in the local postal system. This process has really slowed down during the pandemic. (See Aus Post's statement on the matter here.)
We are working toward establishing better AU/NZ shipping options, but for the moment this is the best we can do.
Other international shipments
We constantly change how we send international shipments as rates fluctuate, our inventory levels in international warehouses go up and down, and different services seem like they're working faster or more slowly than others.
When we provide you with a tracking number, that also gives you information on the courier being used (DHL, TNT, FedEx, etc.)
The courier is the one to contact with specific questions about the package's transit. We don't know anything more than what the tracking page tells us. (The courier often tells you to come back and ask us. This is bonkers because they are the last ones to have touched it, not us.)
Again, please allow 30 days after the last tracking update before we can consider it lost.