Delivery rates and information
Service Update – we now operate a 3 days per week collection… so, our couriers collect from us on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday – we have made this alteration from a 5 day to a 3-day, collection, so that we can keep our prices competitive.
In addition, please note that during September, October, and December we have our extremely busy ‘Bonfire & Halloween’ seasons with our firework retail business. As a small family business this can affect our ability to cope with larger order volumes which can occur, usually on a Monday due to the volume of orders over the weekend. Our shipping times may be slightly affected during this period when we have a large influx of firework orders to attend to. Our business becomes exceptionally busy between October 15th to November 10th, during these dates we anticipate it may take an extra few days to despatch orders due to an significant increase in demand, so please bear this in mind when ordering. In addition, please allow extra time in the build up to Christmas and New Year, due to increased demand, and also how the weekends affect the fall of these keys dates. We always suggest ordering a few days earlier than normal.
Standard Rates (some heavy items may incur a higher cost)
Standard delivery £4.99 – 3-5 days delivery from despatch (please note this excludes weekends).
Express delivery £5.99 – 2-3 days delivery from despatch (please note this excludes weekends).
Next Working Day – unavailable, although we do use 24hr services we cannot guarantee a genuine next day service, although in many instances the goods may arrive the following day.
Click & Collect FREE – Collect from our party shop in Nottingham (find our address and opening hours)
Saturday delivery – Saturday / Sunday (weekend) delivery is not currently guaranteed or widely available through our usual network of couriers. Some deliveries may well arrive on Saturdays, but this is at the discretion of the courier, and as such when ordering on a Friday for Next Working Day, we do not guarantee it will arrive on the Saturday, we / the couriers guarantee it will arrive the next ‘Working Day’ i.e. Monday.
Hazardous Charges £14.99 – 3-5 days delivery from despatch (please note this excludes weekends). On certain items in our store, such as Smoke Pyrotechnics, Fireworks and some other ‘Hazardous’ Goods we must use special courier services… and as a result we must pay higher charges for the special treatment of these goods.. in the checkout process you will see this as part of the extra delivery charges.
Working days
This term is widely used in delivery information as it refers to Monday through to Friday as being ‘working days’, and weekends are not classed as such. We use around half a dozen different couriers at any one time to give the best, cheapest and quickest delivery to your area across a wide variety of packages, which includes Small and Large Letters, Small and Medium Parcels and also Large Parcels. To have the flexibility to meet these demands we use the following services:
- Royal Mail 24hr and 48hr
- Despatch Bay 24hr and 48hr
- DHL and DX Freight Via DespatchBay Parcel2Go, which includes MyHermes 2 to 3 Day and also 1 to 2 Day
- Parcel2Go, which includes MyHermes 2 to 3 Day and also 1 to 2 Day
- TNT Next Day
- UPS Next Day Drop Off
- Rhode Freight for some hazardous goods
All of these firms use slightly different terms, but as a general rule collections are made on ‘Working Days’ i.e. Monday to Friday, and deliveries are always done on Monday to Friday, and with Despatch Bay and Royal Mail delivering on Saturdays i.e. 6 days a week for just the delivery side of the Network.
As an example, an order placed on a Wednesday at 8am in the morning will be despatched that same day, using the couriers ‘Next Working Day’ service and will therefore arrive on the Thursday the day after. However, an order placed on the Wednesday at 2pm, will be shipped on the Thursday using the couriers ‘Next Working Day’ service and arrive on the Friday. The reason for this is that the couriers have collection times of between 1pm and 5pm, so we cannot guarantee that after 12 noon we can pick, pack and ship your item that very same day due to the courier’s various collection times.
If you are in significant need of a ‘Next Day’ delivery we do suggest that you call or email us before placing your order so we can advise you and can avoid any unnecessary disappointment.
We have increasingly found that over recent years many customers can place an order at 8pm at night and expect to be able to receive it the following morning, which we’re unable to do because of the nature of how couriers work, and also because our business is open from 9am to 5pm each day and we do not operate a night shift for packing orders.
Disclaimer: We always endeavour to do our absolute best to pick, pack and ship out your order as quickly as possible. However, we do ask customers to understand that we purchase the Delivery Service on your behalf from all of the above mentioned couriers, and as such we entrust them to carry out the final leg of the journey to you. We know that statistically around 98% of orders with courier deliveries are done on time and in accordance with the service that we buy from them. However, that does mean that around 2% do not, this is often for a variety of reasons, but not least because the courier firms are enormous operations that handle tens or hundreds of thousands of packages each and every day, if not millions, and so inevitably parcels may go missing or take longer to deliver than anticipated.
We kindly ask that customers take this into consideration, and do not complain harshly or abuse our staff in the unlikely, but perfectly possible event that your parcel does not arrive in time. We always want happy customers, and we work extremely hard behind the scenes to pull your order together and get it out to you very quickly.
