Do you offer package tracking?
Our shipping to customers in the US is free (and significantly discounted to international customers), but it doesn’t come with many frills. Recently Endicia (our electronic postage supplier) provided an update and started offering delivery confirmation with our domestic First Class Mail parcels. If you provide us with a valid email address, you will get an email when we ship your package with a tracking number. In reality, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the postal workers WILL scan the package at every waypoint but it is better than nothing.
International customers, I’m afraid, do not benefit from this. After looking into tracking for international customers (even to Canada), we found it would cost us about SIX times as much to ship a package via Priority Mail International (the least expensive option with tracking). I believe our customers would prefer to spend their money on tea rather than shipping, so I’m afraid tracking for international orders is not available at this time.
How long will it take to receive my tea?
52teas is a small business. Though I occasionally employ some help packaging teas and filling orders, I’m largely a one man band. I work as an accountant during the day; being a tea mogul is just my secret identity and gets done in my spare time. I try to get orders out as soon as possible, but there are some weeks (particularly during tax season) when I can only ship once or twice a week.
We ship all of our teas via USPS First Class, First Class International and (for larger domestic orders) Priority Mail. Typically, I would expect your tea to arrive in 7 to 10 business days if you are in the US. International Orders may take a few weeks. Occasionally, particularly with Canada for some reason, international orders can take as long as six weeks. This doesn’t happen all the time, but every once in a while it seems customs wants to hold up a package for reasons known only to them.
Where do you ship your teas?
EVERYWHERE. But please note that it’s your responsibility to research your country’s customs restrictions.
How much is shipping?
Shipping to the US is FREE for individual pouch orders or plans! (Please note this does NOT apply to barter orders. (See the question about barter.))
Shipping to Canada is $3.99 + $0.50 per ounce or $4.99 per week of subscription (Just $8.33 per MONTH, if you subscribe to one of our monthly plans.)
All other countries: $5.99 + $0.75 per ounce or $7.49 per week of subscription (Just $13.99 per MONTH, if you subscribe to one of our monthly plans.)
Can you make a tea with [insert ingredients/flavors here]?
We love taking suggestions from our customers and turning them into tea blends. Please feel free to use our contact page to send us your ideas. It may take us a while and it may not be EXACTLY what you imagined, but we’ll give it a try if we can. Please note that if you are looking for something really simple (i.e. an apricot tea), that’s probably not something we would do (we’re kind of known for our really unique blends). At the same time, if you are looking for something really out there (i.e. a hot dog flavored matcha) that we don’t think anyone else would be interested in, we probably won’t go there either. But send us your ideas, and we’ll see what we can do.
Do you take IMS or ITEX?
We have been accepting barter for several years now. In general, we love the idea of barter, however, since we no longer have a brick and mortar shop, we’re finding it increasingly difficult to use our barter dollars for business related expenses. That coupled with the fact that we have repeatedly run into issues with trade partners that seem to want to abuse the system (by only taking partial trade payments or by charging excessive shipping charges to supplement their cash income on trade purchases…) has made us slightly reluctant to continue accepting trade.
At this time, we are going to continue accepting barter dollars from IMS and ITEX, however, we are presently unable to continue offering free shipping to our trade customers. Shipping for trade orders will be billed via Paypal to the email address you provide when checking out. (You do NOT have to have a Paypal account.) Shipping will be $1 + $0.50 per ounce. For subscriptions we charge $2 per week for weekly subscriptions or $5 per month for monthly subscriptions.
We are also asking our trade partners to please not buy up all of our stock of a new blend before our cash customers have a chance to purchase some. We will periodically reevaluate our commitment to the trade networks, and if we feel we’re carrying too high a balance in trade dollars with a particular network, we may temporarily suspend accepting trade from that network.
Lastly, if you are in one of our trade networks and have packaging or shipping supplies, web advertising, printing, designing or website development available on trade, we would love to hear from you.
PLEASE NOTE: We are no longer accepting Tradebank.
Will you reblend [Insert tea here]?
52teas has a bit of a different business model. Most tea companies create a set number of blends and offer them for sale. Their selection rarely, if ever, changes. At 52teas, we create a new blend EVERY week, but they are typically limited edition blends–when they are gone, they’re gone and we move on to something else. Unfortunately, if we re-blended everything we get requests for, we would be drowning in inventory. It’s difficult to blend less than one pound at a time, and a pound is typically at least eight pouches. If we did that every time someone wanted a pouch or two of a certain blend, we would find ourselves quickly buried in inventory.
However, if we have enough requests to recreate a certain blend, we certainly will. Alternatively, if you are interested in purchasing a full batch (roughly 1lb) of a given tea, and we have the ingredients to do it, we can certainly help you out. If this interests you, please use contact us to see if we can do it. A full pound typically sells bulk packaged for $49.99.
