Shipping policy
Shipping is the most critical element in our overall value proposition.
It is also the area where most of the pain or problems exist as we are just like all other retailers in Australia relying upon just 1 or 2 shipping providers to deliver parcels promptly and professionally.
In numerous articles featured throughout our store, you can read about our unwavering commitment to freshness and our elaborate, extensive processes that underpin our product quality.
But what may not be so evident in our blogs is our exceptional track record of rapid speed.
We have been running online premium coffee businesses for 19 years and over that time we have most certainly learned much about the expectations of our customers when it comes to delivering fresh roasted coffees.
Take for example when you place an order.
It's typically going to be relatively close to when you are about to run out, have run out.
Like all our essential daily rituals, running out of coffee is a dire situation, so please don't worry as we already understand the critical importance of getting your coffee order shipped fast.
In shipping more than 1 million parcels over the last 19 years all around Australia, we managed to achieve more than 99.99% of those orders dispatched the same day (business days) when the order was received by 3pm.
The 3pm deadline is due to the unpredictable times that our shipping providers randomly collect parcels from our facility. Whilst we keep asking them to collect at 4pm, it's just not possible for us to control the time they arrive at our facility to collect your order.
We will always do our best to ship your order immediately. Even when we are loading parcels into our shipper's collection vehicle, we will try to pick, pack and ship your order. Sometimes we can do this in minutes, but other times for larger orders or where coffee needs to be ground, it may take up to an hour.
Orders placed after our shipping provider has already collected will be sent the following work day.
On Mondays. due to the large volume of orders and parcels requiring shipping, we have two(2) collections occurring on Monday because our parcels won't fit into the largest collection vehicle. This means your parcel may be collected earlier, e.g. midday or 1pm on Mondays.
Freshness
We roast around 20 - 28 different coffees daily, 5 days a week.
We turn over our roasted coffee products extremely fast, sometimes we run out during the day. This rapid movement of roast, pack and ship enables us to hit our freshness target of more than 85% roasted same day.
You will never, ever have to worry about freshness with us - shipping over 3 tons of fresh roasted coffee every week means we have significant scale advantages compared to all our online competitors. In fact, we ship literally 3x more than our nearest competitor.
Our fully integrated computer systems track roasted coffee stocks, customer orders, picking, packing and dispatch without the need for manual intervention.
This enables us to have intelligent and accurate freshly made product available for picking and preparation of your parcel in minutes, not hours or days like most retailers.
Some of the best online retailers in the world will never be able to process customer orders in under 5 minutes - we are very proud to announce we can, we do that all day, every day.
Out of Stock
In the rare case we don't have enough roasted coffee to cover an order, that particular coffee is automatically scheduled for roasting either that evening or early morning for the next dispatch run.
Obviously, we could achieve a 100% order fulfillment rate but it comes at the cost of negatively impacting our freshness target, so these are fine lines being managed and balanced literally on an hourly basis throughout the day.
Our policy place freshness as priority over inventory at all times.
This is something we have done for the last 17 years and it's served us well according to our customer feedback.
Despite being less efficient and more expensive for us to operate this way, but we honestly can't achieve the freshness goal without having a small batch, fresh shipment mentality.
How we send your parcels
All customer orders are packed in brand new cartons.
We use Australia Post business parcel services for all our consignments and in many areas of Australia we also offer an Express Parcel service.
For large, bulky orders where it can be delivered without a futile attempt, we may elect to use StarTrack Road Express. Specifically, this is better suited to business premises.
There are also restrictions on some services such as Parcel Lockers and PO Boxes that can only be delivered using Australia Post.
After 19 years and 1 million parcels, we know from experience that only Australia Post has the reach, reliability and consistency to deliver all across Australia.
Over the last 16 years we have used a variety of different courier services and whilst some of these services have moments of fast delivery to some areas of Australia, the couriers can also be painfully slow or frustrating in other areas. For couriers, it all comes down to the local agent in your area, if they are good then it works well, if they are lazy then it falls over. The range in service quality is too broad and outside of our tolerance of acceptance performance and reliability.
Ultimately, we want our customer parcels to arrive as fast as possible and for there to be the lowest number of delivery incidents. We know this directly leads to happy customers.
Nobody wants their parcel to be delayed or problems developing. It upsets our customers and increases our costs as we must engage to help and support our customers with delivery incidents.
Authority to Leave
All of our parcels by default have Signature Required for security purposes.
This means you, or a nominee must provide a signature when the parcel is presented at the time of delivery.
If nobody is present at the time of delivery (referred to as a futile delivery attempt), your parcel will be directed to the nearest LPO for collection.
Please be aware that we are not able to control or influence behaviors or performance of delivery agents. If you experience a poor level of service from AusPost, please raise a complaint directly with AusPost. It's honestly the best approach when more voices are heard by AusPost - they tend to ignore us as merchants.
Leaving a card when a futile delivery has occurred is no longer standard procedure. Please do not rely upon a "sorry we missed you card" as everyone these days has smart phones to check email or SMS notifications that are sent to you by AusPost.
If you collect the parcel from an Australia Post outlet, they may ask you to identify yourself which is likely to involve appropriate ID verification. It's also important to ensure the addressee on the consignment is the same person collecting the parcel as the freight company may refuse to allow a surrogate to collect a parcel.
To set Authority to Leave on our website you must choose this option in the CART before proceeding to the checkout.
The checkout is "locked down" for high security, so features such as delivery instructions and setting Authority To Leave must be set in the CART before checking out.
Entering Delivery Instructions such as "please leave on the veranda" without setting Authority To Leave does not remove the requirement for the delivery agent to obtain a signature at the point of handing over your parcel.
In other words, delivery instructions are completely ignored so asking for a parcel to be left is pointless without also having CHECKED THE BOX for Authority To Leave.
When a customer selects Authority To Leave for their parcel it means that the default security of that parcel is removed and hence your parcel is in risk of either being stolen or misplaced. AusPost will not entertain any type of consideration for compensation where a parcel was delivered without signature.
Proof Of Delivery (POD).
Where a parcel has been enabled for Authority To Leave, or the receiver has selected this option when contacted by AusPost via transit progress messages, there is a requirement for the delivery agent to take a photo of the parcel when it is placed in a safe location.
This photo image is called Proof Of Delivery (POD).
Receivers can request the POD image from AusPost without needing to contact us.
In most cases, the photo images have been taken on private property and hence the AusPost Privacy Policy may restrict 3rd parties such as us as senders from obtaining the image.
A sender is also not able to verify the accuracy or otherwise of a POD, only the receiver can assess and verify these images.
For these reasons, we ask our customers to obtain the POD images from AusPost directly, without our involvement.
Tracking Notification
Online shopping customers are already familiar with tracking notification emails sent by AusPost.
These messages are sent to your registered email address at various stages throughout the transit commencing with the initial notification once the parcel has been collected from our premises (dispatched).
The tracking notifications are issued by shipper, e.g. AusPost - not us.
Once your parcel leaves our facility, your order is marked as Fulfilled and generates email notifications informing you that the parcel is on it's way.
All tracking of your order is performed on the freight provider's systems - not ours.
On the day of delivery, the freight provider sends you a notification (either SMS or email or both) advising your parcel is to be delivered today and another notification indicating the parcel is onboard with a driver.
Again, all these notifications are sent by the freight service provider, not us.
Transit Times
Please understand, a sender is unable to control or influence performance of freight companies in relation to transit time frames.
We also cannot give you delivery time frame indicators over the phone or email as the service is entirely out of our control - there is zero feedback from AusPost on their transit performance times so we have no idea on shipping durations.
All we can do is our absolute best in shipping your parcel fast by having it ready quickly for handover to AusPost.
It's also important for consumers to understand that every merchant or retailer and every parcel in the networks all experience an equal level of performance.
There is no such thing as faster services or special routes unless you selected a different level of service such as the Express option.
As we lodge directly to a large hub, we eliminate the delays normally experienced at the Melbourne Parcel Facility in Sunshine. This means we can reduce transit times by anywhere from 1 to 3 days. Our standard service is so fast in some cases it can beat Express, particularly for Melbourne metro deliveries.
Peak Freight Periods
During holiday periods, all the freight around Australia slows down. This should not come as a surprise to anyone as freight networks are always delicately balanced in capacity versus demand.
Peak periods occur in the lead up to Xmas from mid October through to mid December.
Retailers typically load up inventories and there are big sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday which ultimately end up clogging the freight networks late November and early December when consumers are performing their Xmas gift shopping.
Transit times around Xmas and New Year, early January and Easter along with School holidays end up with AusPost staff on holidays, less people to process parcels means slower transit times.
We recommend you visit the AusPost website to learn more about transit time frames.
Late Parcel Arrival
We cannot lodge a Service Request with AusPost for a consignment yet to be delivered if that consignment is still within the AusPost recommended delivery time frames - which is subject to change on a daily basis.
What this means is we cannot ask AusPost to investigate a late delivery when it's still within their range.
Customers are allowed and encouraged to contact AusPost directly if they are concerned about their parcel - we are both sitting at either end of a delivery network, it's not the sender's sole responsibility to contact AusPost, we don't have any special privileges or power over AusPost as a sender.
Damage In Transit
Please be aware that parcels sent by Australia Post do not have transit insurance by default.
In the case of an Australian Post consignment, this means if a parcel is lost, stolen or damaged, we are unable to lodge a claim on our freight provider.
Its not our policy, it's the terms of conditions of Australia Post.
Obviously, if Australia Post were happy to accept claims for damage or loss, then we would also offer that to our customers, but the unfortunate reality is that damage is not covered unless insurance has been purchased by the customer before it has been dispatched from our facility.
If you are concerned about the risks associated with freight damage, you must contact us to arrange Transit Insurance prior to the parcel being sent from our facility. Once your order has left our premises, you cannot add insurance.
Insurance is $3.30 (incl.GST) per $100 of transit cover.
IMPORTANT NOTE - Australia Post Express Parcels have no delivery time frame guarantees.
When Australia Post launched the Express Post service, it offered guarantee delivery time frames for many capital city destinations.
Originally, it was a letter and small documents based service that was expanded to parcels.
The key point to understand here is that these guarantees are only available from pre packaged items such as satchels, AusPost branded cartons, etc. bought over the counter at Australia Post retail shops. The delivery time frame guarantees do not apply to merchants using Express Parcels - this is the same policy that affects all Australia Post merchants.
It's a very important distinction as we have encountered customers in rare instances demanding a refund for Express Parcels that did not arrive within expected time frames, e.g. next business day.
Just to repeat - There is no refund for Express Parcels that fail to arrive within some defined time frame - refunds are not possible to us as merchants as this "guarantee" only applies to over-the-counter AusPost branded products sold in their Australia Post retail shops.