Mr Snuff Shipping costs

Anyone know why shipping went from 4.99$ to 12.99$ ?

It was 9.99$ then dropped to 4.99$ now back up to 12.99$ ?

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I don’t know, but just noticed tonight! Totally bummed.

I think Jonny had mentioned in another thread that they were standardizing all of their shipping, partly to include tracking because a lot of people who weren’t opting for tracking were putting in support tickets when their orders weren’t arriving.

Probably also has to do with customs issues.

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I don’t recall what I just paid, but I placed a Mr Snuff order the Thursday before Easter 24’ and I got the package the day after Easter. So it was ordered and delivered in just 4 days to Pittsburgh, Pa. USA. That’s way faster than I would have guessed.

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As others have mentioned, the shipping has been rationalized. It should be faster and more reliable, as long as Customs don’t get their paws on it. We have had three outcomes so far:

  1. Customs stop and entire box full of orders (approx 50 per box) and send it back to us without a word of explanation. This happened recently and has caused all manner problems. Big lesson learned though - because the boxes actually come back fast we can just turn them around and send them right back out instead of messing around cancelling all the orders.

  2. USPS taking its own merry time to deliver parcels. We see customers waiting two weeks to get an order and nearly all that time it has been lounging in the US postal system. No pattern as yet but we are keeping our eyes open.

  3. People get their orders much faster, sometimes less than a week, which is pretty good going. I see @Huff-N-Snuff managed to get his in only four days! That is amazing considering it goes IoM->UK->Germany->USA->USPS. So when it works it works.

As for the price increase: The $4.99 deal was created a while back and was meant to be a ‘special offer’. The previous employee did not remove the offer though and so everybody got used that price - no wonder they thought we were a US company!

Anyway, to fix this I just calculated the true amount and used that. It is, in fact, cheap, because we use this technique of batching up all the orders into a single box for its trip from IoM to US. It doesn’t feel that way though because it is a price increase, so apologies for that.

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How long does it take for 50 U.S.A. orders to accumulate to be able to send a box, on average? I am thinking my order must have been #50 in that box, to ship that fast.

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I thought 4.99 was insanely low for the distance it is coming from. Shipping pipe tobacco from state to state is about 6.99$ on top of state and tobacco tax your generally looking to add 15$ to whatever you plan to order.
Any thoughts about a dollar amount for free shipping incentive such as orders over 50$ include free shipping?

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It would be pretty sweet if the shipping time stays as quick as the turn around last time. But I have a bad feeling it all depends on where your order lands in that 50 order shipment. If your order is #1 and you have to wait on the other 49 orders to finish out that box that goes to the U.S. it may take 2 weeks 4 days?

@Huff-N-Snuff

Don’t worry about waiting for a box to fill. Depending on the day, we will ship between between 1 and 4 boxes; but importantly, we don’t wait to fill up the last box before shipping it. This does add an additional cost to the packages in the last box but we absorb that to keep our turnaround below 24 business hours.

Most of the reported variability is down to US customs and USPS. Customs don’t just reject boxes, they also sometimes hold them for a few days before releasing them, presumably they are spot checking the paperwork. USPS is just a gamble, sometimes fast, sometimes not.

And then sometimes it is down to the warehouse. For example DHL won’t pick up from the warehouse on bank holidays so this easter weekend saw two days added to the US orders just like that.

Wow I had no idea, that’s pretty good. In the u.s.p.s. I had a package where the barcode got damaged, and it was skipping back and forth along one step of their automated journey. By the time they sent in a live person to find it, there were about 3 days where it went to the prior sorting facility farther from me, then it would go forwards 1. Then back 1, then forward 1, you get the idea, like a scratched record. Turns out there was like a black smudge on black/white barcode. Like axle grease, idk? But I can get a package from you in 4 days, meanwhile it takes 2 weeks to get one from the US state North Carolina. Anyways congrats on getting your shipping so fast, when no body feels like slowing down the packages.

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I wished you guys had the Toque, Honey & Whiskey, I’m really bummed out I’m gonna be out in a day or two. I could use some ultra fast shipping on that one, I haven’t even placed the order yet😟

These types of deal may well come in the future but right now I am cleaning out the stables and that means everything being reset to the correct price, not just shipping but products prices too.

I am hoping that through simplification, the price per item will go down sufficiently that, coupled with a flat shipping rate, customers may well end up saving money on larger orders than if we layered deals with staggered shipping and higher prices.

Its also, I believe, more transparent this way so if people think we are still too expensive then at least that is up front and clear.

That is the plan anyway :slight_smile: We will see if it works out and change things if it doesn’t.

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Transparent you got that right I’ve never seen a CEO communicate so well with their clientele. Up front and honest. These are reasons I’ll be buying as long as you guys keep selling :+1:

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Inflation.

I mean, unless you live on the Isle, $12.99 shipping is probably cheaper than getting there. Before questioning shipping prices, I like to consider the total cost of locating myself to and from the shipping location.

As discussed prior In the thread prices on products came down which offset the shipping cost. I placed an order yesterday that came in cheaper than it normally would even with the shipping cost.

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Yeah I don’t know about this new system I’ve never waited longer than a week for an order to arrive I’m sitting at 1.5 weeks and doesn’t even look like it’s made it to the U.S.

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@Nicfit

Your order, along with about a hundred others, did indeed make it to the US (almost) but it was stopped by Customs and then sent back. As soon as your parcel arrives back with us we will send it straight back out and hopefully it will get through next time. I am really sorry but that means a significant delay.

We don’t know why US Customs has suddenly started to turn back more of our consignments. It used to be very rare but seems to be happening more often now. I have asked our shipping agent to investigate and I have my fingers crossed its something trivial in the paperwork that we can just fix and get back to smooth operations.

One thing we are looking to improve is how we communicate with the customers who are affected by Customs issues. To that end I have asked the tech guys to find a way to link the orders within a given consignment (shipping software) to the customer details held in Shopify. Once complete, this will allow us to create a mail-merge to contact all affected customers directly as soon as we find out Customs has returned a consignment, which I think will go a long way to helping people understand what is going on.

tl;dr
Sorry for the delay. Your parcel will get there.

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That’s interesting I’d be interested to know why. Nasal snuff is not wildly accepted or much known about it seems over here not sure if that’s the case in other countries. I was also wondering if there were any issues with tobacco tax since every state has its own laws and policies.

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We have found out more info today about the returned consignments.

It turns out the problem is with just one US hub, Cincinnati. If a consignment happens to be routed through Cincinnati then it gets stopped and sent back. Some customs official there has misunderstood something so we are now trying to track down a contact in Cincinnati customs to see if we can find out what they think the problem is and fix it for them.

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@Jonny What a headache for everyone involved, glad your team is on top of it!

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