PDS Arts crafts and collectibles

Postage Information

This is a guide to our posting policies and information about cost.

When we post:

We post out every weekday, Monday to Friday, unless exceptional circumstances affect this.
Holidays will be notified by details appearing on every auction page.
We do not post at weekends or on bank holidays.

How quickly do we post?

Your order will be sent out the next working day after you pay, so if you pay on a Friday it will go out on the Monday. If you pay on a Monday, it will go out on the Tuesday. We will always try to get your order out on the same day if we can, but our collection is straight after lunch so there isn't a lot of time to get same day orders out. We are working on the packing of existing orders in the morning so there isn't much time to check sales and do those too before the collection comes.

Postal services:

We use Royal Mail and UPS.
We offer all Royal Mail services; 1st class, 2nd class, recorded mail, Special Delivery and Standard Parcels within the UK and Airmail services for outside the UK.

Combined postage on multiple orders:

We are always happy to combine postage and get the cheapest rate for sending you your order.

eBay checkout for mulitple orders - DON'T DO IT!

At the moment, and for the past six months, the eBay checkout system has not been working properly. For multiple orders it miscalculates the postage. This isn't just me, there are lots of comments on the eBay userboards about it. Checkout just isn't sophisticated enough to work out the exact postage anyway, but for some reason now it isn't working at all well and will just pick off one of the postage charges and use that. This can lead to massively reduced and incorrect postage being charged. If you follow checkout and pay and eBay has gone wrong (as it so often does) then we will have to refund your payment and then re-invoice you with the correct postage amount. If the postal charge is too high, of course we will just refund you the difference.

PLEASE! Request a combined total invoice for multiple orders

This will save all the problems related to the above section and save everyone a lot time.

Lost and late post

We are not only committed to getting your order out quickly, but we also want to make sure it arrives with you. Unfortunately post is sometimes delayed or lost. This is a fact of life, we don't know why it happens but it does. When it does you can rely on us to help sort things out. Royal Mail's service level agreement states that they do not acknowledge an item as lost until 15 working days (three weeks) has passed (for UK orders). If three weeks pass since we send your confirmation email that your order has been sent and you don't get your order, we can process a claim for lost goods.

If you have paid for recorded delivery we will be able to process this much quicker. If you haven't, we will still process the claim immediately, but we will not be able to send your replacement or issue a refund until Royal Mail have paid the compensation to us. Once this has been received, we will make an immediate refund or dispatch a replacement order. We are always more than happy to keep you informed of the progress of a claim and you can email us about it whenever you like. But do remember, this is a very rare thing indeed. If it happens to you, you have been very unlucky.

Postage and packaging charges:

We do not make money on our P&P charges. We use new materials to post your items and these cost money (we do recycle larger boxes for bigger orders). Small boxes cost 30-50p each, Jiffy bags cost between 20-40p each, bubble wrap costs about 10p for one strip and there are other costs involved in packaging your items such as labels, postal subscriptions and collections and more. All these things have to paid for and ulitmately they are paid for by you the customer at some point, whether in the cost of the goods or the P&P. We add a charge to the basic postal cost to help cover this. It doesn't always completely cover it though.For example, we pay out £10 for every UPS parcel sent out - and that doesn't include the packaging materials.

It is also worth noting that Paypal charge 3.5% (plus 20p) for all transactions, this is on the total you pay, including postage. Whilst we cannot and do not charge extra for people paying with a credit cards or through Paypal, these overheads, once again need to be met and ultimately you, the customer pays for it somewhere.

Here is our completely transparent guide to our postal charging. The extra charge does go up slightly the heavier the parcel, this is because all the costs and charges also increase.

The 'Actual Cost To PDS Arts' column shows you the true cost of sending your item, including all the true costs, as explained above.

UPS Courier £8.99 - Up to 30kg - This costs us anything from £10-£13 (not including the cost of packaging).

Recorded delivery = Extra 75p

You choose if you want to!

We will usually send out your order using the cheapest packing method - so using bubble-wrap and a polybag mailer. We believe this is a safe and secure method of sending and also the cheapest packing method. If you want to choose for your order to be sent in a bubble-bag mailer (Mail-Lite mailer) or box (where the options exist on the above chart) then we will be happy to oblige and you will be charged the relevant posting price as listed.

I am well aware this is not exactly a simple explanation of the mailing costs and options. That is because it isn't actually that simple. I wish that it was.

Postal charge quote:

You are always welcome to email and ask what the price will be before placing an order. It's not possible for you to know the weight of the items you are ordering or what the total weight will be once they are packed, so please feel free to email for a precise charge before ordering. The above details are a guide so you that you know how we come to our charge and it will also give you a guide to the price you will have to pay.

Thank-you!

Thanks for taking the time to read this. It's a bore I'm sure of that, but it aims to make things clearer so you know what you are paying and why you are paying it as well as the service you can expect from us.