The Earplugs Files – News from Snorestore

We’ve now begun putting into practice our response to the stamp price increases which come into force on April 30th. You can read our first response here.

From now on, you will start to see the following phrase appear against certain products on the Snorestore website:

“Please note:  this product may be supplied flat-packed to save you additional shipping costs.”

This means that we will more than likely* unbox your earplugs, still keeping them in their hygienic packaging, and send them to you together with their original box (flattened) and/or their instructions. This enables us to use an envelope which is classed as a large letter rather than a packet. It means you won’t have to pay the new £2.70 first class small packet rate for one of these items after 30th April. Most people will be paying pretty much what they are paying now and some lucky people will be paying a little less.

For some products this simply isn’t possible and there will be additional postage charges for these from April 30th. Rest assured we will not be seeking to profit from these increases at your expense. We’ve always had a policy of charging fair rates for shipping, and that’s not going to change. We will also continue to offer Second Class where we can, for those of you who aren’t in a hurry and who have an eye for a postage bargain.

We’re sorry we can’t absorb the price rises, however much we would like to and however much you would like us to. But it would be business suicide.

* if you are ordering more than one product, we might be able to leave these products in their original boxes. This is something we can only decide when it comes to packing up your order.

Admittedly, it’s not great to have to put prices up, but we fully understand why Royal Mail is doing this. How many of us send letters regularly? Not enough of us, it seems, and letter delivery is very expensive for Royal Mail.

Snorestore of course isn’t immune to these price rises and while we have always been careful to charge as little as possible for postage and packing, we can’t absorb the new tariffs completely.  Packets in particular will cost considerably more than they do now – at least £2.70 – and packets make up the majority of our orders.

However, we have a solution in hand, which means that postage costs for some items* will cost you just the same as they do now – but only if you agree to receive your products in a slightly different format.

For example, one of our most popular products is SafeSound Original Earplugs – the 10-pair pack in particular. Currently, we charge you £1.25 in postage for this product (it costs us more than that but that’s what you pay). Under the new Royal Mail tariffs, you would have to pay £2.70 – more than twice as much. Clearly we can’t expect you to pay this on top of the product price of just £6.99.

So what we propose to do, is to unbox the earplugs, keeping them in their sealed pouch, and flatten the box. Placed side by side in a padded envelope, this product can then be classed as as a large letter size rather than a packet, which means the postage cost is massively reduced. As a result, you won’t be paying any more for postage for this item after April 30th than you do now.

"deconstructed packaging"

The downside of this is obviously that cosmetically, it doesn’t look very tidy when you open the envelope, as you can see in this picture >>

The upside: the cost of postage and packing doesn’t have to go up. Given that Royal Mail manages to squash quite a lot of the stuff we send out, we don’t know why we haven’t done this before. We will be explaining on each product page where this can be done, that this is how the product will arrive.

*other products where we propose to deconstruct the packaging include:

Mack’s SafeSound Ultra Earplugs (10 pairs)
Mack’s SafeSound SlimFit Earplugs (10 pairs)
Mack’s DreamGirl Earplugs (10 pairs)
Mack’s PillowSoft Earplugs (2 pairs)

and others to be confirmed.

Please let us know via the comments box or by email what you think of this plan.

We’ve recently updated our website review system to include those posted on Trustpilot. Trustpilot is an independent website which collates reviews from hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. The gold stars (or otherwise) show up in Google searches so new customers can see at a glance how we are doing.

The way it works is this: you place an order, and about a week later, you get an automatically-generated email from Trustpilot asking you to review your experience with Snorestore. Trustpilot doesn’t hang onto your personal information, and you won’t be spammed. The system is set up so that only verified customers can place reviews – we feel this is the fairest way as it means only people who have genuine experience of what we do here at Snorestore can express their opinions. It also stops dishonest people who might have a different reason entirely for posting a negative review, from getting access to the review system.

Snorestore staff can’t alter reviews – what you write will be seen on the Trustpilot site almost as soon as you hit Send. We can comment, and we do this occasionally, but mostly, we feel that what our customers write about us is more important than anything we could say.

It’s more the service you receive from Snorestore which is important to Trustpilot, so if you want to review a particular product, feel free to add your comments on the individual Snorestore product pages as before.

So, how are we doing? Erm. Pretty well it would seem. Which is not to say we’re resting on our laurels. We can always do better. Click on the badge below to see what real people are saying about us right now.

Just a v quick reminder that this week sees some important last posting dates if you want to get your Snorestore stuff before Christmas.

1) Second Class post is now no longer an option as the deadline for posting Second Class Royal Mail items was Saturday 17th December

2) First Class and First Class recorded orders must be placed by 2pm on Tuesday 20th December

3) Next Working Day (Special Delivery) orders must be placed by 2pm on Thursday 22nd December

4) If you’re taking things down to the wire, then if you use the Saturday delivery option and we receive your order by 2pm on Friday 22nd December, then your item(s) will arrive on Saturday 23rd.

5) Airmail: it’s too late now to guarantee that any items sent to Europe or beyond will arrive by Christmas. Sorry. You can still order of course, just please don’t expect your stuff to be with you by 25th December.

6) Er that’s it.

Now we’re into December, it feels we can legitimately remind you that there are only a set number of days left before Christmas a) to order your Snorestore stuff and b) to get it delivered. Don’t miss out – order sooner rather than later and keep your stress levels down.

Snorestore will be dispatching every day before Christmas up to and including Friday 23rd December. After Christmas, we will not be able to send anything until Wednesday 28th December as the two preceding days are Bank Holidays in England.

Anyway, here are the last posting dates as published by Royal Mail:

UK
Sat 17th December: Second Class and Second Class Recorded Signed For™
Tue 20th December: First Class and First Class Recorded Signed For™
Thu 22nd December: Special Delivery™
Fri 23rd December: Special Delivery™ with Saturday Guarantee

Airmail
Mon 5th December: South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East (including Japan), Australia and New Zealand
Fri 9th December: Eastern Europe, USA and Canada
Mon 12th December: Western Europe

British Forces Post Office (BFPO)
Fri 2nd December: Airmail to Operational BFPOs
Thu 15th December: Airmail to Static BFPOs