Category Archives: Shipping

A post on post

Royal Mail price risesOur annual moan at Royal Mail follows with a mild sorry to regular readers who’ve been here before.

Royal Mail have put up their stamp prices, just 11 months after the last increase. They now charge £3.00 for a small first class parcel (e.g ten pairs of DreamGirl earplugs), or £2.60 Second Class. It’s a lot, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Once again, Snorestore has been forced to get creative and try to minimise the impact to you.

However, the miserable facts are these: we can’t absorb all the increase and have passed on some of it to you.

Better news: while Royal Mail have whacked their charges up by as much as 17.5% for small parcels and 7.5% for large letters, we’ve kept our price rises to around 5%. Next Working Day delivery costs the same as Royal Mail.

Even better news: we’ve reduced some postal charges by 20%, better to reflect the actual cost. So for example, the cost of posting a ten pair pack of LaserLite earplugs first class used to be £1.25. We’ve brought it down to £1. And of course, if you opt for second class, most items with a value of up to £14.95 have no delivery charges added at all.

Better news still: we’ve extended the cut-off time for dispatching orders the same day from 2pm to 3pm. Order by 3pm and you could still have your earplugs the next morning (if Royal Mail pull their fingers out that is).

One other point: until 2nd April any items posted with a value of up to £46 were automatically covered by Royal Mail’s insurance if they were lost or damaged in transit. Royal Mail have arbitrarily reduced this cover to just £20. Pathetic. As a result, if you order earplugs etc worth more than twenty quid, we could decide to send them to you in two or more packets.

Confused? Email us or see the Shipping page on the Snorestore website.

Snow snow go away

© Liz West (Muffet)

Just time for a reminder that if it’s snowing where you are, the chances of a postman getting to you are greatly diminshed.

Likewise, if it’s snowing where *we* are*, the chances of Royal Mail being able to process our orders as quickly as they normally do are also greatly diminished. What does this mean in practice?

To state the bleeping obvious, it means that while we will be sending your order to you in the normal way, it might take longer to reach you.

Watchword: PATIENCE.

;-)

*It is indeed snowing where we are.

Early Christmas Present

Oh dear. We said it. The C word.

Never mind – any excuse to plug our latest offering.

Which is:

FREE SHIPPING ON MANY SNORESTORE PRODUCTS.

Is there a catch? Well, a small one maybe.

Free shipping applies to low cost orders sent by Second Class post.

By low cost we mean earplugs like LaserLite, Spark Plugs, Max, Pillow Soft and a host of others.

And other products, like our innovative and top-rated Women’s Earplugs Sample Pack are also cheaper to send than they were this time last week so you’re still winning.

In fact, Snorestore is full of win at the moment, what with our special offers, legendary customer service and the biggest range of earplugs on the web.

You can read more about our shipping options here, or email us with any questions.

Accounting for taste

Imagine if you went to your local supermarket and they stopped you at the door and said, “Sorry miss, you’re not allowed in unless you fill in this form with your name, your email address and your phone number, and your full home address. Including postcode.” You’d turn round and walk away wouldn’t you?

At Snorestore we don’t believe anyone should have to register to use a website before they’re allowed to buy something. It’s just rude. So we’ve never made people do it.

But what if ….

What if it’s optional?

The other week, we included on the Snorestore website the *option* for customers to open an account with us. At this stage, it simply means a quicker and easier route through the checkout once you’re logged in (your address details for example are already filled in). You can find the link to open an account at the checkout. After that, use the link on the top menu bar.

It also allows you to check the last few orders you’ve made, going back six months. This is helpful for those people who love their Snorestore earplugs but don’t know what they’re called! You can check the status of your current order and get the tracking number if you need it.

In the future, we’ll be able to offer account customers one-off discounts, discounts no-one else will be able to use.

But as we said earlier, this is optional. What if you don’t want to open an account? Is there nothing for you at all? Well we’ve come up with a neat little extra which we’re pretty pleased with.

Now, even non-account customers can check the details of their orders. You simply put in the required information on the “Recent Orders” page, and the order details and current order status (e.g. Shipped, Paid etc) are displayed. What you won’t get however, is the ability to save your billing and delivery addresses, and you won’t be on the list for unique discount codes.

We hope you like these enhancements. We’re sure you’ll let us know if you don’t ;-)

 

 

Don’t mention the Limpics

Ball

Balls

As you probably already know, companies are not allowed to use the upcoming international sports festival aka The Olympics/London 2012 to promote their brands. You’re not even allowed to decorate a cake with the 5 coloured rings for heaven’s sake. All a complete nonsense, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Especially – ESPECIALLY – as the presence of the Games (also a copyrighted phrase apparently) in London means that businesses are going to have to be very creative about getting their goods out, and customers are going to have to be very understanding about delays in receiving them.

Snorestore, as a London-based online retailer, has been getting doom-laden emails from Royal Mail and other couriers for months warning of disruption to their services. You can read the details here if you want to wade through acres of small print.

 

Or you can read these bullet points written by us:

  • The period of disruption lasts from now until 17th September (!)
  • Order in plenty of time for your holiday/swim/marriage to snoring partner. i.e. about two weeks ahead. At least.
  • The Olympics will affect mail collections from the Post Office from which we send all Snorestore orders
  • This means we have to bring forward the cut-off time for same-day dispatch to 1pm. If you want guaranteed next working day delivery, this affects YOU.
  • Next Working Day delivery will be just that for the duration. No more “guaranteed by 1pm.” Instead: “at some point the following working day.”
  • Expect your Snorestore stuff to take AT LEAST an extra day to get to you. It will probably take much longer. NOT OUR FAULT IT REALLY ISN’T.
  • Orders from Europe and beyond are best sent using a Signed For service. Please use this.
  • Be patient. The games will be good for us even if you are only watching them on the TV.
  • A few deep breaths and a sense of humour are good for your health

Er, that’s it.