Question 1

Is it necessary for somebody to be present to accept the delivery?

Accepted Answer

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In the majority of cases, in order to avoid fraudulent claims, the courier will require a signature on delivery of your order and therefore somebody will need to be in to receive it. You are free to ask us to instruct the courier to leave your package in a location that you believe to be secure, or to choose a non-signature required service (like Royal Mail), but in this case you assume the risk involved in specifying that a signature is not required and we will not be able to entertain claims for non-delivery.

Nowadays we have the possibility as well of doing a last minute re-arragment directly with the courier. DPD interface will allow you to change the delivery date, as well as some other options to choose from - such as 'leave in a safe place' or 'collect from a Pick Up Point' -, the day before they intent to do the delivery. Once we dispatch the order, and they have it ready for delivery they will send you a notification, and at that point, you will have about 12-24 hours to interact with them and do any of this last minute changes.

Question 2

What will happen if there is nobody available to accept delivery?

Accepted Answer

As with the majority of courier companies, the courier will leave a card with instructions for contacting them to arrange for redelivery. If you have specified a mobile phone number, you should also receive a text message. They may or may not automatically attempt delivery again the next-day.

After attempting delivery once or twice, the courier will hold your order awaiting instructions from yourself. If you do not contact them within 3 days, the order will be returned to us at our cost. As such, we regret that in these cases we will have to pass on the £15.00 return charge from the courier, plus then a new shipping charge would be incured if redelivery is required.

Question 3

May I specify any special delivery instructions?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Our courier is very flexible and we can instruct them to leave your order with a neighbour or other secure place where a signature can be obtained. If access to your property is difficult or unusual, you may also specify how they should enter. A box is provided for you to specify these instructions when completing your order.

Question 4

My address is hard to find - can I give special instructions?

Accepted Answer

Yes. On the 'Checkout' page there is space called "Specific Delivery Instructions" for you to fill in any special advise to the courier, such as 'Flat is on top floor', 'Large house at end of dead end', 'Ring bell to enter driveway', or '1/2 mile off A454 past the Dog and Duck'.

Question 5

What about items that would normally be kept in the fridge?

Accepted Answer

We'll pack them in thermally protective polystyrene and frozen ice packs to ensure they stay cool during transit. Our cheeses and meats all have at least some curation and are thus able to be transported for 24-48 hours in such packaging without going bad. Our fresh padron peppers will be fine too.

For customers outside mainland UK where we cannot offer next-day delivery, we don't recommmend that you order goods that would normally be kept in the fridge. Although delivery is often within 3 days, if there is a weekend in the middle delivery could take a week, and the products won't last. If you do choose to order refrigerated products, please take into account that we cannot accept responsability for their degradation and we can't refund.

Customers should be sure that they are able to receive delivery of orders containing refrigerated goods on the first attempt. Unfortunately,  we cannot accept responsibility for degradation of such products that were unable to be delivered at the first attempt due to the customer being absent. If you are not sure that you will be available to accept delivery, consider using the "Specific Delivery Instructions" box to schedule delivery for a specific day, or preferably, have the goods delivered to your work address. Please note that orders placed on Thursday after 2pm, Friday or during the weekend containing refrigerated products will be shipped on the next working day, normally Monday unless there is a holiday in between.

Question 6

What about frozen products?

Accepted Answer

In order to ensure an unbroken cold chain from our freezer to yours, extra care has to be taken in delivery of frozen goods. We package your food in special insulated boxes with gel ice, which will guarantee that products remain frozen for the 24 hour journey. Please ensure you understand the following:

The laws of physics make it impossible to send very small orders of frozen food. We therefore have to ask for a total minimum weight of 6 kg for the frozen items in your order.
We can only deliver frozen products to destinations where a next-day service is available. Unfortunately that means UK Mainland only and excludes certain areas of northern Scotland where only a 2-day service is available (please check with us if in doubt), as well as international deliveries. 
You must be available to take delivery on the first attempt. Although we will instruct the courier to leave the package with a neighbour or in a safe place if possible, we cannot guarantee that this will happen and cannot take responsibility for spoiled goods where you have not been in to accept delivery.
Please do not reject your box for any reason. Frozen goods that are not delivered have to be thrown away. If you detect any damage or leakage, please still accept the box then inspect the contents and contact us if necessary. A small amount of liquid formation is normal as the ice begins to thaw. If there is genuine damage, we will not ignore your claim just because you did not reject the delivery. 
Regarding other products you may want to order at the same time, that's not a problem, we can dispatch ambient, fresh and frozen products within the same delivery service and cost. So there is no extra charge for the different temperature products, just any items up to 20kg will still come within the main next day delivery service at £5.99.

Question 7

What about free shipping?

Accepted Answer

All companies pay more or less the same for courier shipping and these costs have to be recouped in one of two ways: either they are spread over an average shopping basket and included piece-by-piece in the price of each product, or charged on a separate basis.  Companies that offer free shipping are simply adapting the former model and including shipping costs in product prices.  Since we started in 2005, we have always opted to be transparent with our pricing policy: we aim to offer the cheapest possible unit prices for products and charge for shipping separately.  We feel this actually works out better for customers in the long run and results in less being paid for 'shipping'.  Although this might not be to everyone's liking, it has enabled us to maintain some of the lowest online prices around, which, again, we feel brings more benefit to more of our customers than rolling the cost into the price of the products and offering 'Free Shipping'.  Whilst you might not agree with this policy, I do hope you can see the logic behind it.

Question 8

Why do you charge more to deliver to some areas within the UK?

Accepted Answer

We realise that it seems unfair to charge extra to deliver to some of the more remote parts of the UK, but unfortunately our courier imposes a surcharge for these areas and there is nothing we can realistically do to change this. We only ever pass on an amount equal to the extra that we are charged and in many cases we absorb some of the extra charge in order to be able to offer you cheaper delivery. We do NOT make profit on these courier surcharges. If you feel that you would like to complain about remote area surcharges, please take up the matter directly with DPD who will readily explain their reasons for these higher charges.

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