How we determine our
shipping dates
Once an order is received, time is needed to harvest,
process, freeze, and package the products we produce to
make them available for shipping. Our goal is to
keep frozen inventory to a minimum and to process orders
as they are received, making the end product much
fresher for our customers.
All orders placed (CST) Monday through Thursday will ship on
Monday / Tuesday of the following week. All orders placed
(CST) Friday thru Sunday will ship on the second Monday / Tuesday
following the date on which the order was placed.
Once your order has been received you will be notified
with an estimated time of arrival. Below is an
illustration of how many days it will take for an order
to ship once it has been received.
An order placed on a...
Monday will ship 8 days later.
Tuesday will ship 7 days later.
Wednesday will ship 6 days later.
Thursday will ship 5 days later.
Friday will ship 11 days later.
Saturday will ship 10 days later.
Sunday will ship 9 days later.
Optimizing your
shipping costs
All of our products are packed in heavily
insulated boxes containing dry ice. While our
methods ensure your product will arrive at the
temperatures needed to guarantee freshness, they also
add to the cost of shipping for every box we use.
To ensure you receive the most value for your shipping
costs we have added a feature to our web site that
allows you to monitor how many boxes will be needed and
what percentage of free space you have left. On
your product summary page before checkout, as well as
when browsing our products, you will notice "space
taken" information. These numbers reflect how much
space a particular product will occupy in one box of
your shipment.
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When items are added
to your cart the total amount of space that item
occupies will be shown on the summary page.
The numbers displayed in pink pertain to FedEx shipments utilizing standard sized boxes (STD) while the numbers in
green are
for optimizing shipments with oversized boxes (OS). The boxes used in oversized
shipments are twice as large as those used for
standard. |
At the bottom of the
summary page there is an indication of how much
space is remaining in your box or boxes.
Use this information to calculate how much of
a particular product you may add to your order
without requiring the use of an additional box. |
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If
you are shipping to an area where oversized boxes (OS) are available, the summary will contain information
pertaining to both standard sized boxes and oversized boxes as shown below. |

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As you browse
our products you can use the information found
in "Box Space Taken" to determine how much of
a particular product you can add to your order without
requiring the use of an additional box. |
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How shipping charges
add to the cost of your order
It will always save you money when
you try to reduce the amount of free space that is
available in your box. For example, an order
consisting of 100 mouse fuzzies being shipped to
California (100 fuzzies @ .19 cents each = $19.00 plus
$41.15 for shipping and handling) would cost $60.15.
That's about .60 cents per fuzzy. If you increased
your order from 100 fuzzies to 200 fuzzies (200 fuzzies
@ .19 cents each = $38.00 plus $40.19 for shipping and
handling) your new total cost would be $78.19
making your new cost per fuzzy about .39 cents. This is a total savings of about .21 cents per fuzzy.
Other cost cutting
ideas
By ordering quarterly
as opposed to monthly you may take advantage of our
quantity discounts. Quantity discounts will always
save you money.
Splitting an order with
a friend, friends, group, herpetology club etc. will enable you
to take advantage of our quantity discounts and may also
provide an opportunity to have others share in the cost
of shipping.
Visit our site
frequently and look for the "hot deal" icon.
When we are offering an item at a reduced
price, it is generally on sale until inventory has been
reduced and then it will immediately return to its
normal price.
Understanding
Oversized Boxes
Customers in certain
delivery areas have the
option of choosing FedEx oversized boxes (This usually offers a considerable
savings to these customers on larger orders). When those who are given the oversized box option choose it, the amount of
product that fits in an oversized box is double what standard shipping
methods allow and the numbers reflected on the site
pertaining to "OS Box Space" should be used when
calculating the use of available free space.
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