Our pricing update is on hold until alternative delivery & shippings options have been cost tested to see if we can work around a price increase - our UK deliveries are working fine using TNT & Royal Mail services but our international orders are not going at all well at the moment.

We use TNT for European deliveries & apart from an issue with an order to Holland (a damaged unit that we had to repair) overall the road courier service has been good - the intercontinental deliveries on the other hand, which are fulfilled by either UPS, FedEx or DHL air services via resellers are becoming increasingly expensive & unreliable.

The last two orders to go to the US have ended up with a unit being lost & the other order having two units damaged - there were also issues with coir fading on two Polecat units, which we hope is just a temporary issue & think is down to the lengthy exposure to direct sunlight or excessive heat during their journey.

We have been told that some of the issues may relate to the COVID-19 situation as 95% of domestic flights have been grounded & couriers were heavily reliant on this air traffic - the significant reduction in cargo space on these flights means that courier companies are having to charter additional aircraft & this is where the complications may lie in terms of pricing & as well as different handling procedures.

We think the solution to getting things back to normal is to move to independent freight carriers, rather than use courier re-sellers as they do offer more specialist services rather than just being box shifters but there might be price implications - we will keep everyone updated & in the meantime we are going to switch to black wrapping as soon a possible for international shipments so we don’t get a repeat of the coir fading issue.

Pricing Update On Hold...