Dear Wild Tea Qi Tea Lovers:
We’ve received a number of inquiries about the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on international shipping. We want to help you navigate this tricky period, so we’re pulling together as many details as possible to help you figure out how your shipments may be affected. The main takeaway is that production, shipping, and fulfillment from China will be majorly affected due to strict anti-coronavirus measures being put in place.
1. Global Mail Slowdown
Flight suspensions due to the coronavirus have also taken a toll on global postal services. Many national postal services have announced temporary route suspensions and expect delays on most other routes. In countries dealing with major pandemic outbreaks, including France, Italy, and Spain, the services are operating at far less than their normal capacity. They've also all suspended signature-on-delivery services.
Most national post services have announced mailing disruptions as a result of the coronavirus, including:
· United States Postal Service
· China Post
· Deutsche Post
· Singapore Post
· Swiss Post
· Post Danmark (Denmark)
· Georgian Post
· Hellenic Post (Greece)
· Posta Româna (Romania)
· Posta Serbia (Serbia)
· Correos (Spain)
2. US Customs
We have been informed that at this time, US Customs is not planning to hold air or ocean shipments from China due to the coronavirus. This applies to both courier and postal shipments. As such, if you already have shipments en route from China, you could experience delays at US Customs.
We have been watching as the worldwide air cargo shipping situation deteriorates rapidly. More than 95% of air passenger traffic has vanished compared to the same time last year (97% between USA and China). Although there are many cargo flights still running, they cannot even begin to absorb the massive excess of parcels that were typically routed to their destinations on passenger flights. 95% less than same time last year!!! Let that sink in for a second!
As such, there will be long long delays for those customers who ordered as far back as mid-February 2020 until now.
Additionally, many countries' Customs agencies are now much slower to accept and process parcels from abroad due to reduced staff (social distancing in the workplace).
We are asking our customers to be patient and understand these key points:
1. Your parcels are NOT lost. They are simply waylaid; either waiting for a plane ride, or in a warehouse awaiting Customs processing.
2. Please be patient with the shipping times. Please see below for the shipping times by shipping method (if you don't know your shipping method please refer to the Order Confirmation email you've gotten from us when you made the order, or you can track your shipping statue by type the tracking number in your country's post office official website):
Express Small/Large Parcel - Around 4 to 12 weeks, but could even longer! We cannot guarantee an exact delivery time.
3. All of our orders ship via Express Small/Large Parcel - Around 4 to 12 weeks. All shipments originate from Kunming, Yunnan, China and will be processed as quickly as possible – in most cases within 1-3 days. Processing time will vary depending on the existing order queue though. Back-ordered items may require an additional 2-5 days, but we will keep you notified of any delays.
4. Since we are a very small business we politely ask customers to not inundate our support email and chat with questions about your shipment. If you want to know roughly when your parcel could arrive, refer to the shipping times above and check your Order Confirmation emails from us (these often end up in your spam folder, or login directly to the site to see your Order Shipped Date and you can take the shipping tracking number we gave to you to find track more info on your country's post office official website too.)
5. We cannot give you a date for delivery, or cancel your shipment. All we can do is wait for the shipment move through the system.
6. Your country's customs could ask you to pay for the tax once the parcel arrived at customs, you may need to pay the taxes which we don't know how much it would cost, because different countries have different rules. If because of refusing to pay taxes causing the parcel return, we will not be able to get any refund back to you.
7. If after receiving our products you still wish to receive a refund, please be sure to return our products in the original packaging as they were received (both inside and outside). We will refund the full amount after receiving your return to confirm that the product has not been damaged.
IMPORTANT: If you are in the EU please provide a VAT # (Which is should be your tax number, please make sure to send your VAT # / Tax # to our email info@wildteaqi.com to ensure timely delivery. If we couldn't receive your VAT # / Tax # after received your order in 3 days, we'll refund your payment and cancel your order.
IN CONCLUSION:
Being a small business we simply cannot survive if people ask for refunds for shipments that are delayed. Please be patient and understand that you will get the items you ordered, but that it could take months!
This pandemic and the problems it has caused are impacting the entire world. If we could wave our magic wand and fix it all we most certainly would (and we'd bring about world peace as well)!
We sincerely hope that you'll understand that this disruption in no way impacts our commitment to our customers, we just want you to understand what's going on and that our ability to deal with this (hopefully) once in a lifetime disruption is very limited.
We will continue to monitor the situation and send updates as we learn more. In the meantime, you can still process your order as normal on our website. And you can purchase our Ebooks and Online tea courses to learn deeper about tea while you are waiting for your parcels.
If you would be interested in to know more what we have learned from coronavirus, please check our articles here:
2020 - The Year of Lungs (Metal)
The Facts of Tea in Fighting Coronavirus
What we have learned from coronavirus
Last, We want to thank you for your strong supporting and understanding for us, especially at this difficult time. Every single of your support means a lot for our unique tea artisans, their hard work need your love and your long term support. We're here would like send our best of energy for you and may you and your loved ones be happy, healthy and free!
In Good Tea
Wild Tea Qi Team