2021 Update
Thank you to all of my customers for your business. It is greatly appreciated.
My 2021 update is mostly done. Restocks and new additions are available on the website. There will be a handful more probably into mid December that I know I have missed, but just don’t have the time right now to get on the website.
For my customers in EU nations. I am sorry, but at this time I will not be able to sell to the EU due to the new VAT Tax regulations that were put in place on July 1. I am just a hobby shop, and have a full time real job, and just do not have the time right now to deal with extra paper work and tax payments. My web host has indicated they will automatically collect VAT tax from EU nations so I cannot afford the legal issues that may come from that if I do not have everything setup properly. There may be a future date if this ever becomes a full time business that I will go through with that and again sell to the EU, but for now, I am just not able to.
Now on to the biggest pain in running a business dependent on shipping orders to customers. The shipping situation has apparently not improved from last year. From what I have been seeing, I am expecting a repeat of the bad shipping experiences I saw last year. Please check out this blog post I made last year detailing some of the issues I have seen.
https://www.whitehotpeppers.com/blogs/news/shipping-issues
I am expecting more of the same issues if not worse, and ask for those ordering to be patient. A rough estimate would suggest about 25% to 35% of the orders I shipped last year were at least delayed if not severely displayed. Ideally with the US orders would make it in 2 to 5 days, but the reality is for those that experience the delays it could be 1 to 8 weeks. There is just nothing I can do about this, I have no ability to influence the USPS. They focus on the big shippers and a small time vendor like me is no different than their average customer. There really is nothing I can do about this, and I cannot just resend or refund every order that is taking 3 to 4 weeks or longer, as so many fall into this category particularly during the holidays. But at the end of the day, almost everything eventually arrives, just a lot later than people would expect or want.
For international customers, I expect this to be just as bad this year. I don’t know the full impact, but there is constantly news about the ports in the US being unable to manage the load. I know particularly in southern California ports there are a large amount of ships anchored at sea unable to come into port as there is not the capacity. I don’t know how or if this will effect the mail, but assume it might.
Due to demands on my time from work and family, I may be longer in processing orders for the next few weeks. I will do my best to get orders out as soon as possible, but my normal 1 to 2 business days for processing and sending out orders, could end up being much longer more in the 1 to 2 week range. I will do my best to get them out ASAP, but I am only one person and there is only so much time in the day. If you order, please be patient with me, I process orders in the order that they are received.
I do plan to have a Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale this year. I hope to send out an email and post about those. The Black Friday sale will probably start sometime Thursday November 25 and run through midnight Friday November 26 CST. The Cyber Monday Sale will probably run 12AM Monday November 29 to 11:59 PM Monday November 29 CST.
Thank you again for your business. Thank you for your patience with shipping.
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