Shipping & Returns

IMPORTANT!  EU & Norway Customer Information!

EU & Norway Customers - if you plan to order less than 134,00€/3000NOK of miniatures, please use my Etsy store instead of this store, so that  you don't get charged Import Fees on low value orders! Etsy pre-pays the VAT on my/your behalf so no further fees to worry about! ETSY STORE LINK 

(Also, you may wish to place two small orders of less than 134,00€ if your large order comes to over that much, the extra shipping fee will be less than the import charges!)

Free Shipping - Check the Discount Coupons page to see if Free Shipping is available on orders this month!

I ship world-wide. This includes the USA, which is the question I am asked the most!

In the USA the best option to choose is Tracked shipping - this arrives weeks earlier than Standard shipping, and you can get tracking notifications to your phone via USPS or the Aftership app at every stage of your parcel's jouirnery, once it arrives in the USA customs. You cannot track Standard shipping, don't expect it to arrive for several weeks, the USPS is great with Tracked, way better than the equivalent UK Royal Mail service, but the USPS is usually quite infuriatingly slow with Standard.

To Get A Price For Shipping 

Add whichever items you want to the shopping cart, then Go To Shopping Cart in the top left corner of the screen or menu. You will see the contents of your cart, and below it a Shipping Estimator that gives you the prices you will pay depending on which options you choose. It is easier to log in so that your destination country can be shown.

Royal Mail are the only available option other than specialist couriers in the UK. They charge a fortune for international services, unfortunately. 

EU Import Duties and Customs Fees

Well, what a brave new world post-Brexit UK lives in, eh? Sadly, now that we're so totally global that we aren't part of  anyone's Customs Union any more, this means every country outside of the UK must now consider what Customs fees, import duties, and VAT are due on items they buy from UK one-man companies like Heresy. 

EU & Norway Customers - check your local customs office for information on fees before ordering. 

• if you plan to order less than 134,00€/3000NOK of miniatures, please use my Etsy store so that  you don't get charged Import Fees on low value orders! Etsy pre-pays the VAT on my/your behalf so no further fees to worry about! ETSY STORE LINK This makes it much easier for you to buy figures from the UK!
• If you order from this shop and choose one of the normal shipping options (Standard, or Tracked) you will be asked to pay VAT and a handling fee by your country's Customs department. Check with them to see what this will be. PLEASE check your local country's charges regarding this - some of them are quite low, some surprisingly high, ranging from €7.50 to €27.00 per parcel! That's in addition to any VAT levels you will be charged. It is therefore a good idea, if you can't justify it on a small purchase, to either get together with friends and share the import costs by splitting an order once it gets to you, or to order from an EU based business like Battlefield Berlin in Germany, who can order from Heresy, take the Customs hit and then ship from Berlin, to you.
• Rest Of The World - there's no real change, if you paid taxes before Brexit, you still will, although you may find your Customs departments are a bit more agressive at opening parcels and charging any fees. Please check your coutnry's official Customs information for what levels are applicable on imports to your country.

UPS 3 Day Express Courier (mainly for USA customers, but can be used worldwide)

If you are in the USA and want to guarantee a specific delivery arrives within a given time period, the only realistic way of doing that is to use a courier service like UPS Worldwide 3 day Express, which would cost £50.00 for delivery of a parcel up to 2kg to the USA but is normally pretty reliable – please note that I have absolutely zero control over any parcel once it leaves the workshop. Below UPS, the next best option is Tracked or Tracked&Signed delivery, but even those are subject to the vagaries of US Customs. Normally they seen to arrive in less than 2 weeks, sometimes 1 week, but I have had the occasional one in the last 20 years that turns up 3 or more weeks later, and it’s not something I can control.  If you go with Standard shipping it can be anything around 3 weeks or more.

If you add items to the shopping cart, you will see what prices are available for Standard or Tracked shipping to the USA based on the weight of what you have ordered (prices went up astronomically during 2020 as the US withdrew from the global postal agreement for Last Mile Delivery and every country had to put prices up)

If you want to use the UPS courier 3-day service choose the Flat Rate shipping option in the cart. Let em know your window of delivery so I can be sure to get it sent off 3 days ahead, it takes 24 hours to arrange collection

This service may cost less to other countries (between £28 and £40 to the EU for instance depending on weight and szie of parcel) so if you wish to use it let me kn

NORMALLY ALL PARCELS ARE SHIPPED ON FRIDAYS. This is because of the coronavirus. I am at high risk of death if I catch it so i am limiting my exposure until such time as a working vaccine is with us. Sorry for any inconvenience! If your order is urgent please let me know via the Contact Us page or Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Your order status will be updated when it ships, please log in to check your order status, and if it says 'Paid For, Awaiting Packing' that means it hasn't shipped yet. If you don't give us a working email address (or if your email provider blocks our server) you will not receive an order status update via email but you will be able to see the status online in your customer area.

If you are concerned that you are missing a parcel, please bear the following in mind:

1) If you didn't specifically pay for tracking and insurance, eg you chose Free Shipping or regular Airmail or First Class, there's not a lot we can do to trace your order. Royal Mail simply doesn't provide that service unless you pay the extra money.

2) Most orders arrive eventually once posted. The current worst coutnry for delivering parcels is apparently the USA, where parcels seem to arrive at a random length of time between one week and five weeks (the worst I've heard lately is two months!). This is totalyl out of our control and is entirely to do with the US postal service.

3) Also, if you are expecting a parcel, and it should have arrived by now, eg overseas within three weeks, then PLEASE check with your local post office as they may be holding it for you and have failed to let you know this. This happens all the time. Or perhaps they've left it in a safe place, or with a neighbour, or someone else in the house received it on your behalf and never mentioned it.

All of these things happen a lot, you'd be amazed. Also, in the UK the posties aren't above leaving things in the wheelie bins thinking they'd be safe and you'd spot them. More often than you'd think, truly...

4) If you've tried asking the post office and all the rest of it and you still think it's gone missing, then do let us know using the contact form below.

5) All orders will be shipped in order of receipt, so if you're 100 in the queue, it may take a day or two to get to yours. We will update your order status when it ships!

6) I say 'we' I mean, 'I' there's currently only me working here, I don't have some mighty mail order department toiling away at all hours, just me trying to do everything, so do bear with me. Sorry for any delays! - Andy Foster

SHIPPING AND RETURNS

YOUR ORDER and SHIPPING CHOICES

When you place an order, please choose the appropriate shipping from the choices given. As Royal Mail only offer compensation up to £42 (and they make it extraordinarily difficult to claim), orders beyond that value must be sent by Recorded or Special Delivery in the UK, or by International Signed For or Airsure service for overseas, in order that the parcel is insured against loss.

If you choose not to use an insured/trackable service for your order then your order gets shipped at the standard, non-trackable, uninsured shipping option  at your own risk of loss - it cannot be replaced!

Rather than force you to pay the higher shipping prices, we give you the option to send the order via regular, un-insured, un-trackable serivces, but this is at your own risk of loss, so please bear this in mind when ordering. If you pay for insured or trackable shipping, then your order can be replaced in the event of it being lost, no problem.

Orders are shipped Tuesday to Fridays, except on Bank Holidays and other days when the Post Office is shut in the UK. Or if we're on vacation and nobody is about to process the orders! (Vacation periods should be made clear somewhere on the site when this applies)

We aim to get everything out as soon as possible, sometimes the same day, but if there's a big pile of orders (Oh how we wish...) it might be a day or two. If there's a Sale on, for instance, orders can get delayed by a week before they are shipped as we may have to cast miniatures up for your order, that sort of thing...

UPDATES

The shopping cart system includes an email-based order update system. You will receive an email updating the status of your order when it has shipped. Please check your junk folders. There should be at least one immediately following your payment to confirm the order has been placed. You may get a second telling you it is being packed if it's a quiet day or we may just skip ahead to telling you when it has shipped if we're busy eg on a Tuesday when we have the previous three days of orders to sort out.

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT IF YOU LIVE OVERSEAS YOUR ORDER WILL TAKE LONGER TO ARRIVE FROM THE UK THAN YOU THINK.

The best way to get your order quickly is to pay for Airsure or International Signed For shipping, and Airsure is the faster and better of those two. ISF is only semi-trackable.

PRE-ORDERS and OUT OF STOCK ITEMS

If you have order miniatures etc that have yet to be released (check the release date info on the item description) your entire order will be held back until those items are ready to be shipped, and you will receive an Order Status Update email that reads 'Awaiting Pre-Ordered Items'. You will also get one of these emails if your order contains items that are temporarily out of stock like tools etc or if you have put your name in the queue for a Dragon, for instance!

RETURNS

If you need to return an order, please contact us first. If we can't resolve your problem or need you to return items you must reseal it and pay for it to be returned at your local post office. You can try the old trick of writing RETURN TO SENDER, ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN but it's not guaranteed to work. We will refund the cost of the value of the order less our postage costs and/or any Paypal or eBay fees that cannot be recovered, if you have changed your mind. If you are returning incorrect items and we have acknowledged this, we will credit you for the postage you have incurred. Please contact us about the problem before sending it!

Please note that you must return an item within seven days of receipt. Please contact us to let us know when something has been sent. You must send your returned item by some form of recorded delivery so that it can be proved to have been sent and arrived safely!

Please also note that there is a maximum time of 28 days allowed for refunds and returns.

MISSING ORDERS

Despite our best efforts, the various postal systems around the world are not perfect. Especially Italy and the USA, where parcels seem to go missing en route more often. Since all of our customers are 100% honest, it must be the fault of the postal system that things don't arrive. If you have paid for insured/trackable shipping, we will send out a replacement order. If you did not pay for insured or trackable shipping i.e. First Class Packet or Airmail Small Packets overseas, then we cannot replace your missing order normally. Contact us and we'll see what we can do to assist.

Please allow time for your order to arrive. Quite often we get an angry email from someone in, say, the USA demanding to know where their order is that they placed two days ago. Things take time to arrive! The USA for example is very fond of delaying parcels in customs for security checks. Normally things go according to plan and parcels arrive overseas within two weeks. We have had rare occasions where, for example, a parcel to the USA has taken not two weeks, not even four weeks but three months before suddenly arriving, having been detoured around the country in question for no reason. Not our fault, we posted it the day after the order was made but we get the blame. In this case, the customer had to return the parcel as we'd already shipped a replacement thinking the first was lost! That sort of thing is VERY RARE though. Normally, even the slowest overseas parcel turns up within four weeks. if nothing arrives within two to three weeks something may have gone wrong and you should check with us if you have not received an Order Status email update to let you know your order has shipped along with any tracking information etc.

AIRSURE vs INTERNATIONAL SIGNED FOR

These services are available to specific countries. Royal Mail provides both choices to a few countries, but only International Signed For to certain countries. Some countries apparently stand less chance of their orders arriving, normally in the Eastern European areas, but also places like Italy and Brazil. You will be able to choose Airsure only if it applies to your Shipping Address country.

Airsure is an Express service, trackable to a degree and insured. Royal Mail doesn't provide the same level of tracking info as specialist couriers do unfortunately, so you can't tell if it's on the delivery van or anything, but it is a fast service, for instance reducing the time taken to America or Canada to around five working days instead of twelve or more for normal mail.

International Signed for is normally a little quicker than regular mail and is partially trackable (it tells you when an item has left the UK, and when it has arrived, which you will already know, or if you missed a delivery attempt, which you might not have realised). It is also insured.

RECORDED vs SPECIAL DELIVERY (UK)

Honestly, if you need it urgently, and the next day is a working day, then choose Special Delivery. Guaranteed before 1pm delivery, they say. Depending entirely on your postie, you might even get it on a Saturday. Special Delivery is trackable and insured. Recorded Delivery often does the job just as well, but it is not guaranteed next day.

Please make sure someone will be in to sign for a Recorded or Special Delivery item as they require signatures on delivery. If you are not in, the Royal mail are supposed to leave a card and you can arrange redelivery or collection from your local Collection Office. Sometimes the postie might leave it with a neighbour or 'in a safe place' like a bin or box in your garden! You'd be amazed how often we hear that...