Steenbergs Organic

Conditions of sale

THESE CONDITIONS OF SALE MUST BE READ IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE USER'S AGREEMENT WHICH CONTAINS THE LEGAL DETAILS REGARDING MAKING PURCHASES FROM STEENBERGS.

OUR PRODUCTS

Steenbergs is a manufacturer and retailer of organic Fairtrade teas, spices and herbs under the Steenbergs brand, as well as a retailer through its website of a number of other organic, Fairtrade, ethical and environmentally friendly products from other producers.  Steenbergs-branded products are sold for culinary purposes only. As food products, they should be stored safely in a cool, dark, dry place with lids on. You must use good hygiene and safe food preparation practices when using our products, taking advice from our "best before" dates as shown on the label. For more details on food hygiene and safety, please go to eat well.

Steenbergs does not retail its products as medical or health products. Should you intend using them for health purposes, you must seek and take advice from qualified medical professionals. It is totally at your risk if you intend to use our products for these health purposes.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

We offer you consistently low prices on our entire product list. "Our Price", as displayed, is in pounds sterling and inclusive of UK VAT at the appropriate rate - most of our items are regarded as foods for UK VAT purposes and so are zero rated for UK VAT. Orders from EU countries are accepted on orders paid in advance. Terms are the same as for UK orders except that carriage is more depending on your location (i.e. not £4.50 which is for UK delivered orders).

Postage outside of the EU will be charged at cost and we will let you know the exact amount prior to asking for the balance. Delivery of Steenbergs' products into the USA and Canada is not currently available. This is because the costs of transport into the USA and Canada, together with the legal implications of trading in the North American region, are not commercial.

When we charge your card and payment security

We take the security of our customers' payment information very seriously - we use the WorldPay online payment system to guarantee this security.   WorldPay is an online payment system that utilises its Streamline credit and debit card clearing system. WorldPay encrypts stored transaction information, ensuring that it's not tampered with. WorldPay takes responsibility for capturing and storing card details on its secure servers - it always ensures that this information is managed with the very high levels of security you would expect from a major financial services company. No-one at Steenbergs sees, or can access, your card details.

Payment for goods is required in advance to enable Steenbergs to review orders for potential  fraudulent activity through manually checking the credit process via WorldPay, which does now incorporate a short timing delay before Steenbergs will start processing an order. Steenbergs only charges your credit or debit card at the time of ordering.  Should you wish to have your credit or debit card processed at dispatch, you will need to phone in your order and provide us with your card details, which is theoretically less secure than processing via the secure Worldpay site, where Steenbergs are not provided with your account details; Steenbergs does not accept PayPal for any transactions at present.

Steenbergs accepts most major credit and debit cards from major financial institutions, but it does not accept payment by American Express, and no longer accepts payments via PayPal due to Steenbergs' experiencing fraudulent transactions through this service.

If you have paid by cheque and we owe you a full or partial refund, we will send a refund cheque for the correct amount.

What we do about mispricings

Steenbergs' products are agricultural commodities and as a result their underlying prices vary all the time. While we only change our prices annually, we reserve the right to change the prices of products at any time without notice.

Despite our best efforts, a small number of the many products on our web site may, therefore, be mispriced. Rest assured, however, that we verify prices as part of our dispatch procedures.

If an item's correct price is lower than our stated price, we charge the lower amount and send you the item. If a product's correct price is higher than our stated price by more than 10%, we will cancel your order and notify you of that cancellation, otherwise we will charge the stated price and send you the item.

Availability guide

We endeavour to hold sufficient stock of all our lines to fulfil our expected medium-term order book. However, some of our organic specialist blends and more unusual organic spices and herbs may not be held as packed stock; therefore, these may need to be packed specially for your order. This guarantees a high quality and fresh product, but may require a few days for our production team to blend and pack your goods.

We aim for orders to be blended, packed, picked and prepared for dispatch within 5 working days, but it may take up to 21 working days - Steenbergs does not work on Saturdays or Sundays or Public Holidays. When we run short of an item because of the harvests & seasons or supplier stock issues or you are placing a large order, we will inform you by e-mail if any items in your order turn out to be unavailable. We will provide you with the estimated time it will take us to receive the out of stock item from the supplier, blend it, pack it and prepare it for dispatch. If we expect to be out of stock for 2 weeks or more, we will give you the option of cancelling your order or backorder, refunding any payments promptly or crediting your next order.  In addition, Steenbergs is currently incorporating a 2 day additional delay on orders to mitigate current higher levels of attempted fraudulent activity.

How will it be delivered?

Small parcels (items under 1 kilos) destined for a UK address will normally be dispatched by the most cost-efficient untracked method using the Royal Mail unless the Priority Delivery option has been selected, where delivery will be via a suitable parcel carrier business (however see later). Items between 0 - 1.5 kilos, but if the value is more than £25.00 it is likely a signed for/courier service will be use, will be delivered in the UK by Royal Mail 1st class service and parcels over 1.5 kilos in weight may be delivered by a suitable parcel carrier if this is more cost-effective.  The Royal Mail 1st class service is a 2 - 3 working day service.  Steenbergs reserves the right to use whichever is the most cost-effective delivery service in its opinion.

Please note these delivery times are in addition to the picking time and we aim to have goods to you within 7 working days of ordering, incorporating the 2 day anti-fraud delay.

It is recommended that delivery instructions be given if you are unlikely to be able to take delivery yourself. In particular, for deliveries during the week you should consider whether an order can be sent to your work address or whether there is somewhere secure for the delivery to be left (you are responsible for the security of any delivery instructions provided). Should you require a change of delivery address after the parcel has been dispatched, this will incur an additional charge which must be borne by you. 

For deliveries outside of the UK, parcels will normally be dispatched via the mail system but may be delivered by a suitable parcel carrier if this is more cost-effective.

How long will it take to arrive?

For deliveries outside of the UK, please email or ring for estimated delivery time.

To find out when you will receive an item within the UK, you need to consider the availability of the item you ordered and add it to our standard dispatch time. If an item is available as packed stock, it will normally take 48 hours for those items to be picked and prepared for dispatch. Standard delivery will be a further 5 working days from dispatch, i.e. total time from order to arrival at destination is normally 7 working days.

We use external carriers for deliveries but (while we accept that their service can impact your impression of our service) we cannot always influence the way they work, however much we all wish we could; in particular, smaller packets are sent via the Royal Mail and these packets cannot be tracked, because this is not a service offered by the Royal Mail.

From early November to Christmas Day orders may take 10 working days from your order until it has been prepared for dispatch (ie it could take 15 days or more to reach its UK destination from placing an order), unless the priority supplement has been selected. The last day for Christmas orders in the UK is 14 December (or nearest Friday if 14 December falls on a weekend) in any year.  No priority orders will be taken after this cut-off date.

If there are specific events or timing by which products are required, please email or phone us or use the special instructions box and we will do our best to help - to ensure that we meet these timing requirements you should select priority supplement which is there for quick picking and packing. If you need these specific timing requirements to be met, we will charge the timed delivery costs to you in full, including (but not limited to) Saturday courier charges.

If you have selected Priority Delivery, you should order via the Internet, email us or fax or phone us before 12 noon Monday to Thursday and we can dispatch your parcel for next-day delivery. Orders placed after 12 noon on Thursday will be delivered the following Monday. Please do not embarrass us by asking on Friday for a Next Day/ Saturday delivery as our experience is that (even with the best will in the world) both your - and our - expectations are rarely met since the only delivery option is First Class Post unless you opt for a timed delivery (as above).  No new Priority Orders will be taken after the Christmas cut-off date of 14 December until 2 January in the following year.]

NB: Delivery times to BFPO addresses are dependent on British Forces Post Office schedules.

NBB: All the above delivery times relate to deliveries in the UK (excluding Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands). For these excluded destinations please add at least one extra day.

How much will it cost?

Our standard UK delivery service is free for orders over £20.00. Below £20.00, there is a £4.50 handling charge for UK deliveries, which includes VAT at 20%. For other EU orders, the delivery is more depending on which country it is which includes VAT at 20%. Orders outside of EU are at cost and we do not deliver into the USA or Canada. The Handling Charge covers the costs of picking, packing and other processing costs for small orders (including credit checks and fraudulent activity) where these costs are not covered by the value of the order.

You should allow 7 working days for the standard delivery service. We offer a Next Day delivery service for an additional fee of £10.00 (inclusive of VAT), i.e. you will still pay the additional charge for Next Day service even when your order is over £20.00. Your order should be with you by 5.00 p.m. on the next day.]

GIFT WRAPPING

We offer gift wrapping on our boxes. This is now in recycled double sided red/blue paper from Germany with an Ecofil coloured string, which is made by an Austrian company that uses natural paper and colours to make their twine.  If you require gift wrapping, please ensure that (a) you select the gift wrapping option on the web site and (b) you include a "Gift Message" by typing the details in the "Special Instructions" section of the web site or by emailing us with details.

EXPORT/IMPORT INFORMATION

At present, we do not export our products outside of the European Union. Please do not embarrass us by completing an order for dispatch to the USA as we will have to refund your money and explain that we cannot fulfil your order - there is no delivery option for the USA for this reason and it is not an oversight.

When ordering goods from Steenbergs for delivery overseas, you may be subject to import duties and taxes which are levied once the package reaches your country. Generally, customs forms for international packages will list the value of the contents of your order by product type.

Any additional charges for customs clearance must be borne by you; we have no control over these charges and cannot predict what they may be. Customs policies vary widely from country to country, so you should contact your local customs office for further information.

Additionally, please note that when ordering from Steenbergs, you are considered the importer of record and must comply with all laws and regulations of the country in which you are receiving the goods. In particular, certain countries may require additional procedures and certification with regard to organic status prior to import. At present, Steenbergs is certified under EC 834/2007 and EC889/2008 by the Organic Food Federation (GB-ORG-04) for processing and sales of organic products in the UK and hence the European Union; we are not currently compliant for the United States, Japan, Australia or any other country that does not recognise EC organic certification rules.

Your privacy is, also, very important to us and we know that you care about how information about your order is used and shared. We would like our international customers and customers dispatching products internationally to be aware that cross-border deliveries are subject to opening and inspection by customs authorities. We may provide certain order, delivery and product information to our international carriers and such information may be communicated by the carriers to customs authorities in order to facilitate customs clearance and comply with local laws. If the order is a gift or a sample, the package is marked "Gift" or "Sample" but the cost of the item is still stated on the customs form. Customs authorities require us to state the value of the gift or sample item directly on the package.

OUR RETURNS POLICY

No quibbles returns

At Steenbergs, we want you to be delighted every time you buy from us. Occasionally though, we know you may want to return items. That's why under our "no quibbles" guarantee if, for any reason you are unhappy with your purchase, you can return it to us in its original condition with the invoice within 30 days of the date you received the item. Original condition means unopened with all tamper-evident seals intact. We will then - and only then - issue a full refund for the price you paid for the item. This returns policy does not affect your statutory rights.

Your statutory rights - cooling off period

We would advise you to check your order when it is received and report any issues within 3 days of delivery. By law, you also have the right to withdraw from your purchase of an item within 7 working days of the day after the date the item is delivered to you.

We regret that we also cannot accept cancellations of contracts for the purchase of herbs, spices, blends and accessories where the item has been unsealed, except where there has obviously been infestation, mould or other quality problem that occurred within 7 working days of the day after the date the item was delivered to you.

To cancel your purchase under this cooling-off period, please provide a brief written explanation giving the reason for the return. Please package the relevant item securely and send it to us with the delivery note or original invoice so that we receive it within 7 working days of the day after the date that the item was delivered to you.

Returns address

The returns address is:

Steenbergs Limited, 6 Hallikeld Close, Barker Business Park, Melmerby, Ripon, HG4 5GZ, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1765 640 088; Fax: +44 (0)1765 640 101; E-mail: enquiries@steenbergs.co.uk

Steenbergs offers a FREEPOST returns service.  Should you require this facility, we will email you the details.  For your protection, we recommend that you get a certificate of posting from the Post Office - they're free.

Please note that you will be responsible for the costs of returning the goods to us unless we delivered the item to you in error, or if the item is faulty, or if you fail to utilise the FREEPOST returns service that we offer customers.

As soon as we receive notice of your cancellation of this order, we will refund the relevant part of the purchase price for that item together with the item's normal postage charge - we cannot refund any priority, express or courier component of the postage charge.

REGISTERED OFFICE

If you wish to contact the company, please contact us at our registered office which is at the address below:

Steenbergs Limited, 6 Hallikeld Close, Barker Business Park, Melmerby, Ripon, HG4 5GZ, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1765 640088; Fax: +44 (0)1765 640101; E-mail: enquiries@steenbergs.co.uk

Registered in England with company number 4316848.

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