Delivery times & methods
We try to maintain a four working day maximum turnaround time for 35mm slides, but it is often less than that. If you have a more urgent time schedule then please ring or email us first so that we can try to accommodate you – forewarned is forearmed! Larger film formats and View-Master reels have longer lead times – the product pages give estimated despatch dates.
There is no specific insurance with First Class or Airmail delivery but Royal Mail has a maximum of £20 compensation for loss or non-delivery.
For deliveries that need to be guaranteed next day we use Royal Mail Special Delivery. The next day delivery service is only available within the UK and is for deliveries next working day, Monday to Friday. The next day courier service costs £12.20 and is UK only. A signature is required with next day deliveries – please consider this, if there is no one to sign for the package then your delivery will be delayed.
Note: ‘Next Day delivery’ doesn’t mean you receive your order gets the day after you place it! It is an alternative to normal first class post delivery (where delivery should be next day, but often isn’t).
For non-UK deliveries we offer Airmail postage and packing – within Europe is from around £16.50
Airmail postage and packing Rest of the World is from £26.00
These international tracked and signed services (to most of the world) should arrive within 10 working days of despatch.
For urgent international deliveries, we also offer two or three day DHL deliveries.
Up to date prices are calculated at the checkout taking into account your delivery address, chosen delivery method and currency.
Urgent orders and the production workflow
What we will not do is push other customer’s work aside to accommodate urgent orders – that wouldn’t be fair at all. And we cannot run urgent orders by themselves, it would be economically unviable and turn a slick and efficient service into chaos.
So, how can we deal with your urgent order? Well, we can help you help yourself. Many, many jobs are actually despatched the same day they are received. We can’t guarantee that, there are so many variables involved, BUT you increase your chances by making sure we have the order and images by 10am or uploaded overnight. Any job that arrives after 11am definitely won’t be going out the same day.
You can make sure your images are prepared correctly (plenty of advice elsewhere on the website) and that you use credit/debit cards that have funds available.
Don’t delay sending off the order. Even five minutes might make the difference between catching a process or being rolled over to the next day.
However, slide production is a batch process – it isn’t like running off a copy or two on a photocopier! To keep prices anything like affordable many jobs are processed together and it simply isn’t possible to produce just one or two slides for an urgent order. Our stated schedule is four day turnaround for many products plus delivery time (although 80% of orders are sent well within that time, often same-day).
We run an efficient and well practised production schedule. Orders are taken and images received at any time of the day or night (we send slides all over the world) but our working hours are 9am to 4pm (UK time) Monday to Friday. We visually check orders and images then run the images through a pre-production process which then passes the images to the film recorders that run throughout the day. Once a day the films are processed, usually around lunchtime, but on busy days three or more processes might be run. When the processed films are dry they are separated into the separate orders and mounted, packed and paperwork completed. At the end of the day they are despatched by first class post or collected by the courier and the cycle is complete.
If you have an urgent order you are welcome to get in touch to see if our production schedule will hit your deadline.