Not all shipping services are equal, and your delivery experience can vary widely based on who’s carrying your box. Some carriers excel in certain areas and struggle in others. Some delivery people are go-getters, others are slow fretters. While we can’t control the fate of your order once it leaves our facility (yet), we do offer a variety of delivery options to suit your budget, schedule, and preferences. Let’s walk through how to use these options.

It all starts in your Shopping Cart. Here, you’ll see white area with all the items in your cart, as well as a light green area where the cost to order is broken down into subtotal, tax, and shipping fee. Note the blue Delivery Options button next to each item in your cart. These buttons let you customize delivery for each item.

First, enter your ZIP code in the green Subtotal area, then hit Estimate. Our system will take a moment to estimate shipping cost. By default, this estimate will use the cheapest available delivery options and try to group your order into as few shipments as possible. Now, hit the blue Delivery Options button next to any item. A screen will appear with options to choose from.

The first option is Delivery Date Preference. This lets you specify a day when you would prefer to receive that item. Perhaps a certain day would work better for you, or maybe you just want that item sooner. By default, our system will choose the cheapest service, not necessarily the fastest, but faster services may be available.

The second option is Carrier Preference. This lets you choose the shipping company you want to deliver that item. Most items will have options for FedEx, UPS, and USPS, as well as an option called Cheapest. This will be the cheapest service allowed for that item (some items can only ship via certain carriers).

About shipping cost calculation

We’re a convenient one-stop shop for all your exotic pet needs, which means that your shopping cart may contain a complex combination of live animals, plants, invertebrates and dry goods. Each of these products has its own set of rules governing how it can and cannot be shipped. Some rules involve weather and other real-time data that must be fetched from external sources. All this is factored in to calculate your shipping cost. The larger and more complex the order, the more time it may take to calculate.

Furthermore, every time you add or remove a custom delivery option from your cart, our system must recalculate the shipping cost for the cart. This may take some time, especially for large, complex carts with multiple custom delivery options. Please be patient.

All of our custom delivery options are available for AutoDelivery subscriptions as well. If you plan to order the same products on a regular basis, consider setting up an AutoDelivery.

Custom delivery options and our Live Arrival Guarantee

Our Live Arrival Guarantee covers all live products. It does not cover all possible delivery options and weather conditions. By default, our system will automatically select the cheapest shipping option for which we can guarantee live arrival, if such an option is available. You may override this selection with a custom delivery option, but the option you choose may not satisfy the requirements of our Live Arrival Guarantee. Each live product in your cart that is guaranteed will show a green badge. Each live item that is not guaranteed will show a red badge. Should you choose to ship live products without a Live Arrival Guarantee, you do so at your own risk.