Eleven rules, and most of them are in your favour.
What happens to an unclaimed gift, who can return what, whether they can see the price, what an age check does to a present, and the four things we will not send however much anybody wants us to.
The eleven.
The gift itself
- Prices
- Never shown to the recipient. Not on the card, the packing note or any email
- Anonymity
- Available on everything. About one in nine gifts here is anonymous
- Unclaimed after 90 days
- Converts to a gift card in the recipient’s name, valid two years. You are told
- Never claimed at all
- After the card expires, refunded to you if you ask. It is your money
The recipient
- They choose the details
- Crop, animal, box or tier. You choose the category and the money
- They can return it
- Thirty days, without involving you, to a credit in their name
- They can transfer it on
- Once. A gifted patch can be re-gifted; a gifted membership cannot
- They are the one who is age-checked
- At the basket, at checkout and at the door. Every time
The awkward ones
- A gifted subscription does not renew
- Three months is three months. Nothing is charged to anybody afterwards
- A gift card is not a trivial benefit
- It is a cash voucher and it is taxable, however small
- We will not send four things
- Set out below, and none of the four is a policy of ours
The four things we will not send.
| What | Where | Whose rule |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol | Outside the UK, to anybody, ever | Excise duty and destination law |
| Meat, dairy and cheese | Into the EU as a personal consignment | EU biosecurity rules since 2021 |
| Fresh produce, seeds or plants | Australia, New Zealand and most of the world | Destination biosecurity, and rightly |
| Anything alcoholic | To a workplace postroom, at any volume | Ours. Nobody can be carded at a postroom |
Why the recipient can return it without telling you.
The standard arrangement is that a gift can only be returned by the person who paid, which means the recipient has to either keep something they do not want or tell the giver they do not want it.
That is a genuinely unpleasant position to put somebody in over a jar of chutney, so here the recipient can return anything within thirty days, on their own, to a credit in their name — and we do not tell you. You will never know, and that is the point.
It costs us the occasional refund. It saves somebody a conversation they were dreading, and it means the thing you gave them is genuinely a present rather than an obligation.
Everything with alcohol in it is age-restricted, and the check is on them.
Please enjoy Hawkstone responsibly. Everything with alcohol in it is age-restricted: we will card you at checkout and the driver will card you again at the door. On a gift that means the recipient is carded rather than the buyer. A case of lager gifted to somebody who cannot lawfully receive it does not ship, and the money comes back to you.
What you get
- Anonymous gifting, on everything
- No price visible to the recipient, anywhere
- Thirty days for them to return it, privately
- A ninety-day claim window, then a two-year gift card
- A refund to you if it is never claimed at all
- One onward transfer of a patch or a cask
What you very much do not
- A gifted subscription renewing automatically
- Alcohol crossing any border
- Food into the EU as a personal consignment
- Anything alcoholic to a postroom
- A gift card treated as a trivial benefit
- Us telling you that they returned it
The rules, questioned.
Reminders at seven and thirty days. At ninety it becomes a gift card in their name for two years. If that expires unspent, ask us and we will refund you.
Whether it was claimed, yes. What they chose, no, and what they did with it afterwards, definitely not.
Within thirty days, for a credit, and then they can buy whatever they like. That is the same thing by a slightly longer route and it is deliberate.
Nothing on this build takes payment anywhere. Every price and every rule above describes how a live version would behave.
Returns, at length.
Thirty days rather than fourteen, and why it is more generous than the law requires.
