Six states, and one of them is the only one anybody cares about.
Order tracking, for parcels that exist and for produce that does not exist yet. The second half is the interesting one, because a wheat patch bought in October has a delivery date eleven months away and a confidence interval of about three weeks.
Where a parcel actually is.
Two to five working days by tracked courier, free over forty pounds. Perishables leave on a Monday or a Tuesday so that nothing spends a weekend in a depot.
-
Immediately
Placed
The order exists and the stock is reserved against it
A confirmation, by email, with everything on it
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Within one working day
Picked
Somebody has physically found it and put it in a box
Push and email, if you asked
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Same day as picking
Packed
Weighed, labelled, and a tracking number generated
The tracking number, in the same message
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By 16:00 on a working dayNow
Collected
The courier has it. It is out of our hands entirely
Nothing. Nobody has ever wanted this one
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Usually the next morning
Out for delivery
It is on a van, with a window from the courier
Push, from the courier’s data rather than ours
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When it lands
Delivered
Signed for, left safe, or with a neighbour
Push and email, with the photograph if there is one
The fourth state produces no notification at all, because in eighteen months nobody has asked to be told that a courier has been to a warehouse.
What ships when.
| What | Leaves | Arrives | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Store-cupboard and homeware | Any working day | 2–5 working days | Free over £40 |
| Anything chilled | Monday or Tuesday only | Next day, before 13:00 | Never over a weekend |
| Beer, cider and spirits | Any working day | 2–4 working days | Age check at checkout and again at the door |
| A box subscription | The 3rd of the month | By the 5th | Skip or change by the 28th |
| Patch produce | After harvest, in lots | Three postings for flour, one for oil | The date moves with the weather |
| A cask | It does not | Eight to twelve years | And then only after duty is paid |
The next thing through your door.
Dispatched on the third, with you by the fifth, and skippable until the twenty-eighth. After that it is picked and we are not unpicking it.
Tracking a thing that does not exist yet.
A parcel has a location. A wheat patch has a growth stage, which is a completely different kind of fact and needs a completely different screen.
So produce you have bought forward does not appear here as a delivery until it is one. Until then it sits on the tracker with a stage, a photograph from the same fence post every month, and a harvest window rather than a date. The window narrows from about six weeks in April to about six hours in August, and that narrowing is the entire honest content of the feature.
The moment the combine has been and the weighbridge ticket exists, the holding moves from the tracker to this page and becomes an ordinary parcel with an ordinary tracking number.
When it goes wrong.
It has not arrived
Tell us after the stated window closes. We do not ask you to wait ten working days first.
It arrived broken
Photograph it, tell us within fourteen days, and we replace or refund. Do not post a broken jar back across the country to prove it was broken.
It arrived warm
Same rule, faster. Chilled goods are replaced without argument and we take it up with the courier.
The courier says delivered and it is not there
We chase the courier and refund you. Those are two separate processes and yours does not wait for theirs.
You have changed your mind
Fourteen days under the Consumer Contracts Regulations, except on perishables and personalised goods, which are excepted by law rather than by us.
Delivery, questioned.
Two to five working days for ordinary goods, next day before one for chilled. The slow end is a Friday order on a bank holiday weekend.
Not from this site. What can and cannot cross a border is set out on the cross-border gifting page, and the answer for most of it is no.
Yes, from the farm shop, and it is cheaper because there is no courier in the middle. The queue, however, is real.
So that nothing chilled spends a weekend in a depot. It costs us four shipping days a week and it is not negotiable.
The harvest countdown.
A window that narrows from six weeks to six hours, and why it cannot do better.