Alright everyone, we’re getting close. Last weekend we painted and set up our new warehouse space, it’s really nice and we’re super excited about it. We’ve got about 48 different pots that we’re working to get on the site, new colors and designs. Also some new water props. We’ve been bagging and bagging soil and receiving plants around the clock. It’s been absolutely hectic around here. But, we are looking at reopening on Monday, May 25th, 2020—just in time for Memorial Day.
This blog article is a little long, but I just wanted you to be fully informed on changes we’ve made, policies and scheduling before we jump back in.
I also wanted to take a moment to thank you for your patience around our relocation and apologize again for any frustration that it caused. This business truly is my heart and I have missed it so very much. I am really looking forward to connecting with you all again.
-Crystal
Permanent changes we have made:
-We have built a very nice cold stock room. If you have not read about it check out our other blog posts. It will help with pest control and keep plants looking their best while they’re in our care. Starting in June all plants posted to the site will have been in-house for at least two weeks quarantining before they make their debut on the site, through May all plants will have been in the cold room for at least a week, but by June everything will be quarantined for two weeks moving forward.
-Presales are no longer utilized, even for special requests. We have a new process around Custom Requests and if you have a request please read through our updated instructions here.
-We can only ship Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We may ship non-living retail orders throughout the week, but on purchases with plants these are the only days we’ll ship. We are implementing this for two reasons: one, we want to aim for Saturday deliveries or sooner each week to make sure nothing is held for an extra day on Sunday. And, two, special requests around specific shipping days throws off our schedule and we have very tight deadlines around shipping.
-We cannot accommodate requests for a specific shipping date, unless you’re traveling. Thank you so much for your understanding around that.
If you are traveling we will not hold any orders longer than two weeks, so please make sure if you are purchasing that you will be able to receive shipments. If you are planning to travel please let us know immediately after placing your order by sending us your Order #, name and date you’ll be back to fulfillment@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com we will send you an email confirming that we got your request for the shipment hold. We don’t mind holding for travel, but please remember to email us right away if you are planning on being out of town and please use the provided email address.
We have changed required checkout settings—we require an email address to checkout now. We have to have a way to reach you to communicate about your order. Also if you have a stored account with us please take a moment to review your shipping address and make sure it’s up to date.
-My inbox is always overloaded, so I will be utilizing some help here to stay on top of things. Please make sure you send any communication to the appropriate inbox:
succulents@cedarcreekfarmouse.com This is our general mailbox for succulent-related questions, upload/site questions—anything general should be sent here.
requests@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com If you have a Wishlist or a request please send it here. We will do our best to get it sourced for you.
fulfillment@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com If you have a special shipping requirement, address change, or anything shipping-related please send it to us as quickly as possible to this email. We check this inbox before every drop off.
returns@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com If you would like to return your purchase for store credit or if you are experiencing a quality issue please send us an email here and we’ll take care of you.
subscriptions@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com If you have an active subscription and have a special request regarding next month’s delivery please email us here. Subscriptions are shipped October through June.
crystal@cedarcreekfarmhouse.com If you would like to chat with me directly-- I absolutely love that, no worries! Please keep in mind that I am the only one in our office right now and I stay slammed. My favorite emails are the ones that are fun to read over a cup of coffee, you guys are like an extended family to me. If you ever just want to chat and aren’t worried about when the response comes back please email me. I love, love, love getting to know you better.
If you have a specific question the best way to communicate with me is via our Community Board because I feel like that is less formal and I usually check it at the end of the day (and my response is there so others can read it, which potentially answers questions for other folks). If you send me an email I will do my very best to respond, but please expect it to take me at least a couple of days (and up to a week during peak times). I generally play catch up on emails on Fridays and Sundays, but there’s always a lot to go through.
Policies that have not changed, but we wanted to remind you of:
-We do not accept order cancellations, we work very hard on pulling orders and preparing them for shipment and during more normal times we have help, so it gets confusing if an order is cancelled. We don’t allow order cancellations, but if you are unhappy with your purchase you may request a return label (complimentary) and we will refund you via store credit when the order arrives back to us.
-We do allow returns (we want you to be happy with your plants). Returns are for store credit only, unless your plant fails to establish and then we’ll happily refund your original payment method. Moving forward any requests for store credit, or if you feel you are entitled to a refund based on plant health, you will need to request a return label and return the plant to us before a credit or refund will be processed.
-Please don’t purchase our placeholder listings, i.e. ‘Coming Soon’ announcements, ‘Archives.’ This only creates more work for us and there are no products associated with them. Just Carts will still be offered at the end of the listings, we may have a little riddle redeemable as a coupon code for those to keep things interesting. Please read the description before carting those.
-And please join us during the live uploads in the Community Tab, it’s my favorite part of the listings and I am really, really missing you guys.
Temporary Changes due to COVID19:
-Right now the only one in our office is me. That’s it. No additional help right now to minimize the spread. I can assure you that our family is being extremely careful with this virus. As a family, we are utilizing deliveries for our necessities, my husband is working from home (and depending on what the autumn looks like we will likely be homeschooling our daughter). We are not socializing or going out. I do our receiving wearing gloves to unbox our plants. Before your plants are even boxed up they will have been held for at least two weeks before they are handled again for shipping. I am not using gloves to take photos or package plants for final delivery (I have to feel the leaves of the plants to accurately describe firmness and health in our descriptions and I like to double check firmness again when shipping by hand). But I will be the only one handling plants until I feel like the health scare is behind us.
-Our drop offs are contactless at the back dock of USPS. We are not going inside the Post Office. We drop off 15 minutes before the last call, so the boxes are immediately moved onto a truck bound for the sorting facility here in Atlanta.
We recommend spraying the outside of your packages with some kind of disinfectant upon receipt, to be extra careful. But the contents of our packages will have been packaged by me, personally.
-We are still seeing hefty delays out of Korea. I have been watching a site called Air Cargo News and from what I can gather they have reduced flights down to one-third of the normal volume coming out of Korea bound for the US, which means packages are taking about two times longer to arrive. Customs is delayed on the US side too, so some of our boxes have been held up there as well.
We are taking losses to come back online with quality plants—not everything is arriving slow or poorly, it’s truly luck of the draw it seems. Some packages arrive within a few days, other shipments take weeks. There’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to it at the moment. So, we have had some rough shipments, because we hold a very high quality standard, it leaves us in a tough spot in terms of being able to predict a reoccurring upload schedule. We’re ordering more than what we would normally, but we’re losing a lot in the process of importing right now. We want to try to follow our normal schedule, but some uploads may have to be cancelled depending on shipments and our sale section will be updated weekly with our less than perfect plants.
-We will try to enclose a post transit photo on every listing, even our Random Rares until shipping times are a bit more reasonable.
Temporary Scheduling Plan (we will update the schedule here on this blog post weekly on Fridays, so please check back):