How long will it take your order to arrive? There is no simple answer.
Our official time estimates for US shipments are 6-12 days for Standard
shipping, and 2-5 days for Premium shipping. Canadian shipments are not covered in this post.
- – - – - – Shipping Speak – - – - – -
Shippers almost always cite time in transit in terms of Business Days. If a FedEx 2nd Day package is shipped on a Friday, it does not arrive on Sunday, but instead arrives the following Tuesday. Saturday and Sunday are not counted as days. Holidays are also not counted as days.
Usually, shipper estimates start on the day the order is shipped, not when the order is received.
- – - – - – Frog Store ‘Standard’ Shipping - – - – - –
Orders with Standard shipping will often, but not always, arrive quicker than
the 6-12 day estimate. Reasons include:
- Lightweight orders are shipped by either USPS First Class or USPS Priority Mail. Priority Mail claims 2-3 business day delivery. First Class varies more, but usually arrives within 5 business days.
- Heavier orders ship by FedEx Ground from Oregon, so the closer you are to Oregon, the quicker your order will arrive. At minimum, heavier shipments from our warehouse in Oregon arrive at US eastern locations in 5 business days from the day that we ship. This means that the shipment will always wrap a weekend, so the quickest a heavy Standard shipped package could arrive is 7 calendar days if we pack and ship the order the same day it arrives, which is not normal.
- We use USPS Parcel Post shipping for heavier orders going to addresses FedEx does not serve (PO Boxes, for example) and “Delivery Surcharge” areas (rural and some downtown city addresses) where FedEx charges extra.
- How to get the maximum 12 day estimate? You live in the Eastern Time Zone, you order Wednesday, we are so busy we can’t ship until Friday, and the following week includes a holiday which causes 2 weekends to occur during transit. Voilà! 12 days.
- – - – - – Frog Store ‘Premium’ Shipping - – - – - –
Orders with Premium shipping normally arrive in 2-3 business days, which most of the time will be 2-5 calendar days. Premium orders always go to the front of the line and ship at the first opportunity.
Our Premium shipping methods are:
- For heavier orders, we use USPS Priority Mail. The USPS claims, but
does not guarantee, 2-3 business day delivery from the day we ship. In
our experience, they make the 2-3 day claim good a high percentage of the time.
- For midrange weights in smallish boxes, we will use FedEx Express Saver, which arrives in 3 business days from the day we ship.
- For lightweight orders (eastern US) to midweight orders (west coast US) in smallish boxes, we use FedEx 2nd Day shipping. Again, the 2 days is from the day we ship and counts only business days.
- In unusual cases, we will use USPS Express Mail Flat Rate Envelopes.
This is for small lightweight shipments usually being shipped on a Thursday. In most cases this results in Saturday delivery, which would be better than FedEx 2nd Day delivery the following Monday.
- – - – - – Frog Store ‘Custom’ Shipping - – - – - –
On customer request, we can usually ship by any method that FedEx has to the customer’s location if the customer is willing to pay the extra expense. We will usually charge the quoted FedEx charge plus a service fee for the
special handling.