Holiday Shipment Guide
How to get your stuff in time for the holidays. 
Holiday season or not, we always hustle to make sure your orders get to you as QUICKLY as possible from our well-stocked warehouse. Almost everything on the site is always in stock for immediate shipping, though we have had some exceptions these past months due to the ongoing supply chain delays that are affecting many product lines (including some of our own). If we have unexpectedly run out of what you've ordered, we'll let you know right away.
Below, please see the calendar, showing the "deadline" dates for ordering via various shipment services, and still getting gifts in time for Christmas. It is a GUIDE, not a guarantee, especially as it pertains to USPS non-guaranteed services like Ground Advantage and Priority Mail.
With the ongoing increases in e-commerce, the shipping services have been overwhelmed with volume, to the degree that they may actually put "caps" on the number of packages that they will accept from some of the larger retailers. Recently, the number of packages that have been reported as arriving to our customers at least a day or two later than usual has grown, through no fault of our own.
So be aware: the shipping date expectations that are offered by UPS and the US Postal Service should be considered more like "hopeful guesses." It would be prudent to order as soon as possible, rather than waiting until the last moment.
Click the picture for a larger version of this calendar
We Do Our Part.
We ship most orders from our New Jersey (US east coast) location by the US Postal Service or UPS Ground, both of which would normally have 1-5 day delivery time-frames to most of the Continental USA. >95% of our orders are shipped out on the same day that they were ordered - we've become kind of famous for our almost freakishly fast order fulfillment. But once your order is out of our hands, the level of urgency put into its delivery is also out of our hands.
As much as I hate doing it, I feel obligated to recommend that you pay for expedited shipping as we get closer to the holidays.
I don't like advising you to spend more money for expedited shipping. That "extra" money doesn't go to me, it goes to the shipping companies. It almost feels like rewarding them for their failures to meet their normal service levels. But with today's high volumes handled by delivery services, I cannot confidently tell you that the "normal" shipping will meet its stated deadline. So if it is important to you to get your stuff quickly, you might have to pony up for the expedited shipping. I'm sorry, but I hope you appreciate my frankness.
In your shopping cart, USPS Express Mail, UPS Next Day, Second Day, and Three Day services are available at additional cost. Our shopping cart pulls real-time rates for you to select from, for these optional services, directly from our discounted UPS and USPS rate tables. So you can choose them in the cart to ensure quick(er) shipment. It also should provide a reasonably good estimate of when the package will arrive.
A couple final notes
- Weekend orders will be shipped the following Monday. Note that this means that orders that are placed after 3:30PM on Friday the 15th, or on the 16th and 17th (Saturday and Sunday,) will be shipped on Monday the 18th.
- As the week of the 10th progresses, you should strongly consider expedited shipment services to reliably arrive by Christmas, especially if you are West of the Mississippi or in AK/HI.
- UPS does not deliver on Christmas Day (Monday) OR Christmas Eve (Sunday). They should be delivering on Saturday the 23rd, but it will probably be the busiest delivery day of the year. Look, we'd really recommend not cutting it that close. Plan ahead!
Happy Holidays!