Delivery Information

Shipping

When buying from us you have the choice of First Class post, Royal Mail parcel service or Parcel Force delivery (depending on the combined weights of your order).

A little or a lot!
We can send up to 30KG by Parcel Force within the UK from just £5.60*.
* Please note Zonal Surchanges apply to some parts of the UK the delivery charges for these are detailed below.

Calculating your shipping cost before ordering
You may choose the shipping method that suits you and your budget at the Checkout before you have to provide any personal information.

While you are still shopping you may see an amount for shipping in the Basket - this is just an estimate. The actual shipping cost is confirmed in the checkout when the shop knows:

a) The combined order weight is
b) Your country/region
c) The shipping method you have chosen.

Please note that we only ship orders after we have received full payment, so if paying by cheque please allow time for your cheque to be banked and cleared.

Typical Delivery Times
We typically dispatch ParcelForce orders by the working day after we receive your payment.

However - due to some pretty unreasonable behaviour over the last few years we are forced to make the following statements:
We cannot and therefore do not 'guarantee' the speed of dispatch or delivery because many factors may occasionally slow things down (such as exceptional demand during Christmas!). We may offer an indication based on the number of orders we have or staff shortages, etc. - These are not a binding promise that we can be beaten with later :-)
We sell pet food - but it is not our responsibility to feed your dog or cat - our responsibility is to provide our service as best we can: We cannot offer an 'emergency service' and will not jump anyone up our packing queue because they have 'just run out of food' It is simply not fair to our other customers. We strongly recommend you should allow for 7 WORKING DAYS (excluding bank holidays) for delivery . You might well receive it in 2 days, but this way you will not get caught out by any unexpected difficulties.

We recognise that people expect and need a fast and reliable service - and we provide it (see testimonials). But we can't work miracles and don't like being shouted at because someone forgot to order their food until they ran out. We think thats fair :-)

Generally, should there be any delays due to stock shortages, public holidays, etc. we will try to notify you by email.

Special Orders:
Please note - products prefixed with 'SO:' (and a block of text explaining that they are not held in stock) are not held in stock :-) We try to make this as clear as possible to avoid disappointment, as they may take 10 days to acquire before we can dispatch them.

Please note that the Parcel Force service is typically 2 to 3 working days from leaving us. They do not pick-up or deliver over weekends. If you live in more remote locations such as the Scottish Highlands & Islands, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight and Northern Ireland delivery may take a little longer.

Royal Mail Postal Delivery:
Please note that Royal Mail delivery is not a next day service.

It is simply paying for the goods to be sent to you from us - it is no guarantee of when the package will be dispatched nor how long Royal Mail may take to deliver it. Only Parcel Force orders have a guaranteed timeframe for delivery. Although we try to ship all orders as fast as possible it is simply impossible to dispatch every Royal Mail order same day, as we can never predict the volume of Parcel Force orders that must be prepared each day.

We attempt to post Royal Mail items as frequently as we can but in practice it is just not possible every day, as each item must be individually weighed at a post office some distance from us. For that reason please do not wait until you are in desperate need before ordering as we cannot guarantee that your order will be posted immediately nor can we promise that the Royal Mail will deliver in the expected timescale (please note: packages are not considered 'lost' by the Post Office until the package is 15 days late!).

Direct Pick-Up & Local Delivery
If you live in the South Hants, West Sussex area, you may pick up your food directly from us, thus avoiding delivery costs. Please note that we only allow this by special arrangement. Stock is not normally available for direct purchase from our office (we are a pack and dispatch warehouse rather than a shop, so it is not possible for customers buy like this). Please call or email us for details on 023 9245 3355.

Other International Orders
We can ship orders almost anywhere in the world up to 1.7kg (3.7lbs) through airmail. Orders must be paid for by Credit Card via the website as we cannot accept foreign cheques. You simply shop and combine the products you want and then proceed to the checkout. If you have too much in the cart you cannot proceed - just adjust the items until you have the correct weight. For more details on Internation Air Mail parcels, see International Air Parcels. If you wish to purchase products from us in larger quantities please contact us via email on orders (at) veggiepets.com for personalised pricing.

Why don’t you offer free delivery?!
The honest answer is that it is not free, it never is but some shops make out that it is. In fact what is really happening is that the cost of delivery is being lost inside the total price of the goods, which actually makes them more expensive.

If we operated the shop like this it would mean that many people would be paying far more than they needed to for their pet food, and in fact would often pay more than if the products and postage were separate.

For example one shop we found was selling 300g bag Denes dog biscuits with 'free postage' - for almost twice the price that we were selling for - see where the 'free' postage was hising? So, if you wanted to buy more than one bag you would be losing money with the other shop.

We also offer some very good deals, so those customers who buy more make savings that can usually offset the cost of shipping or more – effectively making it free.

We deliver all across the UK, and we probably don’t have more than a dozen customers who could actually drive to our warehouse for less the delivery charge, certainly our many customers in Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire couldn’t.

So we decided after looking at the options available to have a pricing system that was transparent and fair where you could properly see where you are spending your money.