How orders ship: cut-off, carriers and tracking

Orders placed before the daily cut-off ship the same day. Orders placed after it go out the next business day. The cut-off is the point at which the day's labels are printed and parcels handed to the carrier; an order that arrives after it is picked and packed first thing the following business day. Weekends and carrier holidays are not business days, so a Friday-evening order ships Monday.

Domestic orders ship from the USA by UPS or USPS, fully tracked. Which carrier a given parcel travels with depends on the destination and the service available for it on the day; both are tracked end to end. Transit time depends on the destination and on the carrier's own network, and for that reason the shipping page does not promise a delivery date. International parcels are also fully tracked, with transit dependent on the destination and customs — see international orders and the importer of record.

Shipping is a flat rate: $15 anywhere in the United States, including Puerto Rico, Guam and the other US territories, and $35 for international orders to any destination we can ship to. The rate is calculated at checkout once a delivery address is entered. There is no per-item shipping and no weight-based surcharge; one vial and ten vials to the same address cost the same to ship.

The tracking number is emailed as soon as the label is created — that is, at dispatch. The email goes to the address used at checkout. If you have the order confirmation but no tracking email yet, the order has not been dispatched: either it was placed after the cut-off, or it is in the queue for the current day. Once the tracking email arrives, the same number is also visible on the track page against your order number and email. We cover the lookup in tracking your order.

Plain outer packaging with no product references on the exterior. Inside, vials are sealed and protected against light and movement. The material is lyophilized and shelf-stable in transit, so there is no ice pack and no cold chain — by design, and for the reasons in does research material need a cold chain?. What to do when it arrives is covered in inspecting a vial on arrival.

Two things shorten the path from checkout to bench. First, the delivery address: a laboratory address with a department, building and room, and a name the mailroom will recognise, avoids the most common cause of a delivered-but-not-received parcel. Second, the account email: confirmations and the tracking email go to the address used at checkout, so an address that is read daily — not a shared inbox nobody watches — means the tracking number is seen the day it is sent. The terms cover the contractual side of delivery; this is the practical side. And because shipping is a flat rate, a laboratory that consolidates a week's needs into one order pays one $15 charge rather than several — see volume pricing tiers explained for how quantity pricing stacks on top of that.

Most questions answer themselves from the sequence above. The ones that do not: a tracking number that has stopped updating for several days, a parcel marked delivered that has not arrived, or a shipment that arrives damaged. For any of those, contact support with the order number and the tracking number and it will be resolved. Every material ships for in-vitro laboratory research only — see research use only.