Shipping and delivery

This page explains how a parcel gets from the order to the door, what the packaging looks like, and what happens when something goes wrong on the way. It deliberately does not print a table of delivery times by country, and the reason is in the second section.

When an order leaves

Nothing is dispatched before two things have happened: the prescription has been read and matched to the order, and you have received the written confirmation naming the product, strength, pack size and total. The check normally takes under one working day. Dispatch follows on the same or the next working day after payment has been arranged against that confirmation.

An order placed on a Friday evening therefore moves on the Monday, not over the weekend. An order held because a prescription is unreadable does not move at all until that is resolved — and you are told, rather than left to watch a tracking page that will never update.

Why there is no delivery-time table here

Transit depends on the destination country, the carrier available to it, and customs clearance, and the last of those is not a number anyone can promise honestly. A table claiming “3–5 days worldwide” would be wrong for a large part of the world and would make this page look confident rather than useful. Instead, the delivery window for your address is stated in the written confirmation, before you pay, by which point the destination is known. If the window quoted does not suit you, that is the moment to say so: nothing has been charged.

How parcels are packed

Medicines travel in their original sealed manufacturer packaging, inside an outer carton or padded envelope that carries no product name, no pharmacy branding and no indication of what is inside. The sender details are the practice’s. Packaging is plain for the obvious reason — what you take for an erectile problem, an HIV exposure or a depression is nobody’s business but yours — but a customs declaration is a legal document and is completed truthfully, which means the contents are declared where the destination requires it. We do not mislabel a parcel to improve its chances.

The injectable and topical items in the catalogue have their own storage requirements printed on the carton; they are packed to keep within them in transit, and anything needing more than ordinary handling is flagged in your confirmation.

Tracking

A tracking reference is emailed when the parcel is handed to the carrier. Tracking tells you where the parcel is; it does not change where it is. A reference that has not moved for two or three days usually means the parcel is waiting on customs clearance, which is the one stage no carrier can expedite from outside.

Customs, duties and import rules

Import duty, customs charges, local sales tax and handling fees are set by the authorities of the destination country, are payable by the recipient, and are not included in the price you paid. They are also not refundable by us, because we never receive them.

Beyond charges there is the question of permission. Whether a prescription medicine may be imported for personal use, and in what quantity, differs from one country to the next: some allow a limited personal supply, some require an import authorisation, and some prohibit it entirely for certain classes of medicine. Checking the rule that applies to your address is your responsibility and it is worth doing before you order rather than after a parcel has been detained. The terms of sale set this out as a condition of the order.

If a parcel is detained, you will usually hear from the authority rather than from the carrier, and the notice will say what is needed — often a copy of the prescription, sometimes nothing that can be supplied. We send any document we hold that is asked for. A parcel that is seized or destroyed by a customs authority is not replaced free of charge, because it was not lost in transit: it was stopped by a rule that applied to the destination.

Delays, losses and parcels that arrive damaged

• Running late. Write to us with the tracking reference once the quoted window has passed. Most late parcels are in clearance and arrive without intervention; where a carrier has genuinely lost sight of a parcel, a claim is opened with them and you do not wait on its outcome.
• Lost. A parcel that cannot be traced is replaced or refunded in full once the carrier’s own search period has run — typically two to three weeks after the end of the quoted window, which is the point at which carriers themselves accept a parcel as lost.
• Damaged, unsealed, incomplete or wrong. Do not take anything from it. Photograph the outer packaging and the contents as they arrived, keep everything, and write the same day: it is replaced or refunded in full. The evidence and the deadlines are on returns and refunds, and the safety reasons for not taking a medicine from a compromised pack are on medicine safety.
• Wrong address. An address error we made is ours to fix at our cost. An address supplied incorrectly can only be corrected before dispatch; afterwards the parcel follows the label, and a reshipment is a new order.

Undelivered and returned parcels

Carriers normally attempt delivery once, then hold the parcel at a local depot or collection point for a limited number of days before returning it. A parcel returned to us unopened and still sealed is refunded less the outward and return carriage, because that cost has already been incurred. A medicine that has been in the destination country’s postal system and comes back cannot be put into stock for someone else: that is a pharmacy rule rather than a preference, and it is the same rule that makes a dispensed medicine non-returnable for a change of mind.

Who to write to

Everything on this page goes to [email protected] with the order reference from your confirmation in the subject line. Delivery questions are answered by the same practice that took the order — there is no separate logistics desk to be transferred to, which is slower on a busy day and considerably faster when something has actually gone wrong.