The Swordsmen! Shopping Help

The Swordsmen! Shopping Help

PayPal | Check/MO | International | Shipping US IntNat | Packaging
Back to Main Shopping page.

Ordering via the shopping cart:

Fill in "Quantity" in the cart and press "Add to Cart" using any "add" button on the same page.

At the end of the process just pick the payment method you want to use - PayPal (credit card or direct cash payment) or Mail a Check / Money Order / PayPal via Money Request option.

In most cases you'll get an email confirmation of your order from the cart. We will write to you and ask you to send your check/money order. There is more info about this and PayPal little further down on this page.

And what is PayPal? A cool online service that let's you send and receive money via email. All you need is a credit card or a bank account.
Not a PayPal Member yet? No Matter! You get the chance to sign up when you place your order by "PayPal" using our cart. You make $5.00 for signing up and so do we! (PayPal is discontinuing this for individuals & some others.)

PayPal options via the cart

1st PayPal option via the cart - the "Credit card or direct cash payment"
you will go to PayPal after all the info is filled in. You will NOT get email from the cart and neither will we.

When you complete your order at PayPal this way - pay for the item - then we will be told about your order and payment.
We will write to you with thanks and ask you about shipping and such.

(Note: If you are NOT in the United States, please do not use this first PayPal option (the "credit card or direct cash payment w/PayPal" option.) You can use the 2nd option - the "PayPal via money request" - though. See the discussion on shipping below for Important tips on why paying first internationally w/PayPal is bad.)

If you get to PayPal this way and do not pay, it is the sort of the same as if you never ordered in the first place. PayPal will not tell us about your visit and will have no record of it.
But our shopping cart will have a record of your unfinished (you were sent to PayPal) order and we will probably write to you about this, when we see this order. But since we won't get email about it, we may never see it.

2nd PayPal option - the "PayPal via money request"
you will not go to PayPal. Instead, the cart will send you and us email about your order.

We will see that you wish to use PayPal and we will write to you about your order, shipping issues (if any - see below) and so on.

When all is clear between us, we will send you a money request from PayPal.
You may then use the link in this email to go to PayPal and send the money to us through them.

Picking "Money Order" or "Mail a Check."

Fill out the cart info. Print the "Payment Options" shopping cart page. Then select mail or money order & press "Continue."

We will get the order via email. And you will get our mailing address on the "Payment Options" page and by confirmation email.

We still ask you to print out a copy of the "Payment Options" page & mail it with your check - just so we don't get confused!

And here is the address again, just in case.

Mail your check or money order
(made out to The Swordsmen) to:

Sandy Wood
The Swordsmen T-Shirts
7448 N. Damen, 2N.
Chicago, IL 60645

We will wait until your check clears before we ship. This could mean a few weeks will pass before we know this if we are out of state. Use PayPal if you are in a hurry.

We are sorry to make you wait but we have been burned before. Should your check bounce, we will also require you to pay us our bank's bounce fees and our own "we can't afford all this" fee. We will let you know the amounts and wait for your fees to arrive and clear before we ship.

(Deadbeats! You are on our list. We won't ship to you again until you pay us for what you have already gotten. You know who you are.)

For International Orders: Fill out the form, print the "Payment Options" page & and hold onto it. After you get mail from us and we figure out the shipping costs, then you may be asked to mail a copy of the form to us, along with your check or money order, in US funds, to the address above.

Or we'll send you a money request from PayPal, if that's your payment choice. See the discussions on PayPal ordering (above) and on shipping, below.

Or write to us. orders@theswordsmen.com Between us, we'll figure it out.

Shipping Info:
Within the United States: currently shipping cost is included. We will ship your order when your payment has been processed.
We ship shirts using U.S. Post Office Priority Mail, mainly. For sending just one postcard set, we will most likely use the regular mail.

For coloring books, we cannot use the priority mail envelopes; the coloring books are too big. So we will send them regular mail as well. Poster tubes go regular mail too.

If you paid by check: We will wait until your check clears before we ship. This could mean a few weeks will pass before we know this if we are out of state. Use PayPal if you are in a hurry.

We are sorry to make you wait but we have been burned before. Should your check bounce, we will also require you to pay us our bank's bounce fees and our own "we can't afford all this" fee. We will let you know the amounts and wait for your fees to arrive and clear before we ship.

(Deadbeats! You are on our list. We won't ship to you again until you pay us for what you have already gotten. You know who you are.)

Questions? Need something special? Write to us. orders@theswordsmen.com Between us, we'll figure it out.

International Shipping and PayPal Info

Don't live in the United States?
Shipping internationally is not cheap. And there are (potentially) costly complications for PayPal users. Read on.

An estimate of what it costs to ship to Canada or elsewhere is added to the cart, on a graduated basis. All prices here and in the cart are in US Dollars. We have to pay in US dollars to ship and so will you.

These are estimates as we cannot add every possible /product /quantity /weight /container /fast-or-slow delivery method /country cost of shipping to the cart. Think about it.

So, we have added a "baseline" - estimated - price to the cart for Canada and another "baseline estimate" for any other non-US, non-Canadian International orders. Did we say estimated yet? These are estimated shipping costs, not set in concrete yet!

Once we know where you are, when you need it, what you ordered, how much it weighs, and so on, then we can go to the post office or UPS or FedEx (your choice) and find out what is really required to ship and how much it will really cost.

Then we will send you mail advising you of these costs and you can tell us what you'd like to do.

Canada: it costs $8.00 US to send a one-pound envelope to Canada. That's 2 t-shirts. It varies from there. 3 pounds in a variable-weight envelope costs $14.00. That's 2.5 t-shirts.

So the cart shipping costs for Canada start at $8.00 US for two ITEMS (it is not distinguishing between shirts and postcards) and then it adds another $8.00 US for the next two items. Then it adds $7.00 US for the next 2 and then $7.00 US for two after that. (We are up to 8 items now.) Beyond this, it adds $3.00 US for every item.

In real life, this cost will be wrong. Why? Well, we would not send 4 tshirts in two different envelopes - we'd use a box. Postcards and coloring books weigh far, far less than tshirts and we can get more of them into a package, so the cost should be less. Single-item or "in bulk," shipping is really calculated on the weight being shipped, not the number of items being sent.
Once we know where you are, when you need it, what you ordered, how much it weighs, and so on, we can go to the post office or UPS or FedEx (your choice) and find out what is really required to ship and how much it will really cost.
Then we will send you mail advising you of the real costs and you can tell us what you'd like to do.

Other, non-Canadian, International orders: this is a tough one.
There are a zillion countries with a gazillion restrictions on importing and an incredible range of costs.
So, we have picked one price to use as the "baseline, estimated" shipping cost. As with the Canadian example, this price goes up based on number of items, not weight!

The cart shipping costs for non-Canadian International start at $15.65 US for two ITEMS (it is not distinguishing between shirts and postcards) and then it adds another $15.65 US for the next two items thereafter, up to 8 items. Beyond these 8, it adds $8.00 US for every item.

In real life, this cost will be wrong. Why? Well, we would not send 4 tshirts in two different envelopes - we'd use a box. Postcards and coloring books weigh far, far less than tshirts and we can get more of them into a package, so the cost should be less. Single-item or "in bulk," shipping is really calculated on the weight being shipped, not the number of items being sent.
Once we know where you are, when you need it, what you ordered, how much it weighs, and so on, we can go to the post office or UPS or FedEx (your choice) and find out what is really required to ship and how much it will really cost.
Then we will send you mail advising you of the real costs and you can tell us what you'd like to do.

How did we arrive at these prices? And what has all this got to do with PayPal?
Our cart does not hook into UPS, FedEx or the US Post Office directly. And we tend to use the US Postal Service's Priority Mail. So we went to the US Postal Service website and clicked on "Postage Rates and Fees"-->"Calculate International Postage" and looked up what it costs to send a two-pound envelope to Canada or Indonesia. We based all our "guess-timates" on these results.
Far from accurate but at least it is somewhere to start.

PayPal payments and shipping: recently PayPal began allowing non-US residents to use their service. Great! But if you pay us for an item before we know what the real shipping cost is (or if we can even ship tp your country at all!) then what you paid will definitely be the wrong amount.

It may be too much! (most likely) or it may be too little. What if we are not allowed to ship to you? You have sent us money for no good reason. We'll send it back but PayPal may charge you for some reason.

What if you live in a country to which we are prohibited from sending money? How could you get a refund of this shipping over-payment? You couldn't.

What if you paid and it was not enough? Now you have to send more money (and maybe PayPal charges you for converting to US funds(?) so you would pay them twice!)

The way out of these dilemmas? Don't pay us until you know the full cost!

You can pick the money order or mail a check or "PayPal via money request" options in the cart.
Just don't pick the PayPal option that sends you to Paypal right that minute because you'll be asked to pay right that minute or your order will be cancelled by PayPal. We will not know about it at all until we check the cart, something we do not do everyday.

What if you have already paid for your order, including the estimated cost of the international shipping costs, with PayPal - then what?

If we find that the real shipping costs will be more than what you have already paid, we will ask you to make up the difference before we ship.

But what happens if you sent us more than shipping will really be?

In that case, we may refund that extra money, depending on how great the difference is and the amount of work involved in the whole shipping process.

For example: the cart says estimated shipping is $20.00 and you have paid this amount.
If it turns out to really cost us $5.00 to ship, there is a difference of $15.00.
We will keep $2.00 for handling (all that running around & filling out of forms) and refund you the remaining $13.00. It would be unfair of us to keep all $15.00.

But if the cart says shipping is $20.00 and you paid this and it turns out to cost us $18.00 to ship, we will not refund this $2.00.
That is a reasonable "handling fee" amount for the multiple trips to the PO or UPS or FedEx and the zillion of forms to fill out to ship out of the US.

And if you live in a country to which we are prohibited from sending money? We should be able to return it to you via PayPal, if you paid that way. Presumably PayPal only operates where money can go back and forth. It may cost you a PayPal fee to get it though.

If you paid some other way and you live somewhere we are not allowed to send money to, then you are Out of Luck. No refund of excess shipping costs will be possible. We could try send you a physical item instead. We will have to work this out on a case-by-case basis.

Avoid all this confusion! Save yourself some money! Do not pay us for international orders until you know the complete and total real costs, including real shipping numbers! We'll look at your order & go to the PO and find out! Then we'll tell you and then you can pay us. Then we'll ship. OK? OK!

Packaging:

We can get two shirts into one US Priority mail envelopes for shipping to US residents. Or we could send a one or two shirts and postcard sets or some other combination this way.

For sending just one postcard set or any poster mailing tubes, we will use a manilla envelope and the regular US mail for US residents.

For coloring books, we cannot use the priority mail envelopes; the coloring books are too big. So we will send them in larger envelopes. We will investigate our shipping cost options (regular mail vs priority - if we are allowed to use Priority w/out using the US PO envelopes) at the PO when we go to send it out. Lots of books will cost more than one. These costs are included for US shipping but will be communicated to you for non-US shipping.

Questions? Need something special? Write to us. orders@theswordsmen.com Between us, we'll figure it out.

Have a question we didn't answer here? Write orders@theswordsmen.com.

Thanks for shopping with us!
Be Bold.

PayPal | Check/MO | International | Shipping US IntNat | Packaging
Back to Main Shopping page.

Top

Site FAQ - Privacy & Credits & Contacts | Site Map