Delivery, duty and fixings

Delivery

We ship worldwide from our United Kingdom warehouse. Orders are dispatched from Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays.

UK rates

The oversize surcharge applies once per order, not per item, and is shown at checkout before you pay. It covers long shelf boards, full-height uprights and tower units that cannot travel on a standard parcel network.

International rates

Free-over thresholds apply to standard items only. Oversize freight is never free, and it is charged once per order rather than per item.

A word about length, if you are ordering from abroad

Length is the thing that makes international shelving awkward, and it is worth understanding before you order rather than after.

Most international parcel couriers will not take a single item over about 1.2 to 1.5 metres, and almost none will take 2.4 metres. That is why anything 2400mm or longer goes on freight, why it costs what it costs, and why it takes weeks rather than days.

In a lot of cases there is a better answer than paying the oversize freight. A 2400mm run made from two 1200mm boards on a shared upright is usually within standard courier limits, costs a fraction of the freight, arrives in a week instead of two months, and once it is on the wall you cannot tell the difference. If you are outside Europe and looking at a long run, email support@homartuk.com with the wall length before you order and we will tell you whether it can be split. We would rather sell you the cheaper configuration than the dearer one and have you resent the shipping bill.

International delivery is kerbside. Somebody needs to be there to receive a pallet and a way to get it inside.

Import duty and local tax

Orders shipped outside the United Kingdom do not include import duty or local sales tax. What you pay us covers the goods and the carriage only. Your customs authority sets the charge, the carrier or a broker collects it before delivery, and there is usually a handling fee on top. You are the importer of record, and if a shipment is refused or abandoned over unpaid charges it comes back to us at our cost — we refund the goods but not the carriage either way.

Fixings and your wall — please read

This is the paragraph that decides whether your shelf stays up, and it is the one thing about shelving that does not travel well.

The load ratings on every product page are stated for British wall construction and the fixings we supply are chosen for it: solid brick, dense and aerated block, dot-and-dab plasterboard on masonry, and timber stud at 400 or 600mm centres. Our Load Ratings & Fixings Guide is written around those walls.

• North American timber frame is usually studded at 16 inches (406mm) or 24 inches (610mm) on centre, which is close enough to ours to work, but the plasterboard is a different thickness and the fixings sold locally differ. Check before you drill.
• Concrete, blockwork and hollow clay, common across the Gulf, southern Europe and much of Asia, need masonry anchors we do not supply and would not want to specify without seeing the wall.
• Anything above a bed, a desk, a cot or a sofa is worth having a local fitter look at, wherever you are.

A load rating is only as good as the fixing behind it. If you are outside Britain, treat the supplied fixings as a starting point and have a local builder or fitter confirm the right anchor for your wall. We will happily tell you the pull-out load each bracket needs to carry so they can specify it — just ask.

Processing times

Orders placed before 1pm on a working day are normally picked the same day. Orders placed after 1pm, at weekends or on a bank holiday are picked the next working day.

Palletised and kerbside deliveries

Items 2400mm and longer, and heavy racking sets, are sent on a pallet by a dedicated freight carrier. These are kerbside deliveries: the driver will bring the pallet to the nearest accessible hard standing at your address but cannot carry goods indoors, upstairs or through a property. Please make sure someone is available to take the goods in. In the United Kingdom the carrier will contact you to agree a delivery day and will normally give a time window on the morning. Internationally, the local delivery agent contacts you once the shipment has cleared customs.

Tracking

You'll get a dispatch email with tracking as soon as your order leaves us. International freight is tracked to the destination port and then by the local agent. If it hasn't arrived within the estimated window, email support@homartuk.com with your order number and we'll chase the carrier.

Areas we can't reach at the standard rate

Some Scottish Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Scilly Isles and Channel Islands postcodes fall outside our standard network, particularly for oversize goods. If your postcode is affected we'll contact you before dispatch with the additional cost, and you're free to cancel for a full refund at that point. The same applies to any international address a freight carrier cannot reach.

Damage in transit

Please check the goods on arrival. If a pallet or parcel is visibly damaged, note it when signing and photograph it — on international freight, signing for it as damaged is the difference between a paid claim and a rejected one. Report any damage to us within 48 hours of delivery and we'll replace the damaged parts or the whole item at no cost to you. Reporting later doesn't remove your statutory rights, but photographs taken on the day make the claim far quicker.

Missing or incomplete orders

Shelving sets sometimes ship in more than one box and boxes occasionally travel separately. If part of your order is missing, wait one further working day, then contact us and we'll trace or reship it. On an international order we will normally send the missing part by courier rather than wait for the original to surface.

Homart Shelfs is a trading name of HOMART LIMITED, company number 15257354, 30 Uphall Road, Ilford, England, IG1 2JF, United Kingdom. support@homartuk.com