Have you taken a look around the website and seen a few products you liked? Thought to yourself “hey, that product looks nice, but how are they going to ship it”? It’s a good question. I mean our main product is glass. How does it make it anywhere without breaking?

Even the word glass is synonymous with glass.

Well, there is a few ways that we ship product to make sure nothing breaks. Yes, we know that this is not possible 100% of the time, but we do try to mitigate it the best we can. So, we’ll go over what happens if you do come across the event that something breaks.

Now let’s get into it.

1^st Method:

The first method isn’t really shipping, but I wanted to include it in there since it isn’t fully advertised on the website yet. That option is “Customer Pickup”. That’s right! You can avoid those high-cost shipping charges, that freight and shipping companies like to keep increasing, by picking up the order yourself.

We don’t have any hidden pickup charge or anything. We are required to charge tax, but if you have a resale number, we can get a form filled out to waive the tax. We love being able to interact with you face to face.

We love to learn more about your products.

Hear how business is going.

Address any concerns or questions you have.

The other great part is that you can take a look at the sample room and see if there is anything new you want to add to your lineup.

The only thing that we ask is that if you’re placing an order to pick up at our warehouse, to place that order at least 24 hours in advance. This way the warehouse doesn’t have to stop mid-pulling or packing someone else’s order. That and they can have your order ready to go if you’re in a rush.

2^nd Method:

This is when the fun starts. Small pack, parcel, or whatever you want to call it. This method is when your product is shipped through UPS or FedEx and they deliver to your home or business on a smaller box truck.

But how does it make it there without breaking?

Well, the warehouse takes the time to pack your order into a larger shipping box with packing material. At the end of every day UPS and FedEx swing by to grab everything and the product starts the journey.

The packing material we found that most protected the glass bottles and jars, without adding on additional excessive costs was peanuts.

No. Not Styrofoam peanuts, but Biodegradable ones. These are great since they have a little bit of compression to them and also, they are …. Biodegradable. They are made out of starch so they break down easily.

We also tape all the boxes of glass jars and bottles closed. This is so when it is rolling around on a UPS or FedEx truck, those bottles or jars aren’t falling out of the case and increasing the likelihood of breaking. We make sure that each box has an adequate amount of peanuts all the way around the glass. The top, bottom, and sides are all surrounded. We try to keep our boxes under 50 lbs. to not only avoid additional handling charges with UPS and FedEx but we figure it’s a little easier on your end. This way you don’t have to carry around insanely heavy boxes.

Now there are a few things to know when shipping small pack. The shipping price is affected by a few factors. A couple of the big ones are, how far it is going and if it is going to a business or residence. UPS and FedEx do charge extra fees for delivering to a residence and of course, if that package has to go cross country, then it will cost more than going to a state over.

Also, the weight and the size of the product do affect the price as well. So, if you’re ordering some gallon plastic jars that hardly weigh a pound, the issue would be the size of them. Since it does take up a lot of space within their truck, UPS and FedEx will charge based on something they call dimensional weight. Which is based on the size of a box. We would be more than happy to discuss on the phone or by email, about the best cost-saving method to keep these prices down as well. Sometimes a few extra or a few less cases will help.

“Oh, no…… My glass arrived broken”

Keep calm. Carefully open the outside box and assess the damage. Take pictures of the damage and give us a call (800-903-2830) or email (info@burchbottle.com) to talk to a customer service representative to get this corrected.

Trust me, we don’t want this to happen either, so we do try to do whatever we can to make sure it doesn’t happen. Please make sure to inspect your shipment when you get it and let us know of any problems. We do need to know ASAP.

3^rd Method

There are a few other methods after this one, but these three are the main course. Less than truckload or LTL or more commonly known as Freight. This method typically tends to be a safer option than a parcel, but unless you’re ordering a significant amount it will be a little pricier.

So, what is this method?

Instead of packing your order inside of a larger shipping box, they will go onto a 48” x 40” pallet. The warehouse will stack this straight up the best they can based on the variety of product that is being ordered. Then once it’s been fully stacked/pulled it's placed on a stretch wrapper machine and shrink-wrapped.

The shrink wrap helps keep everything in place when it's being moved from terminal to terminal on a tractor-trailer. The pallet tends to bounce around when it's on a truck so the few extra layers of stretch wrap we put on keeps everything from sliding around.

Now, this method is typically geared more towards delivery to a commercial business with a forklift or loading dock. If not freight carriers tend to charge some heavy fees going to a residence that needs a liftgate.

When the driver shows up to deliver your pallet, he will require you or someone to sign a delivery receipt. This is when it gets very, very important. On the delivery receipt, right around where you sign your name it states received in good condition. So basically, once you throw your signature on there, you just said that pallet was delivered with no breakage or anything. Now if you go back and open that pallet a week later and notice damage, there is not much we can do with the carrier.

So, please, please make sure to inspect all the pallets for any type of damage and clearly state that on the delivery receipt. Even if it does not look like much or you are not sure, without anything marked on there it becomes extremely difficult to do anything.

After you marked that damage, you can still accept the pallet. That is typically the better option if its minimum damage and is still safe to move. At this point, please contact our customer service (800-903-2830 or info@burchbottle.com) to notify us of the damage and also send over pictures.

With this, we can go back to the freight carrier and submit a claim and either refund or replace it.

If you have any questions about these three methods, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. Our customer service team can go more in-depth and discuss potential cost-saving methods.