How your order travels

An order placed before 2pm ET on a business day is picked, packed and handed to the carrier the same day. Anything placed after the cut-off — or at a weekend, or on a US public holiday — is dispatched the next business day. We do not dispatch on non-business days, and we would rather say that than quote a cut-off we only sometimes hit.

Dispatch means the parcel has physically left with a carrier, not that a label has been bought in advance. If an order contains a line that needs cold packing and the cut-off is close, we will occasionally hold it a few hours so it does not sit in a depot overnight — you will be told if that happens rather than left watching a stationary tracking page.

Domestic parcels move with tracked US carriers, chosen per parcel on transit time and on how long the contents can reasonably spend in the network. We do not use an untracked service for anything, at any order value. The tracking number is emailed the moment the label is created, and the same number is attached to the order record.

You do not need an account to follow any of this. Guest and account orders alike can be looked up at order tracking with the order number and the email address on the order. Order numbers take the shape SER-YYYYMMDD-XXXX.

The catalogue carries 69 lyophilised SKUs alongside a smaller number of liquids that are happier cool. Lyophilised material is shipped dry and sealed, which is exactly what makes it robust: freeze-dried powder in an intact sealed vial tolerates a normal transit far better than most buyers expect. It is packed to protect that seal — rigid inner protection, void fill, and the vial held so it cannot move against the carton.

Cold packs and insulation are added where the route, the season or the specific material calls for them, not as a marketing gesture on every parcel. A cold pack that arrives soft has done its job across the journey and is not a fault. A parcel that arrives warm when it should not have — or one where a cold pack has leaked onto the contents — is worth photographing and sending to us the same day.

• On arrival, unpack promptly. A parcel sitting in a hot vestibule undoes careful packing faster than the journey did.
• Sealed lyophilised vials go somewhere cool and dark and stay sealed until they are needed; once reconstituted with bacteriostatic water they belong in a refrigerator.
• Capsules, tablets, softgels, powders and liquids go somewhere cool and dry, out of direct light, in the sealed container they arrived in.
• Every product page carries its own handling note, and that note beats this general guidance wherever the two differ. All of it is laboratory handling guidance — Seratide cannot advise on human use.

Everything travels in plain, unbranded outer packaging. There is no Seratide branding on the outside, no product name, no molecule name and no shelf name on the carrier label — the label carries the addresses and nothing that describes the contents. Any paperwork identifying what is inside travels inside the box.

This is not something you have to ask for and there is no discreet-packaging upsell, because it is simply how research supply should be shipped. Mixed orders travel together wherever possible; the only reason we split a shipment is to protect a temperature-sensitive line, and each parcel is tracked separately when we do.

Domestic shipping is a single flat rate, shown in the order summary at checkout before you confirm anything. It does not scale with the number of lines, so consolidating into one order costs less than splitting it. Where an international destination can be served, its rate is shown the same way — at the point of ordering, not added afterwards.

We ship to select international destinations where doing so is lawful. On any cross-border order you are the importer of record, and that carries real obligations rather than a checkbox:

• Duties and import taxes are not included in what you pay us. They are assessed by your own customs authority and collected from you, usually by the carrier at delivery.
• Import permissions — any licence, permit, institutional authorisation or registration your jurisdiction requires for research material — are yours to hold before the parcel arrives. We cannot obtain them for you and we cannot advise on them.
• Documentation travels with the parcel: a commercial invoice describing the goods accurately, harmonised tariff information, and the research-use declaration. We do not under-declare value or mislabel contents, and we will not do so on request — that is fraud, and it is also the fastest way to have a parcel destroyed.
• Customs can open a parcel and can hold it while it asks questions. Clearance time sits entirely outside our control and is not counted in any transit estimate.

Some destinations we cannot ship to at all, and we describe that as a category rather than publishing a list that would be out of date within a month. It covers any destination where supply of the specific material is unlawful, where sanctions or export controls apply, where the carrier will not accept the goods, and where local rules mean the parcel would be stopped whatever the paperwork said.

If an order reaches us that cannot be shipped lawfully, we cancel it and refund it in full. We do not send it anyway and let it be seized at the border, and we do not keep the money for a parcel that was always going to be destroyed. If you are unsure whether your destination can be served, ask before you order — it is a five-minute answer.

Carriers return parcels for incomplete addresses, missing suite or lab numbers, and buildings that refuse delivery. Institutional addresses are the common case here: a department name and a room number are worth adding, and a named recipient who is actually on site matters more than the street line. If a parcel comes back to us we contact you, and we re-ship at cost once the address is corrected. Address changes are free before the label is created and impossible afterwards.

Declare it when a domestic parcel has shown no carrier scan for several business days past its expected delivery, or when an international one is well past its window and clearance is not the explanation. Send us the order number and we open a trace with the carrier the same day.

A trace usually resolves within a few business days. If the parcel is confirmed lost, or the carrier cannot account for it, we replace it from the next available lot or refund it in full — your choice. You are not asked to file the claim yourself or to argue with a carrier on our behalf. Note that the replacement carries a different lot code, so verify the new one rather than the one on your original paperwork.

Photograph the outer box as it arrived, the packing inside it, and the affected item with its lot label readable — before unpacking any further. Then send those photographs and your order number within 7 days of delivery. Full detail, including who pays return postage and how the refund is issued, is on the returns page.

Every bottle, tub and vial in the parcel carries a QR that opens the analysis for that exact lot — no app, no account. Scanning it the moment the box is open is the cheapest quality step in the whole chain: it confirms the lot code on the label matches the lot we shipped and that the analysis behind it is the one you expected. You can also type the code at the verification page. If a code does not resolve, stop and contact us before the material is used.

Ancillary hardware — the Lab Supplies & Reconstitution shelf — ships with an incoming lot record rather than a chemical assay, which is the honest document for a syringe or a filter.

Look it up first at order tracking, which needs only the order number and the email on the order and works for guest orders. If that does not answer it, email support@seratide.com or open an order enquiry with the order number in it.