There is something particularly frustrating about not just a delay—but silence.

The kind of silence that leaves you checking, and checking again, wondering if you’ve missed something.

We placed a tea order on the 9th of March. It was packed quickly and sent out without delay. Two parcels began their journey.

One arrived safely on the 13th of March, exactly as it should.

The other—the larger of the two—made it as far as Stanford Le Hope on the 10th of March… and then simply stopped.

What followed was not clarity, but absence.

No notification.
No update.
No message to say something had gone wrong.

Instead, after weeks of chasing and checking the tracking manually, we discovered—quietly, almost as an afterthought—that the status had been changed to “claim in progress”, with a note advising us to contact the sender for more information.

That was the first real indication that the parcel might be lost.

By then, more than six weeks had passed.

In the meantime, the reality here on the ground is impossible to ignore:

Empty storage caddies.
Shelves marked with too many “out of stock” signs.
And customers left disappointed when the teas they came for simply aren’t there.

That is the part that matters most—and the part that hurts.

To say I am more than angry does not even begin to cover it.
I am, quite simply, raging.

A replacement order has already been placed and is now on its way. Unfortunately, it is once again being shipped with UPS, as this supplier does not offer an alternative courier.

Please know this: everything that could be done on our end has been done.

If a tea you love is currently out of stock, we warmly recommend adding it to your wishlist—you will receive an email the moment it returns.

All that remains for now is to wait and to put things right as quickly as we possibly can.

And to say, sincerely—
We are sorry.

Sabine
Hebridean Tea Store Limited