Shipping and delivery

SPL currently exclusively ships its crystals through DHL and UPS. We use the Express Worldwide service for foreign deliveries and equivalent overnight service for domestic deliveries to ensure the fastest possible delivery. For all EU customers this normally means a next-day delivery, whereas for the US it is typically one or two days. For our customers in Latin America, Africa, the Far East and Australia delivery times are two to four days depending on the precise delivery location.

Of course and you are more than welcome. Just be advised that we will always issue a packing and handling charge on any shipment since we still have to adequately pack the shipment for transport and have to set up the shipment, including preparing any customs paperwork that needs to be provided for import.

Not at present. SPL is fully set up to automatically initiate a shipment through DHL or UPS and provide all the customs paperwork electronically. Even if you were to provide an account number that we could use to ship through e.g. FedEx, the time required to set up the shipment, i.e. fill out the old-fashioned carbon paper style airway bills, is simply too time consuming. Therefore, if you wish to order using an incoterm where the shipping is paid for by the consignee, please provide a valid DHL or UPS account number that we can use to set up the shipment.

Yes, we issue transport insurance on all our shipments and principally do not ship a single crystal without it. If you wish to not pay the shipping insurance charge, please place your order using the appropriate incoterm and beware that 1)  the full risk for damage to your goods transfers to the consignee accordingly and 2) we either need proof of transport insurance from the consignee or we will require full prepayment on shipments that are presumed uninsured.

All orders are normally shipped 2 to 5 weeks ARO, which means after receipt of order. If we cannot meet this delivery deadline we will always be in touch to inform you of the delayed delivery. A general caveat with the expected shipping time is that it is established only after receipt of a formal order. Since it is common for purchasing departments to take some time (one to two weeks) to process an order request, the shipping date may be later than what you anticipated.

We are providing automated tracking updates through DHL and UPS when a shipment is created, picked up and delivered. If you do not receive any automated tracking on the email address that was used to place the order, please check your spamfilters and spambox to make sure that the tracking mesages did not get filtered out unintentionally.

For taxation reasons, the only country for which we allow exceptions to our policy of shipping exclusively through DHL or UPS is Brazil. If you wish us to ship to Brazil through regular airfreight, an additional surcharge of € 120 applies since we have to put together a specialized little wooden crate that will stand the torture of being put on a regular aircraft cargo plate, as well as having to go through a lot of additional paperwork for which we do not have an automated setup. If you would like us to ship to Brazil using this mode of transport, we can only offer a quotation using the EXW incoterm since our transport insurance policy does not cover non-courier shipments.