How We Ship

Saurian Enterprises offers the best live arrival guarantee in the business, bar none. Read through the following text for the details, but with very rare exceptions, if we ship it, its guaranteed to arrive alive and healthy! We have very few issues with this process, it is a very safe and reliable method of getting animals to you.

All shipments are guaranteed to arrive alive and healthy. Carrier errors are my responsibility! If your package arrives late, or is misrouted due to an error by Fed Ex, my live arrival guarantee still applies. Many vendors today do not guarantee live arrival if there are any errors on the part of the shipper, or if various temperatures occur through out the shipment process. Personally I do not understand why anyone would buy animals when the shipper is offering such a narrow guarantee of live arrival. Here at Saurian we guarantee everything we ship to arrive alive, with very few exceptions.

However there are certain responsibilities which are yours.

The first is being available for delivery of your shipment. I do not guarantee the live arrival of your animals if there is no one available to receive them on the agreed upon day, at the agreed upon address, and the package is left at the door, or taken back to the station for delivery later. To qualify for the live arrival guarantee, you need to email or call me within a half hour of the time that Fed Ex shows as the delivery time of your package. If you are concerned that you might not be able to be there for the shipper, or that they may leave the box on your door step without ringing your doorbell, make arrangements to pick the package up at the Fed Ex Office or Fed Ex counter location nearest you, or have it delivered to a Mailboxes Etc. or another similar business.

The second responsibility is to alert us if your order does not arrive in a timely fashion. Frogs and lizards are sent "Priority Overnight" and should arrive to your address by 10:30 AM the day following shipment. In the event that there is a delay, you need to contact us right away, so we will be able to contact Fed Ex and find out what went wrong. In some cases packages are delayed due to weather conditions in one of the hub cities, and if no one "lights a fire" under the folks at Fed Ex, your package could take an extra day or two to reach you. In these cases of delay, the package sometimes arrves in your city the next day, too late to go out for delivery. In these cases it is your responsibility to go and collect the package that day, as soon as possible. Under these circumstances, we still honor our live arrival guarantee, as long as you have made every possible effort to get the package when it is available for you to do so. Unfortunately Fed Ex does not provide a money back guarantee for shipping, even in these situations. Replacement orders will still be charged shipping.

A third responsibility, which might seem obvious, is to provide us with the correct address! I cannot guarantee live arrival when animals are sent to the wrong address, due to the customer entering the wrong address in the "deliver to" field of the order process.

Dead animals should be frozen, photographed or both, for possible return or proof. Be aware that occasionally frogs will be chilled in shipment, and they can appear dead for hours. Always wait for an odor, or at least twenty four hours before calling the watch on an apparently dead dart frog. Frogs which have been chilled like this are sometimes prone to health problems in the following couple of months, so let me know if some thing like this happens to your frogs, even if they seem to be fine. Then if it seems they don't do well I can replace them.

I offer no specific guarantee on my animals after they arrive , other than to be apparently healthy upon arrival. Many things can happen to these living creatures, and it is difficult to fairly assess who is at fault when an animal fails to thrive. I will most certainly consider replacing animals, which fail to thrive, if you will address the problem immediately. After three to five days, you should have a sense of how the animals are doing. If there seems to be a problem, notify me so we can discuss possible causes for the problem, and once satisfied that you are doing every thing right, in most cases I will replace the animal if it dies. It is imperative that you contact me, and notify me that you are concerned about the progress of the animal, I would like to be able to help you with any husbandry issues, and make sure there is not an easily corrected problem. The charges for shipping of replacement animals is your responsibility, and at my discretion I may issue you a refund instead of sending out another animal. Charges for the shipment of replacement animals may be higher than your initial charge for shipment, as I build the price of my boxes and such into the cost of my animals.

Payment forms accepted include Master card and Visa, Money orders or bank checks, and personal checks, with time allowed for it them toclear. This may take two weeks. Paypal is also accepted. Before sending money, please email for availability confirmation. Also include all the information on your order in the envelope, if you haven't emailed it. All orders must be prepaid before shipment.

Shipping is generally done through Fed Ex, Priority Overnight. The charge for this is forty dollars, which includes your box fee. In some cases there will be extra charges for winter packing and the over size box fee. For delivery I will need an address at which there will be someone available to receive the package all day. If this is a problem, consider checking out a Fed Ex Office, or a similar type location. I go to great lengths to make sure my animals arrive in the best possible condition, and very rarely have a problem getting the animals to you safely and with a minimum of stress. To accomplish this, we use a variety of techniques perfected over 15 years of shipping frogs, including double boxing, heat packs, gel packs and more, as conditions warrant. However, as discussed below, the most important part of this in many cases is simply waiting for the right night to ship during colder months....so please be patient!

Shipment in less than ideal conditions may require some patience! In order to assure the safety of animals shipped overnight, during the winter I will only ship if the night time temperatures at both ends are expected to be around the low to mid thirties, or higher. I will make exceptions to this as I can, taking into consideration the animal being shipped, and your location, time of year, (the holiday season, for instance has such heavy volume of shipping that shipments are a bad idea too close to certain dates).

Summer time can be a problem as well, but in most cases we can still get frogs to you, even in fairly extreme temps, but will require you to go to a Fed Ex Kinkos, or other Fed Ex station, to pick up your package.

We ship animal orders as soon as possible. When shipping overnight, I can only ship Monday through Thursday. Generally we try to get all animal orders shipped the Monday or Wednesday after your order is placed. If possible we try to ship on these two days only, however when weather is making shipping difficult, we ship whenever possible. When you place your order, the date of shipment will be discussed, and we will set a date that is mutually acceptable, if possible. If the weather doesn't allow for definite planning, then the order will be set up for shipment at the earliest possible date.

Thanks for your business, and let me know how I can help you enjoy these incredible creatures more!

Patrick Nabors