Customer Service & Shipping Information

Ordering and Customer Service

The best way to place an order is here on our website because all of the needed information can be securely and conveniently transmitted to us at any time, any day, and from any place where you have an internet connection. You can also place orders or ask questions by sending us an email message to: orders@nydpshopping.com. If you send a message, you can expect an answer within 1-3 business days.

Payments and Order Fulfillment

For payment, we accept major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express), or bank wire transfers (for orders of $1,000 or more, allowing for a 2 percent discount), or checks drawn on U.S. banks. If you use your credit card to place an order at our online store, a charge for the merchandise cost and shipping amount will be authorized and the funds are held at that time. However, the charge will not be settled or completed until your order is ready for shipping. We're sorry that we do not accept Paypal at this time, however we plan to make that payment method available to you in the near future.

Please understand that we do not always have every item and color in stock and ready for immediate shipping. Orders are generally shipped within 1 to 5 business days after being received. Sometimes the particular color or item you want must be produced or reordered, and therefore your order will need additional time before it is ready for shipping. If any item(s) on your order will not be available for shipping within 5 business days after you place your order, we will notify you by email and/or phone and ask whether you prefer to: (1) wait until the entire order can be shipped together, or (2) ship what is available at that time and either backorder or cancel any unavailable item(s).

Shipping Costs and Methods

We can ship to virtually any address in the world. Postal service will be used for most orders shipping both inside and outside the U.S.A.

Still, we like to provide our customers with other options if we find other shipping methods that are less expensive. Depending on the size of the freight and/or the destination, using a different carrier such as UPS (United Parcel Service) or other private freight carrier sometimes would be less expensive. In such cases, prior to charging your card and shipping your order, we will contact you to inform you about less expensive shipping methods and to find out your preferences.

Our shopping website is built to calculate shipping costs as accurately as possible, but occasionally the limitations of our software and the complexity of our products (different sizes, weights and densities) may result in errors in the calculations. These errors mostly have to do with a practical inability to safely pack the particular items from your order into a single box of the right size to get the calculated shipping rate. Or sometimes it is due the order being too large for our shopping website to calculate. If such a calculation error happens with your order, we will contact you prior to charging your card to inform you about your options. Sometimes it is possible to make slight variations to your order which would allow a shipping cost similar to what was calculated on our shopping website.

There are other a couple of other options available for receiving your order. You may wish to request express delivery for higher shipping charges. Or you may wish to save money by taking a road trip to Oneonta, New York to pick up your order (prior appointments are required and some additional handling charges may apply).

Prior to ordering, if you would like to know your shipping amount or to request an alternative method of shipping, you are welcome to send us your questions by email at: orders@nydpshopping.com. Please give as much detail as possible about the items and quantities you want to purchase and about the shipping destination. Or you can also give us special instructions or inform us about your shipping preferences while placing your order on our shopping website. Just enter your comments in the shopping cart before clicking "check out" and completing your order. We will respond to your questions and comments before shipping and finalizing your payment.

Flat-Rate Shipping for Porcelain Slip

For our heavier products such as porcelain slip, flat-rate boxes will be used whenever possible to save you money on shipping. To get an accurate shipping quote on our shopping website, it is important to order the correct product. Please pay attention to the names and descriptions of the four different product types of porcelain slip below, which depend on the size of the order and the shipping destination:

For small orders of porcelain slip shipping anywhere inside the U.S.A., there is a minimum purchase requirement of two bags, and the shipping costs are $8 per bag. Two bags can be shipped in a medium flat-rate box and three bags can be shipped in a large flat-rate box. A combination of medium and large flat-rate boxes will be used as needed depending on the total number of bags ordered.

For small orders of porcelain slip shipping outside the U.S.A., because of a lower weight limit, we offer a smaller size bag of porcelain slip. These smaller "export bags" each contain 2.25 liters of porcelain slip, and we can pack two of them in one special postal box. The shipping cost is US$54.98 to Canada, or US$89.98 to other countries. You must order them in multiples of two – either two of the same color or one each of two different colors.

When using flat-rate boxes to ship porcelain slip, it is possible to add a few small items which can be shipped together without increasing the shipping cost (for example, no more than 11 vials of china paint, or 3 bottles of painting medium, or 1 jar of tint or stain). Or if you order an odd number of bags, then there may be additional room in a box for packing even more small items.

Again, please be aware that shipping cost calculations provided on our shopping website may not be accurate in cases where: (1) your combination of items cannot be safely packed together in a flat-rate box, or (2) you do not choose the correct product for the size and destination of your order. In these cases, we will communicate with you about your options and let you decide whether to change your order.

In the Event of Damage During Shipping

We pack your orders carefully, but accidents happen sometimes during shipping. When you receive your order, please make sure to open it and check the contents within a few days. If you find that any items have been damaged in shipping, please notify us immediately by email or phone and we will take steps to correct the problem. Let us know exactly which item(s) is damaged or lost, and if possible take a few photos of the packaging as it appeared when you received it. We will also ask you to hold on to the packaging for a couple of weeks in case any postal authorities or shipping agents wish to inspect it as part of our insurance claim.

Sales Tax

We are required to collect sales tax on orders shipped to addresses in the State of New York, as well as on orders picked up at our New York location. The shopping website will automatically add the sales tax to your order total if you've requested shipping to a New York address. If your business is exempt from paying taxes, you must send us the correct exemption form, completed and signed, in order to claim the exemption. You can find the exemption forms here: form for resale exemption or form for manufacturing exemption. If you want to place an order before sending us the completed form, please inform us in the comments at checkout. If we have received your completed form by the time your order is ready for shipping, then we will remove the calculated sales tax from your order total prior to charging your card for payment. If we already have your completed form on file and the shopping website calculates the sales tax anyway, then please remind us of your tax-exempt status in the comments at checkout and we will remove the charges for sales tax.