Shipping policy

Every order is packed by hand and dispatched from our warehouse in China. There is no overseas warehouse in the chain and nothing ships from a second location.

We dispatch within 48 hours of your order. That is the whole of the promise: no cut-off time to catch, no business-day arithmetic, and the same forty-eight hours whatever time of day you ordered and wherever you are reading this from. Your tracking number is emailed to you when the label is created, before the carrier has scanned it.

If something you ordered is not in stock we will tell you within those 48 hours and give you the choice of waiting, splitting the shipment, or cancelling that line.

We do not publish a delivery estimate, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. Once a parcel leaves us it is carried by an international carrier and cleared by customs in your country. Neither is under our control, and a delivery date quoted by a shop is a date the shop cannot guarantee — so we do not quote one.

What we give you instead is the tracking number, from the moment the label exists. It shows every scan between our warehouse and your door, so you can see exactly where the parcel is rather than relying on our guess about when it will arrive.

Customs is the one part of the journey that can add time without warning. A parcel held for inspection is not lost, and the tracking will normally say so.

Standard — CAD 9.50$ flat, and complimentary on orders over CAD 79.00$. There is no minimum order.

Express — CAD 19.00$. Express buys a priority service from the carrier, which moves the parcel up the queue once it is handed over. It does not change the 48 hours, which is the same either way, and it cannot move a parcel through customs faster.

Shipping is calculated at checkout and shown before you pay. Nothing is added after you press pay.

Duties, import taxes and customs handling charges are the recipient's responsibility and are not collected by us — the carrier will ask you for them before delivery. A parcel refused for that reason comes back to us and is refunded less the outbound shipping.

Tea is a food product, and a few countries restrict the import of unprocessed leaf or of foodstuffs generally. If we know a destination will not accept a parcel we will say so before you pay rather than after. If a parcel is nonetheless seized or destroyed by customs, we refund the product cost in full.

Tea travels in a sealed foil pouch inside a tin or a box, and the outer parcel is plain with no indication of its contents. Bracelets travel in the box they are listed in, padded so the strand cannot move. We use paper tape and paper padding, no plastic void fill, and every part of the outer packaging is recyclable.

A gift order can be sent straight to the recipient with the price removed. Say so in the order notes and we will leave the invoice out of the parcel and email it to you instead.

If tracking has not moved for 10 business days, or shows delivered when nothing arrived, tell us at support@northstarcart.com. We open a claim with the carrier and either reship or refund — your choice — and we do not make you wait for the carrier's answer before we act.

If a parcel arrives damaged, photograph the box and the contents before you unpack it fully and email us the same day. That is what the carrier's claim needs, and it is the difference between a claim that is paid and one that is refused. We will replace the item or refund it either way.

Returns, exchanges and refunds are covered in full by the refund & returns policy — the thirty-day window, what can and cannot come back, who pays the return postage, and how long the money takes. The short version: thirty days, no restocking fee, and we pay the postage when the fault is ours.

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club and China UnionPay — credit and debit cards, in the currency shown at checkout. Every payment is processed by our payment provider, a PCI-DSS compliant payment institution, as a 3-D Secure 2 authenticated card-not-present transaction.

3-D Secure 2 means your bank may ask you to confirm the payment — usually a code in your banking app, a text message, or a fingerprint. This is a security feature of the card scheme, not something we control, and it protects you against fraudulent use of your card.

We never see or store your card number. The card details you type go straight from your browser to the payment provider over TLS, and are never held on our servers. Our database records only the card brand, the last four digits and the provider's transaction identifier, so that we can reconcile an order or issue a refund.

All prices are in CAD and include HST (13%) where applicable, calculated at checkout before you pay. We do not store your card for future purchases and there is no one-click re-order.

Every card payment on this site is screened in real time for fraud risk before authorisation. If a transaction is flagged we may contact you to confirm the order before shipping. A declined payment means your card was not charged — an authorisation that is later reversed will show a pending amount on your statement which your bank releases on its own schedule.