Shipping policy

Everything we do at justfreshroasted.com.au is focused upon our 4 core objectives:-

• Quality,
• Freshness,
• Speed, and
• Value.

All four of these characteristics need to be performing at their absolute peak/top levels with supreme consistency.

If any of these functional areas slip, even by just a fraction, then we know almost immediately our customers may become disappointed and potentially unlikely to return or recommend us.

So maintaining a high performance across all 4 functional areas remains super important to us - in fact, it's the key to running any online retail business as our customers must always be delighted. In the online market you never get a second chance.  

With more than 2,900 brands of coffee being sold in Australia you cannot risk failures.

In articles featured throughout our store, you can read about our unwavering commitment to freshness and our elaborate, extensive processes that underpin quality.

What's not so evident is our track record of speed.

We have been running online premium coffee businesses for 15 years and over that time we have learned a lot about the expectations of our customers when it comes to fresh roasted coffees.

Take for example when you place an order. It's generally going to be pretty close to when you are running out, or about to run out very soon.

Like any essential ritualistic daily need, running out of coffee is dire - don't worry, we really understand the importance.

For those customers that can't remember to order regularly, we have a subscription service available that sends fresh roasted coffees to your door on the schedule you require.

Our business is competing with traditional retailers in that a physical store, or shop, provides you with the ultimate level of convenience - buy now and take it with you immediately.

The only advantages we have is in quality, price and freshness over traditional bricks and mortar retailing.

For our online business to be superior against the retail shops, we have to offer a fresher product, a higher quality product and a competitive price delivered to your door. All this needs to be processed in a quick time frame else we lose the opportunity to delight our customers.

In shipping more than 900,000 parcels over the last 15 years all around Australia, we managed to achieve more than 99.97% of those orders dispatched the same day (business days) when the order was received by 3pm.

With the introduction of different shipping providers, the 3pm cutoff time is becoming more difficult to manage as freight companies may randomly collect parcels from our facility as early as 12pm (midday). Some carriers collect a bit later in the day, but we have no control over the ways in which freight companies collect.

As you can appreciate, the demands of keeping the product fresh (low inventory) versus sending it when an order is received are complex and challenging. Truth is, this is our biggest headache each day as both these objectives of freshness and inventory levels are in constant tension - pulling against each other in opposite directions.

Nobody can predict the future. So it's difficult to think how many of each coffee to roast each day, but after 16 years of doing this daily, we have a decent idea of what volumes for each coffee sell.

We roast around 28 different coffees daily, 5 days a week. We turn over our product extremely fast - this enables us to solve the freshness target as more than 85% of what we roast every morning is sent out that same afternoon. You will never, ever have to worry about freshness with us - shipping over 2 tons of fresh roasted coffee every week means we have significant scale advantages over all our competitors.

For speed, we have a fully integrated computer system that rapidly tracks the roast stock, customer order, picking, packing and dispatch without the need for manual intervention. This means we can typically pick and prepare your parcel in minutes, not hours or days like most retailers - assuming the fresh roasted stock is there - it's all electronic which also contributes to less human errors.

Some of the best online retailers in the world will never be able to process customer orders in under 5 minutes - we are very proud to announce we can, we do and we run that way all day, every day.

Out of Stock

In the rare case we don't have enough roasted coffee to cover an order, that coffee will be automatically scheduled for roasting in the evening or early morning for the following day dispatch day.

To put this into perspective, you must keep in mind that 99.97% of our orders are processed the same day, if the order is received by 3pm on a business day.

We could achieve 100% order fulfillment, but it would negatively impact our freshness target, so these fine lines are being managed on an hourly basis throughout the day.

Our strategy is to place freshness above inventory at all times.

This is something we have done for the last 15 years and it's served us well according to our customer feedback. It's far less efficient and hence more expensive for us to operate this way, but we honestly can't achieve the freshness goal without it.

How we send your parcels

All customer orders are packed in brand new cartons.

We use either Sendle or Australia Post business parcel standard service for all our consignments and in some parts of Australia  we also offer an Express Parcel service.

Most of our customers are in residential delivery areas and many general freight couriers will not handle residential deliveries. There are also restrictions on some services such as Parcel Lockers and PO Boxes that can only be delivered using Australia Post or StarTrack.

General couriers have strong preferences for business-to-business freight services and often slug merchants like us with expensive surcharges for residential freight or futile delivery attempts. Couriers also lack the essential infrastructure for convenient pickups from a futile delivery attempt.

After 16 years and close to 1 million parcels, we know from experience that only Australia Post has the reliability and predictability to deliver across Australia.

Since 2016 we have been offering Couriers Please and Fastway/Aramex deliveries. Whilst these services can be incredibly fast in some areas of Australia, they can also be painfully slow and frustrating in other areas. For couriers, it all comes down to the local agent in your area, if they are good then it works well, if they are lazy then it falls over.

Whilst many of our customers may also have experienced slow transit times with Australia Post during 2020 and 2021 with pandemic lock downs and parcel network congestion, we remind our customers that Australia Post are growing and increasing their capacity volumes at rates that far exceed the courier networks.

Ultimately, we want our customer parcels to arrive fast and this leads to happy customers. Nobody wants parcels to be delayed or problems developing as it upsets our customers and increases our costs as we must engage to help and support our customers.

For this reason, we prefer to recommend the Australia Post parcel network. For free shipping we will send your parcel via AusPost, in many cases it's more expensive than Sendle or the couriers, but the cost of dealing with incidents is far lower.

Authority to Leave

All of our parcels have Signature Required for security.

This means you, or a nominee must provide a signature when the parcel is presented at the time of delivery.

If nobody is present at the time of delivery, your order may be carded which means you will need to collect it from an LPO if it was sent via Australia Post, or arrange re-delivery if it was sent via a courier.

Please kindly note - some couriers may choose to leave your parcel at a local PUP (pick up point) which could be a service station, newsagent or chemist nearby, but it's important to understand that not every location can be serviced by a 3rd party collection point, especially for business or commercial premises where the parcel may not be permitted to be left at a collection point.

Instructions on how to organize this re-delivery or collection will be provided either on an email notification from the parcel shipper or if a card has been left.

Please be aware that the practice of leaving cards for a futile delivery is gradually being phased out - so do not rely upon this feature and always check the email or SMS notifications that are sent to you.

If you collect the parcel from an Australia Post outlet, they may ask you to identify yourself which is likely to involve appropriate ID verification. It's also important to ensure the addressee on the consignment is the same person collecting the parcel as the freight company may refuse to allow a surrogate to collect a parcel.

You are also able to set the Authority to Leave, or to Set as Safe Drop.

From 1 April 2017, Australia Post will be changing their default option from Authority to Leave to Safe Drop.

When a parcel is instructed to leave without signature, please understand that the security of the parcel may be placed at risk.

StarTrack parcels are set for Authority to Leave as we are charge a hefty fee if the delivery attempt is futile.

Sendle allows for a redeliver, but if your parcel can't be delivered within 5 days it will be automatically returned to us.

Tracking Notification

Most customers these days are familiar with the tracking notification emails.

These messages are sent to your registered email address at various stages throughout the transit commencing with the initial notification once the parcel has been collected from our premises (dispatched).

The tracking notifications are issued by freight provider - not us.

Once your order leaves our facility, we also mark your order as Dispatched which will generate an email notification informing you that the parcel is on it's way.

All tracking of your order is performed on the freight provider's systems - not ours.

On the day of delivery, the freight provider will normally send you a notification that the parcel is to be delivered today and another notification indicating the parcel is onboard with a driver. Again, these notifications are sent by the freight service provider, not us.

Transit Times

Please understand, we cannot control or influence the performance of freight companies in relation to their transit time frames.

We also cannot give you delivery time frame indicators over the phone or email as the service is entirely out of our control.

We do our absolute best to lodge your parcel fast.

Every merchant and every parcel in the network experiences an equal level of performance - there are no faster services unless you selected the Express option and in some cases the express may not be much faster.

During holiday periods, all freight slows. This also occurs in the lead up to Xmas from about October through to the week before Xmas as retailers are loading up their inventories and it also affects transit times in January with many staff on holidays.

We recommend you visit the freight provider's website to learn more about transit time frames.

We cannot lodge a Service Request with freight provider regarding a consignment yet to be delivered if it is still within their recommended delivery time frames.

Damage In Transit

Please be aware that parcels sent by Australia Post do not have transit insurance by default.

Parcels sent via Sendle include free transit insurance up to $1500 per consignment.

In the case of an Australian Post consignment, this means if a parcel is lost, stolen or damaged, we are unable to lodge a claim on our freight provider.

Its not our policy, it's the terms of conditions of Australia Post.

Obviously, if Australia Post were happy to accept claims for damage or loss, then we would also offer that to our customers, but the unfortunate reality is that damage is not covered unless insurance has been purchased by the customer before it has been dispatched from our facility.

If you are concerned about the risks associated with freight damage, you must contact us to arrange Transit Insurance prior to the parcel being sent from our facility. Once your order has left our premises, you cannot add insurance.

Insurance is $3.30 (incl.GST) per $100 of transit cover.

IMPORTANT NOTE - Australia Post Express Parcels have no delivery time frame guarantees.

When Australia Post launched the Express Post service, it offered guarantee delivery time frames for many capital city destinations.

Originally, it was a letter and small documents based service that was expanded to parcels.

The key point to understand here is that these guarantees are only available from pre packaged items such as satchels, AusPost branded cartons, etc. bought over the counter at Australia Post retail shops. The delivery time frame guarantees do not apply to merchants using Express Parcels - this is the same policy that affects all Australia Post merchants.

It's a very important distinction as we have encountered customers in rare instances demanding a refund for Express Parcels that did not arrive within expected time frames, e.g. next business day. 

Just to repeat - There is no refund for Express Parcels that fail to arrive within some defined time frame - refunds are not possible to us as merchants as this "guarantee" only applies to over-the-counter AusPost branded products sold in their Australia Post retail shops.