Remote Customer Issues

for custom furniture and accessories from Plesums.com

Planning

Most of the time we are able to make the plans and reach an agreement by email and/or phone. If you are out of town and I need to visit before or after the sale, I charge $2 per one-way mile for my time and travel costs (e.g. if you are 30 miles away, the fee for the "house call" is $60).

I provide a "lifetime guarantee" on my work... but it is my lifetime - as long as I am actively building furniture. I have had practically no claims, so hopefully this is not an issue, but I charge the same price for local sales as for items shipped elsewhere. If you are a remote customer and have an issue, you are responsible for the cost of shipping both ways for any guarantee work.

Sales Tax

We are not required to charge sales tax on any items shipped out of state by common carrier, which may relieve a portion of the pain of shipping costs. If you (or a friend) pick them up in Texas, we must charge Texas sales tax. We do not deliver out-of-state, since that implies that we are doing business in that state, and may complicate the tax situation.

Shipping small items

If we have the necessary packing materials, and the post office is a suitable carrier, we are glad to mail the item to you for the actual postage cost.

If the item is larger than "mailman" delivery, or we don't have suitable packaging on hand, we are glad to deliver the items to the local UPS Store (Mail Boxes Etc) or Fed Ex Office (Kinkos) location, so they can pack and ship at your expense.

Shipping large items

If you want a large item shipped, there seem to be several options.

• Major household moving companies with "padded vans" are oriented to large shipments (one or many rooms full of furniture). Quite a few years ago it cost about $1,000 to ship a few items to Texas from my parent's estate in New York, but additional items had little impact on the total cost. You are welcome to check them out, but each time I have checked, shipping one or a few items was prohibitively expensive. If you want to consider this option, feel free to contact your favorite moving company... our zip code is 78759, and it is a residential address (no loading dock).
• The standard price from normal truck lines can be extremely high - then they negotiate lower rates for frequent shippers. For example, one place I occasionally buy "mail order" lumber gets an 83% discount (only pays 17% of the normal rates, but the cost is still high). I don't ship much, so have no hope of getting those kinds of discounts.
• Normal shipping requires custom packing, and the cost is based on volume and weight. Custom packaging is not cheap. Calculating the weight of a piece before it is built would be extremely time consuming. I don't want to do the calculation, and you shouldn't want to pay me to do it, since the difference in shipping cost between a low and high estimate is probably far less than the cost of getting a good estimate. I suggest that you work from a rough estimate, such as those below, from "Craters and Freighters," a company that does packing and then contracts for shipping (at discounted prices).
• One of my customers used a service called "U-Ship." It appears to be a clearing house for truckers who have space, matched with your requirements - when you are ready to ship, list the item and services required, and the truckers will bid. Great for all sorts of unusual items - something from me would likely be shipped as household furniture (but only one piece, not a room full, mixed with boxes of books and clothes) or antiques (since antiques often ship as a single piece). Specify the services you need such as blanket wrapping, padded van, and inside delivery. The customer paid a little more for a trucker with excellent ratings, and our experience was great!
• I suggest customers use local moving companies for items too big for me to deliver. They often will give a price "per piece" or "per hour" for pick up and "padded" delivery. Minimum cost locally seems to be around $150.

When getting a delivery quote, be sure to specify whether you want

• terminal delivery You will be called when it arrives at the local trucking terminal, and are responsible for picking it up from there. This is the lowest cost trucking option, especially if you have a residential rather than a business address (with a loading dock),
• "tailgate" delivery Truckers consider this "normal" - they will get it to the back of the truck, but you are responsible for getting it off the truck without their help. (A $20 bill will often get some help from the driver). For a heavy item, a lift-gate truck can be specified (for an extra fee, often $75 to $150) to lower it to the ground,
• curbside delivery, sometimes called "unloading assistance" (on the ground on your property, most likely at the garage door, not the curb),
• front door delivery (inside the house, but just inside the door),
• inside delivery where the furniture is placed in the correct room (and perhaps packing materials, if any, are removed), or
• "white glove" delivery where items such as pianos, pool tables, home theaters, etc. that require special handling, may have to be disassembled and reassembled, as well as put in place, and the packing materials removed. Needless to say, this can be the most expensive option.

Shipping companies are glad to give a close estimate for the cost of packing and shipping furniture if you give them the exact size and weight. But with custom furniture, it is hard to know the weight until after the item is built, and even then it is hard to weigh accurately - I don't have a freight scale. Several years ago, one highly regarded firm, Craters and Freighters, offered these examples based on size and weight of previous shipments. These numbers are a couple years old, so prices probably have risen some, and are for somebody else's shipment, but they can give you an idea (be sure to add both the packing and one of the shipping costs from the list):

The toybox I built cost $125 to pack and ship to New York City, but the person doing the packing struggled...when I asked why, he said that if the package were a half inch larger, it would fall into a different category, and the shipping cost would rise over $100. The mysteries of shipping rules can "get" you.

If you want something unusual, shipping may be justified. If you just want a simple item, like a bookcase, someone locally can probably build it for less than my total cost when you include shipping.

In our local area, I am glad to deliver items that are too large for your car, but that fit in our minivan. If you are outside our local area, but the most logical delivery is in our van, I will provide delivery for $1 per mile (one way) for as much as I can load in the minivan. If you are local, but the item is too large for our van (for example, queen size Murphy beds don't fit, and are too heavy for me to handle alone), you are responsible for hiring a mover, or borrowing or renting a suitable vehicle, with sufficient manpower.

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