Brands
Age
Capsules/tablets etc.
Categories

Frequently Asked Questions

We really try to use sustainable packaging as much as possible, so all our boxes are lovely brown recycled cardboard. We also use paper tape to seal them instead of plastic tape, which means you can recycle the whole box. Even our competitor named after a river in South America can’t claim that as they use glass fibre reinforced tape.

Most of our packing material we use is recycled from what suppliers send to us. But we do buy in some recycled paper to fill up the void in boxes, and some bubble-wrap. Sorry, but when sending fragile products, there’s not really any substitute for bubble-wrap. We’ve tried a few, and problems include heavier weight & bulk (which increases postage cost and uses more fossil fuel), opacity (it’s helpful to see roughly what is in the package) and it can be a fiddle to pack. But if it is being reused, bubble-wrap is not “single-use”, so that’s something.

We do not recycle anything that makes a mess when it arrives with you, like shredded paper/cardboard, or polystyrene chips. We are really keen to get the balance right between the least packaging we can get away with, whilst aiming for the parcel to arrive with you looking smart, and most importantly, intact!

Do let us know how happy you are with your parcel on our feedback form!

Please visit our returns page. If we have goofed up then the cost of returning is on us, but if you have changed your mind, we think it’s not really fair for us to pay return postage. But you can check out the formal terms and conditions here.

We do not sell anything that needs to be refrigerated in transit, but we stock some items that the manufacturer has advised should be stored in a refrigerator. 

Room temperature for a few days is not going to hurt these products, or affect the best before date, but don’t leave them in the sun, on a windowsill, or near a heat source. We will try to highlight which products need refrigerating with a sticker.

Often you can, on advice from a qualified healthcare practitioner.

Product labels will normally state that you should not exceed the recommended dose. In some cases, there may be a clinical reason for not exceeding the recommended dose; but the reality is that it must be placed there by UK law and there is often no clinical reason whatsoever. The MHRA, which is the UK’s healthcare regulator even discourages wording such as “or as directed by your healthcare professional” on the dosing instructions.

We try REALLY hard to choose products that will only attract positive reviews. In most cases, we have tried them ourselves, or have first-hand feedback from someone who has. We don’t always agree amongst ourselves, and you may see the odd review from staff which is bleugh negative. But on the rare occasions we discover something isn’t liked, we want to know, and will do something about it, like finding an alternative, or simply delisting.

However, we do reserve the right to moderate or delete reviews;  and obvious spam or abuse is deleted. But we wouldn’t delete a review just because it is negative. When we edit reviews. we will make that clear and state why we have done so. Reasons could include inappropriate disclosure of personal information, excessive or inappropriate claims about products or health conditions, anything we believe may be problematic for legal or regulatory reasons, promoting other sites or external web links, or related to something other than the quality of the product.

There will be grey areas, such as when reviews refer to previous formulations. Sometimes leaving them up there tells a story that is useful, and on other occasions, they could be misleading if left up. We will try to balance these issues, and generally won’t delete unless there is clear potential to be misleading.

As far as we know the reviews are all real! We don’t currently stop people from leaving a review just because they haven’t bought the product from us, but you can tell from the review whether the system recognises a verified owner that has logged in before reviewing it.

We don’t allow reviews on restricted products only available on the recommendation of a practitioner. This is because the suitability of the product for a particular situation is the responsibility of the practitioner, and the product review may be out of the context of a wider set of recommendations. We could simply allow comments that didn’t refer to its efficacy, but we feel our moderator would have to edit too much out, and the star rating might then not match the text.

We send out review request, usually 30 days after your purchase, offering wonderful prizes to our lovely reviewers. We currently give two prizes each month: 

  1. To the person who in our judgement has made the most in-depth review. This is for someone who has taken the time to write about their experience in a way that is helpful for other customers.
  2. To the person who has written the most reviews in a month.

Neither of these prizes are anything to do with the positivity or negativity in their reviews. Although it makes us sad when a bad review comes in, we think it’s important to put it up there so future purchasers can have a balanced view, and we may reply to show how seriously we take customer satisfaction.

When our lovely customers write truthful things about their experiences with a product, sometimes they are deemed health claims. For example, “This tastes nice” is not a health claim, but “My eczema cleared up when I took this” would be. It may be true, but if it is published on our web site, and if it is not in the EU register of approved health claims, we can get into trouble. So we have to remove the offending part. Crazy but true! We didn’t write the rules but we do try to follow them.

We aim to be competitive, but we can’t always be the cheapest for everything. It’s tough being a smaller retailer. We don’t have the clout with suppliers to demand huge promotional discounts like some of our larger competitors. So sometimes we won’t match their promotions. 

We also have to factor in the cost of postage. Again, as a smaller retailer, our postage costs are higher than others, especially where it comes to heavier items and our low or free shipping cost doesn’t come close to covering our actual cost.

VAT is removed at checkout if you are ordering from a country where we can do that! 😀

Sometimes orders fail because of a mis-spelling, wrong card details, address, or just a bad day at the card processor. Often the system tells you what went wrong and you can try again. But give us a call if you are not sure. Click here to find out how to get back to your order if you can’t find it.

Good question! It’s so that you get the right postage, tax or currency options for your country.

Short answer is no. Why not?

  • Subscriptions encourage smaller more frequent purchases. There’s the cost of postage which people expect to be included in the price and makes it harder to offer an incentive to subscribe; but mostly it is bad for the environment to send parcels frequently. It costs the earth in packaging and fuel for transport.
  • Frequency of supply is very tricky because while some products have 30-days’ supply, many do not because of pack size and some people need more or less a day. A monthly subscription would be pretty useless in most cases. Even 30-day subscriptions are problematic because the day will drift away from the day in the month you started it which for some would be their payday.
  • Managing inventory is really tricky when we make a commitment to you to send your products reliably every time and our supplier lets us down, which happens depressingly frequently since global supply chains have been disrupted.

Instead of subscriptions, where we can, we are increasingly offering multi-buy discounts. And if you would like to spread the cost over three months, then you can do that with PayPal. This has the same financial bonus as a subscription, but we save on shipping!

Shopping Basket
Scroll to Top