???.....FAQs.....???

General Questions

Internet Ordering   

Pricing/Postage Charges

We have no minimum order value for products.  We've listened to your feedback and can understand that sometimes you need lots of goodies, but sometimes you just need a little top up order!

Our p&p charges are a flat rate of only £3.95 for UK orders and £7.95 for Eire/Europe.

We would advise you to group your smaller orders together to make the most of our flat rate charge.

Do you have a brochure or printed catalogue?

As we stock tens of thousands of products from manufacturers and companies located all over the world, there is no possibility of a printed brochure or catalogue.  This would be totally unmanageable as not only would it be bigger than a telephone directory, it would also be a very expensive overhead that would need to be passed on to the customer. 

We also have new products arriving on a regular basis, plus special offers and sale items, so a printed catalogue would be out of date within a couple of weeks which would make the whole thing pointless. 

We do not sell at trade prices on craft products as we are a retailer, not a distributor.  Where we buy in bulk to achieve a better price break, these prices are immediately passed on to you in our retail prices - for example, glitter peel off stickers which normally retail between 80p to over £1, we sell at 69p - Royal Brush Rub On Transfers which sell at £1.45 to £1.99 we sell at 99p because we have passed our price break on.  We don't think we can get much fairer than that.  

This applies to many other products throughout our on-line shop but it's up to you to balance stock choice, price and customer service factors into making your own buying decision.

We do offer trade prices on Shaker Pegboards as these are manufactured in our own workshop - usual wholesale minimum volumes and spend levels are required.  For further information please contact us.

We frequently run promotions, competitions and special offers - don't miss out - join our mailing list to ensure you always receive news of the latest updates and offers.  

This is an opt-in list - you have to make the request to join as without your direct consent, we do not send any promotional material in any form and your details are never passed to a third party (except for your name and address on your parcel!).

Although we aim to keep our website as up to date as possible, with our continued product developments we always have something new that is waiting to be added. All you need to do is to telephone or contact us us and we will be more than happy to help you.  We will "special order" any item for you where possible if it's not part of our standard stock.

Yes, we do.  For opening hours and directions please visit our Contact Us page for further information.

As we are continually updating our site and adding new products, sometimes pages or products do get moved around.  We have tried to set the site out in the most logical fashion providing as many links throughout the pages to make surfing the site easier.

Occasionally, we may remove a product - our web space is very valuable (and our bandwidth bills very large!) so if we feel that a product is not productive to our business we will cease to stock it.  However, this has the benefit of freeing up space for new products.  Of course, sometimes a supplier will cease supplying certain product lines or a manufacturer may discontinue a product line, in which case any existing stock will be sold off on a "once it's gone it's gone" basis.

Unfortunately this is a service we cannot offer.  As we stock tens of thousands of product lines, it would not be possible to offer samples.  Also, many of our product lines come in sealed packages which we are unable to split.  Also see question regarding returns below. 

Sorry, we cannot split packs.  Where we can buy products and sell them singly, these will be shown as such on the website.  If products are only available as mixed packs, we would rather offer customers the option of buying those packs than not offering the item for sale at all.

Although we aim to ensure that the product images, descriptions and measurements given on the website are as clear as possible, we understand that occasionally you may wish to return a product for a refund or credit towards a future order. 

You can find full information about our returns policy on our Terms & Conditions page by clicking here  and you can also action a returns form which contains instructions for returning goods by emailing (please give your name, postcode, date of receipt of order and order number). 

This is simply a subtle watermark imposed over the image to prevent copyright theft.  We invest a great deal of time and money ensuring that the images you see on our website match the product you would like to purchase.

Many manufacturers and wholesalers provide no (or very bad!) images of their products, so we have to invest in the equipment and technology to provide the best images we can to ensure you are seeing as close to the "real thing" as possible.  

Because of the high quality of our images, these have been copied (i.e. stolen) many times by some of our competitors for use on their own websites.  To ensure that this no longer happens, all products now have our watermark.  

The products that you purchase from Calico Crafts obviously do not have this on the products - this is purely on the images on our website to prevent copyright theft. 

If there is likely to be an unusual delay in getting your order dispatched to you for any reason we will contact you immediately after we become aware of the fact to take your instructions ~ therefore it is essential that you provide us with correct contact details.

We try our best to get your order to you as soon as humanly possible.  Please allow at least 5 working days for dispatch although we do aim to turn orders around sooner than this wherever possible (this excludes weekends, Bank Holidays, seasonal closures etc).  If any item you have ordered is out of stock but due in within a couple of days, we will hold your order until it arrives.

On the day your order is dispatched you will receive a confirmation email.  Although the majority of parcels are delivered quickly, please allow 15 postal days following the date of dispatch before chasing your order unless you have elected to pay extra for a guaranteed service. 

We are bound by Royal Mail regulations in that a parcel is not considered lost until this period of time has passed.   If your parcel has not been delivered after 15 postal days, we  will refund your money in full or resend the goods to you, whichever you would prefer. 

Should we decide to pursue a claim for your lost parcel, we will expect your co-operation in doing so should you be contacted to confirm that you have reported the parcel as lost.   This enables us to operate a goodwill system of not expecting you to wait until our claim is settled before resending your goods or refunding your money, or unlike other companies by expecting you to make the claim yourself (which you can't, because you are not the sender).

If you do not wish to pay for a guaranteed delivery service and are not prepared to wait for 15 days (which is extremely rare in any event), please do not place your order.

Obviously turn around and delivery times are given in good faith and we do try to make sure that you receive your goods in the shortest time possible.  If you require your order by a certain deadline (such as for a project, birthday or special occasion), please allow enough time when ordering or contact us for guaranteed delivery assistance.  Despite our best attempts, we are not psychic and cannot guess if you have a deadline and do not tell us.

GUARANTEED DELIVERY:  Please contact us if you require this service.  This guarantees delivery on the day after your order has been dispatched.  This service does not fall within our UK flat rate postage charge.  

Orders over 2kg can be prohibitive to send by a Royal Mail Special Delivery, but we can also offer a 24 hour or 48 hour Parcel Force guaranteed delivery.

Before chasing your order, please follow these steps:

1. Check with other members of your household that they haven't put the parcel somewhere and not told you (it happens more often than you'd think!).

2. Check with your neighbours to ensure that they haven't taken delivery for you.

3. Check with your local Post Office that they are not holding the parcel for you.

If your parcel will not fit through your letterbox and has been left with a neighbour or returned to your local Post Office/Parcel Force depot for collection/redelivery, a card should be put through your door (although we cannot be held responsible for the omissions of individuals).   It does frequently occur that customers inadvertently discard these with junk mail so do not think that a delivery has been attempted and we do sometimes receive parcels back marked "not called for" because the customer has not checked.

You will receive an "order shipped" email on the day your parcel is sent out.  If you have followed the above steps and your parcel has not arrived after 15 postal days (which commences the day after your order is dispatched) then please contact us and we will do all we can to help you.

We are bound by Royal Mail regulations in that a parcel is not considered lost until 15 postal days have passed.   If your parcel has not been delivered after 15 postal days, we  will refund your money in full or resend the goods to you, whichever you would prefer. 

Should we decide to pursue a claim with Royal Mail for your lost parcel, we will expect your co-operation in doing so should Royal Mail contact you to confirm that you have reported the parcel as lost.   This enables us to operate a goodwill system of not expecting you to wait until our claim is settled before resending your goods or refunding your money, or unlike other companies by expecting you to make the claim yourself!

If you do not wish to pay for a guaranteed delivery service and are not prepared to wait for 15 days (which is extremely rare in any event), please do not place your order.

If you require your order as soon as humanly possible, we can offer a Fast Track Service for a fee of £11.99 - this includes a guaranteed next working day delivery (irregardless of order value or weight) and VAT subject to the terms noted below. The fee of £11.99 is instead of our normal flat rate p&p charge of £3.95, not on top of.  

If you wish to opt for this service, your order will be pulled to the front of the queue, picked and dispatched on the same working day for a guaranteed next working day delivery provided your order is placed before 12 noon.

If you place your order after 12 noon, on a Friday after 12 noon, on a weekend, on a bank holiday or seasonal closure, your fast track order will be queue jumped to our next working day.

This service is available to UK mainland customers only at this time and is subject to stock availability (excludes Europe, Eire, NI, Channel Islands, Highlands etc).  It does not apply to orders placed for sale/clearance items as these orders have to be picked in turn.

If you require this service, please note "FAST TRACK" in the additional information box on check out - your order total will be adjusted when we process your payment.

If any item you have ordered is out of stock but we know we have a delivery due within a day or two, we will hold your order until our delivery  arrives.

You also have an option on check out to click a box to enable automatic back ordering.  

This has several benefits: 

Firstly we don't need to contact you to take your instructions as this can add several days to your waiting time if we cannot get  a quick response; 

Secondly if you do not wish to enable back ordering, we do not need to contact you and will leave off any out of stock items from your order and you can re-order them another time (although this will be considered a new order and P&P charges will be payable).

There is no additional p&p charge for back ordered products and customers on back order take immediate priority on stock as soon as it arrives. Should there be a delay or a problem on back ordered products, we will email you to take your instructions.  Some items are difficult to obtain on short notice and in this case even if you have back ordered, we will always try to contact you first to take your instructions before processing your order.

As an ecommerce business we only accept payments by card (either through our secure on-line server or by telephone) or by bank transfer (BACS).  We do not accept payment by cheque, postal orders or Paypal.  

We handle tens of thousands of orders a year and to ensure our turn around times and standards of service are maintained, unfortunately we cannot accept payments by any other method which might slow down our service to the vast majority of customers who are happy to pay by these methods.

If you do not wish to give your card details via our secure e-commerce facility, you can still place your order on-line and opt to telephone with your card details or pay by BACS (Bank Transfer).  Choose your preferred method on check out.

We are happy to take telephone orders but you must have the correct product codes and descriptions.  Telephone orders do add several days to your order turn around time due to the fact that a member of staff has to enter the order on the system on your behalf.  

For full instructions on how to place an order please click below:

We know of no cases of credit card fraud using our shopping system over the internet. When you enter your card number all that passes over the internet is a scrambled message which can only be decrypted by us using secret keys in our ecommerce software.  This system is the safest way to buy and is safer than passing your details over the phone lines and at least as safe as passing your card over a shop counter.  

ABOUT COOKIES

In the broadest sense, a cookie allows a site to temporarily store and remember order information on your computer. The cookie contains a unique ID for your order and lets the site keep track of you as you add/remove different things to your shopping basket. Each item you add to your shopping basket is stored in the site's database along with your ID value. When you check out, the site knows what is in your basket by retrieving all of your selections from the database. It would be impossible to implement a shopping mechanism without cookies (they are not always the sinister "spying" devices that some would have you believe!).

To use our secure shopping cart your computer must be set up to accept cookies. For information on how to accept cookies follow our step by step instructions below:

1. Click on Tools at the top of the screen.
2. Click on Internet Options.
3. Click the Security tab.
4. Click Internet.
5. Click the Custom Level button.
6. Scroll down to Cookies.
7. Click on Enable.

If for any reason you do not wish to give your card details via our secure e-commerce facility, you can still place your order on-line and opt to telephone with your card details.

Full details can be found here:

We ship to the following international destinations: Austria - Belgium - Cyprus - Denmark - Finland - France - Germany - Gibraltar - Greece - Eire/Ireland - Italy - Luxembourg - Netherlands - Norway - Portugal - Spain - Sweden - Switzerland - Channel Islands. 

If it's not on the list, we do not ship there - this can be for various reasons including insurance purposes or fraud prevention and we apologise for any inconvenience if your country is not included.

If you are exempt from VAT, this will be deducted at the point when your order and payment is processed - we cannot offer this as a click box on check out for those customers to which it applies, because then everybody clicks it thinking they can avoid VAT (and as we all know, you cannot avoid death or taxes!).

For full details on how to order from the international locations we do ship to,  please click here:

No - your payment is not processed until your order is packed and ready for dispatch in accordance with the EU Distance Selling Directive.

This has several advantages:

• Firstly, we feel it is much fairer to you and is upholding the EU Distance Selling Directive which states that orders should not be charged for until they are ready for dispatch, and it also allows us time to advise you on stock issues should a query arise
• Secondly, as frequently happens, you may wish to add an item you've forgotten or adjust a product quantity.  By not processing the payment immediately through the site, provided you follow the instructions given on your order confirmation email, you can make changes to your order before your payment is processed to save yourself the expense of having to make a further order.

If for any reason you have a problem with on-line ordering it is usually a minor glitch which can be rectified very quickly once we are aware of it.  Security is in no way affected. 

Our website is either working or it's not - it does not pick and chose who it will allow to complete orders on-line.  We are immediately notified of any problems with the website and would know straight away if there was a problem with orders coming through (for instance, if we didn't get an order for more than half an hour, we would know something was up and would investigate).

As there are now so many different computers on the market with so many unique configurations, programmes, firewalls, anti virus settings etc, the usual reason for not being able to complete your order on-line is purely down to the settings on your computer.

1.  Firstly ensure you have cookies enabled (see explanation above: About Cookies).  If you can add products to your basket, then you have cookies enabled.

2. If you can add to basket, but cannot get through check out this is usually because you have a conflicting firewall problem.  Known problems exist when you have your Windows firewall switched on, but are also using another firewall.

3. If you still cannot get through check out, click on the "View Basket" button.  On your browser, click on file>send this page by email.  This will open up your email and create a copy of your order - send this email to

Please ensure you give your telephone contact details and a member of staff will call you to take your payment over the telephone.

Pricing/Postage Charges

We aim to bring you the best value products and great customer service!  A great many of our products we sell at far less than the recommended retail price (RRP) due to bulk buying and our prices will certainly never exceed the RRP.  We keep a watchful eye open and where we save money, we automatically pass this saving on to you.

Should a supplier increase its product prices to us, we will honour the prices shown in our online shop up until new prices are uploaded (sometimes, if the increase is small we will not increase our prices at all).

The best way to ensure you get the most savings and are informed of special offers is to join our mailing list.  Also see question above about special offers.

Due to the volumes of orders we handle, we operate a flat rate charge of £3.95 including VAT for all UK mainland orders and a flat rate charge of £7.95 for all Eire and European orders.  This has the benefit of streamlining order processing  and you never need to worry about how much your postage will be because it will always be the same no matter how large or heavy your order is! 

The charge is worked out as an "average" of what it costs us to send out all orders and covers our basic expenses including VAT and is still, we believe, a very reasonable charge. For customers who wish to place smaller orders, we recommend that you group your smaller orders together to make the most of the flat rate charge.

We pride ourselves on taking personal care of your orders to ensure your shopping experience with us is honest, friendly and above all, that you have a great time and come back again!

Yes, we do.  Just place your order in the usual way but please ensure that you enter your card registered address as your invoice address, and your BFPO address as your delivery address.  Our standard UK flat rate of £3.95 p&p applies to all BFPO orders.  If you arrange for a guaranteed delivery service please note that this will only be trackable up to the point where delivery is made to the BFPO forwarding centre.