Shipping

The product detail page says that we ship within "2 - 5 business days."

"Ship" means when your package leaves our facility and not when it arrives on your doorstep.
"Business days" excludes Japanese public holidays or weekend or any other circumstances that we always list on the Mirai Store page.

However what actually happens is that we ship on a daily basis. We ask for "2- 5 business days" to give us a buffer for things outside of our control like natural disasters or post apocalyptic events.

The cutoff time for shipping is 9AM Monday - Friday. If you order anything after 9AM then your stuff will have to wait until the next day to ship - the exception is Friday where your stuff will have to wait until Monday before it ships.

Regular customer orders are given priority over new orders because we have to run various fraud checks. Use the tips in this post to speed up the out-the-door-time.

All times described are JST and you can use this page to see what time it is in Japan.

Do remember that this is the normal schedule but events may happen that are out of our control and we are in no way promising that your stuff will be shipped on a certain day. Use the above schedule as a note.

As you have already learned, we currently have no control over the transportation networks or natural phenomena that may or may not affect the speed of your package arrival times BUT there are things you can do to speed up the time it takes to get your package out the door.

1. Triple check your address. An order confirmation is sent to you after you placed your order which contains the address that you typed. If you panicked because you was afraid of something selling out and accidentally typed 

   The White House
   1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
   Washington, DC 20500

   then immediately reply to the order confirmation email and tell us your correct address. If your package was not sent out yet then we can change it for you. If your package was already sent out then here is nothing we can do after Japan Post has collected the package.
   
   You can try contacting your local postal service with the tracking number to have it delivered to the correct address. If all fails then the package is usually returned to us.
   
   We can resend the package but we will have to charge you for shipping to have it sent out again. If your order qualified for free shipping in the first place then it just means that we paid for the shipping - it does not mean that Japan Post likes you too and provided free shipping.
   
   
2. Make sure the contents in your order is correct. If you want to add something after then your order will obviously be delayed. We will edit your order and send you an invoice. Once you paid for the outstanding amount, our system will mark your order as "paid" and we can proceed to ship.
   
   Remember that we are in Tokyo and the time difference can add half a day to your order because when we send mail it could be your bed time.
   
   
3. Use Paypal when paying. Paypal has protection for both you and the seller. The credit card field on the site is processed by Stripe. We do have fraud filters in place but sometimes they can take a while to do number crunching which may affect the out-the-door time of your order.
   
   
4. If you are ordering a Smart Doll for the first time, leave a note on how you discovered Smart Doll. If you have no previous order history with us and are ordering apparel or accessory then let us know where you bought your Smart Doll - it does not matter where you bought the Smart Doll.
   
   We need to know that the accessories you are buying is for a Smart Doll you own. The reason is that some folks buy a wig or a dress thinking that it comes with a whole Smart Doll.
   
   Smart Doll accessories do not fit other doll brands. Previously folks have bought stuff for their non Smart Doll and have given us a hard time saying that as a "doll maker" we should make stuff that fits all dolls - we prefer to avoid contact with these kind of folks ;-)
   
   
5. Do not ask any of the following...
    "can you lower value for customs"  - because we will hold your order and send you this link until you give us the OK to ship.
   
   "can you get this to me by the blah of May" - because we will hold your order and send you this link until you give us the OK to ship.
   
   "can you ship in a discreet box" - because we will hold your order and send you this link until you give us the OK to ship.
   
   

When an order is placed, your order gets put in a queue. On a business day (meaning not weekends or public holiday), a member of our shipping team will go through the orders to make sure that payments are legit (yep there be fraudsters out there) and that the address is a deliverable one - some folks mistype and put "Moon" instead of "Manchester" for example.

Before shipping, we need to go through the customer support tickets to see if anybody has contacted us with a "can you merge orders blah and blah" or "I typed Moon instead of Manchester."

If the order is a first timer, we send mail to the customer confirming the address and ask how they discovered our brand.

If the order is from a customer who has ordered before then we proceed to pick and pack the items. Japan post comes to our store several times a day to pick up parcels.

At the end of the day we execute a fulfil command in our system which sends out email to customers notifying them of what was shipped and the tracking number.

Folks who are ordering stuff online will have their shipments picked and packed during store opening times. The product detail page usually states something like "ships within 2 - 5 business days" - business days do not include Japanese public holidays. "Ships" means when Japan post picks up your parcel from our store and not when it arrives at your doorstep. 

We pool together feedback on how folks discover our brand so when ordering, if you leave a note mentioning how you came across Smart Doll, your order is likely to be given priority over folks who ordered before you but didn't leave a note.

Some folks get their stuff in a couple of days - for some folks it takes weeks. Factors include:-

• Distance to your country from Japan
• Mood of your pilot and or your postal people on the ground in your country
• Whether your country charges customs for our products
• Whether you are available at the time of delivery
• Other natural phenomena out of our control (typhoon, earthquakes, asteroid impact, pandemics etc)

Generally our stuff gets to America and the quickest. You can check the comments on the following social media to see how fast or slow folks around the world got their stuff.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5pZAvHhNxx/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6HjSY4AsC6/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk6nNUVhCK0/

At the moment we only have EMS shipping which is registered and sent by air. If you qualify for free shipping then choose the "free" option upon checkout. "Free" means that we pay for shipping and still send your package out by EMS. Some folks think that "free" means some inferior postal service - it is not.

We offer free shipping as a thank-you for spending a certain amount. This does not mean that we don't thank you if you order lower amounts! It's just that our margins will be too low for us to cover the cost of shipping.

We can ship via DHL but because of the cost and manual process involved then it will cost an additional 10,000 JPY. If you require DHL shipping then leave a note when ordering and we will bill you separately.

We do not offer other shipment methods like SAL or by foot on the silk road. 

Our boxes have the Smart Doll blazoned on the box - this is the only box we have. If you request discreet packaging we will direct you to this post and confirm whether you would like to cancel your order. We previously kept a zillion types of box and it soon became very unscalable - double corrugated printed/blank for overseas shipments, single corrugated printed/blank for Japan domestic shipments (cos Japanese postmen tend not to throw boxes around) - and thats just for the Smart Doll box - then there is the accessory box...