Historical Emporium Customer Service

We normally ship orders via US Postal Service (Priority or Express Mail) or UPS (Ground or 2-day Air.) If you have a PO box for US Postal Service deliveries and a street address for UPS, please provide both so we can ensure prompt service.

Yes. Orders to a PO Box are shipped via the US Postal Service Priority or Express Mail. UPS does not deliver to PO Boxes. Some of our products are stocked in a warehouse that only ships by UPS, so if you require us to ship to a PO Box, your order may incur a few days' delay while we transport the product to our main warehouse.

We stock in multiple locations across the country, and not every location ships every day, so it may take up to 48 hours for your to ship out. That said, nearly 90% of our shipments come out of our main warehouse, and if you are having a true sartorial emergency, please don't just put in an online order and hope for the best. We hope you willcall our Customer Service Team and we can lay out the schedule and options that affect your order. We'll work with you to meet your required schedule.

We used to offer "super expedite" service, including overnight shipping, but stopped for three main reasons:

1. It costs too much - We found that overnight shipping costs were prohibitive. Very often, the shipping would cost more than the item itself! When that kind of thing happened, it just made us feel bad, because it didn't square with our goal of providing great products at a great value.
2. Order fulfillment can't be rushed - Accurate order processing and warehouse operations take as long as they take. Trying to force the process to go faster only resulted in errors, rework, and grumpy customers.
3. It's too risky - Too many times customers would wait until the last minute to order. No matter what UPS or Fedex may say about "absolutely positively overnight", overnight shipments do get delayed or mis-delivered. When this happened, there was no time left to react, and disappointment, or worse, outright disaster followed.

We didn't like disappointed customers. And we especially didn't like disasters. Neither did our customers. So we no longer offer super expedite shipping.

And we ask you. No, we beg you. Please don't wait until the last minute.

Books are easy. One size fits all. No accessories. No color matching. Easy to pack and ship. Massive automated warehouses. For many reasons, pulling together a complete outfit of authentic victorian clothing just takes a little longer.

We run an efficient operation with an emphasis on providing unique, high-quality products and world-class, human service, at a good price. We feel that our extremely high customer satisfaction ratings speak for themselves, and would be loathe to compromise our high standards for the sake of speed.

We are able to ship orders to addresses other than the billing address on your payment account, but your order will be subject to review by our finance department to validate your identity, confirm shipping address, etc. If we are unable to confirm your shipping address by contacting your bank, we may contact you by email requesting additional information to verify your identity as the authorized account holder.

If you need something on or after a particular date, please let us know by indicating in the special instructions section on the order form or by speaking with us directly. We can usually accommodate this sort of special handling of orders, and we're glad to defer shipping until a later date if necessary.

If you are outside of the USA, your order will likely be charged customs fees (taxes, duties, processing fees, brokerage fees, etc.) when it arrives. These fees will be collected by our carrier, or by your government directly. Unfortunately, we have no control over these fees. If you are not familiar with the customs fees in your country, please check with your local customs office for more information.

• The shipping charges you pay to us DO NOT include customs fees, import taxes, or duties, and any such fees will be assessed to you by your local post office or their agent.
• If you refuse to pay the customs fees when your order arrives, the shipment will be returned to us and we will be charged the customs fees plus return shipping costs. Therefore, we do not issue refunds for customs fees, shipping, or the cost of your order if you refuse to pay the customs fees.
• We have no way of estimating customs fees, taxes, duties, etc. so please do not ask us to do so - we don't have this information. Please contact your local customs office if you need to know more.
• It is possible that the delivery of your order could be delayed due to customs processing. If your order does not arrive in a reasonable amount of time, you should check with your local customs office to see if they are holding the package for payment of fees. Also, some customs offices will send a separate invoice for your customs fees that could arrive several weeks after you receive your shipment.

In short, please make sure you are familiar with your country's customs process and fee structure before you order - so you know what to expect.

Sorry, no. Marking a commercial sale as a gift violates import/export laws of the countries where we do business. Since we try really hard to not violate laws, we can not do this for you. We are very sorry that tariffs are so high, but if you make that request as part of your order, we cannot honor your request. We will ship your order with proper export documentation.

As a small company, we must limit the markets we serve to ensure we can maintain the high standards our customers have come to expect. We have selected our target markets based on a combination of market suitability and costs. We look at our target markets every year or so and expand where feasible.

We stock in multiple locations in the US, but only one of our warehouses can ship internationally. This means that some international orders will experience a one-week delay as we consolidate the order in our international depot. Our general timeline estimates include this consolidation time. Please see the delivery estimates in the shopping cart for more detailed information based on your order and ship mode.

If you pay by cashier's check or money order, we will wait until your check clears before shipping. Please note: we do not accept personal checks.

Your order will likely arrive sooner than the quoted commitment. However, shipping times vary widely, depending on whether the order needs to be consolidated and the speed of the customs office in your country. During holiday periods shipping times stretch out to the upper end of the ranges. To make sure your package arrives on time, please plan conservatively.

Certain items, mainly large hats and long items such as walking sticks and parasols, require extra large packaging to ship safely. In some cases, USPS will charge us based on package volume, using a method called "dimensional weighting", oversized packages often incur significantly higher shipping costs than an otherwise similarly priced order, so we have structured our shipping rates to reflect these costs.

International orders may be subject to review by our finance department to validate your identity, confirm shipping address, etc. If we are unable to confirm your shipping address by contacting your bank, we may contact you by email requesting additional information to verify your identity as the authorized account holder. We encourage the use of Paypal for international orders, as it makes validation easier for us.

If you have questions that are not answered here, please contact us and we will do our best to help.