New stock arriving today! I have found a plus point to my husband working away in Manchester. My African bugs are with a guy 'up North' and he was planning to deliver them next week but I will be away for a few days and won't be here to receive them. I then had a brainstorm that perhaps my hubby could bring the bugs back with him when he returns today, several phone calls later it seems the two locations are only about an hour apart so the guy with the bugs has kindly agreed to deliver them to my husband's place of work and he will be returning with them later this afternoon. Goodness knows what his car share colleague will make of it. Hopefully the box will be sealed and she will be none the wiser!
I have now resigned myself to the fact that I will still be inundated with bugs over the festive season. I need to buy in stock when it is available and I have been offered some great creatures in the last couple of weeks. I have put many on special offer but sales are always slow coming up to Christmas. I cannot emphasis enough that if you want bugs for Christmas you need to get them ASAP. I often stop posting out animals a couple of weeks early as both the weather and the postal service can become erratic and the welfare of my creatures is paramount. You can always come and collect nearer Christmas but this may not be practical if you live miles away. My November promotion to encourage more visitors is coming to an end, I do have a family calling tomorrow which is nice.
I am looking forward to a bit of a break next week. Hubby has taken a week off and we will be spending a few days in Brighton. I love Brighton, it is always vibrant and interesting. We are staying in a hotel with a pool and gym so I can keep up my fitness regime. My back is still up and down, it was very stiff yesterday but feels much better today. I finally collected my new glasses yesterday, it's great having glasses that I can see properly in. I just hope that I can go back to contact lenses when/if my damaged eye heals (I still haven't received an appointment for the opthalmologist).
I haven't had much feedback on the changes that I've made to the website (hopefully that means everything is ok). I am still working away on the individual tarantula descriptions. I have decided not to go back to accepting cheques/postal orders as a payment option on my website but I can still take payments this way on an individual basis. It just means contacting me to make arrangements when you have an order to place. I am thinking of sending the Special Delivery tracking number to customers in the despatched email that I send out. What do you think? It would be more work for me but it would mean that my customers can check the whereabouts of their order on the Royal Mail website. I already send the tracking number to customers outside the UK. Thankfully Special Delivery is an excellent service these days. I can't even remember the last time I had a delayed parcel. This certainly wasn't the case a few years ago when I estimated that 1 in 20 parcels did not arrive the following day. It is an expensive service compared to sending by First Class post but my animals almost always arrive in perfect condition. I am still amazed that when speaking to a guy who runs a similar business to me, he thought that 10% was an acceptable loss. I would give up if I were losing anything like that, I aim for 100% survival rate. I very rarely lose anything in the post, I have certainly had many years of practice packing bugs! It does make me cringe to see all the people on Youtube who film themselves unpacking their parcels from me. I reuse everything that I can so the containers and boxes are often not in pristine condition. Having said that I haven't seen anyone opening their parcel and being disappointed. I suppose the videos are generally rather sweet and there are several shown on my website due to Simon (my lovely and brilliant website guy).
Anyway enough of my rabbiting (is it still rabbiting if I'm actually typing?). I need to get all the new cages ready for later, I have lots of Trap Door spiders to prepare homes for, millipedes (thank goodness there is plenty of leaf litter around now), Whip scorpions (I need to evict some stick insects from their large Exo Terre vivarium).
Hope everyone has a good weekend, I will be busy with the bugs. Even going away for three days is a major task to prepare for. Our daughter has taken some time off work. I'm sure she will walk Teddi but I'm also sure she will do the bare minimum with the bugs. It's not fair, why does nobody in my family love my bugs except me? I have a good idea for this year's Christmas card and asked my great-nieces to help. They both declined until I promised to pay them!
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