Shipping & Live Arrival.

When your order ships

We ship Tuesday and Wednesday only, in one batch a week, and your order goes out on the Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. Order on a Monday or order on a Saturday — either way, it ships the next week. There is no cut-off to catch and no guessing.

Which of the two days it goes out depends on how many boxes are moving that week, so we name the window rather than promise a single date. Shipping early in the week is deliberate: a live animal handed to a carrier late in the week risks sitting in a sorting facility over the weekend, which is where most shipping losses actually happen.

Picking it up from FedEx

We don't deliver live animals to your door. Every live order goes FedEx Priority Overnight to the FedEx location nearest the address you give at checkout, where it's held for you to collect. We choose the location, and the day it ships you'll get an email with its address and the tracking number.

Pick it up the day it arrives. A FedEx counter is a far safer place than a doorstep in full sun or a hard freeze, but it isn't somewhere a spider should spend the night — and the live arrival guarantee depends on a same-day pickup.

Bring photo ID. FedEx will ask for a valid government-issued photo ID, and the name has to match the name on the label. Enter your name at checkout exactly as it appears on your ID.

Weather

Each box is packed for the weather where it's going. A cold pack for a hot destination, a heat pack for a cold one, both inside an insulated container. If conditions at either end are bad enough that no amount of packing makes the trip safe, we'll hold your order and message you rather than ship it and hope. Holding for weather never costs you anything, and you can cancel a held order for a full refund (less shipping, if the FedEx label was already made) if you'd rather not wait.

What shipping costs

Overnight shipping on a live animal is priced by how far the box has to travel, so you see the real figure once you enter your ZIP at checkout — never an estimate that changes later. There is no separate handling charge and nothing is added afterwards.

Supplies ordered on their own ship at a lower flat rate, straight to your address. Supplies ordered alongside a tarantula ride along in the same box, to the same FedEx location, at no extra cost.

Where we can't ship

We ship within the lower 48 states only. Orders to Hawaii, Alaska and US territories can't be accepted — checkout will tell you at the ZIP step rather than taking your money first.

Some states and cities have their own rules about keeping particular invertebrates. Checking what applies where you live is your call to make before you order.

The live arrival guarantee

Every live animal we send is guaranteed to arrive alive when you collect it from the FedEx location. If yours doesn't, we'll make it right with a replacement on the next safe ship date or a refund of the price of the animal. Shipping isn't refundable.

To make a claim, we need three things:

1. Pick it up the day it arrives at the FedEx location.
2. A photo or video of the animal on top of our box, clear enough to see both the animal and the box it came in.
3. Contact us within 2 hours of pickup, measured from the pickup time on FedEx tracking.

Send the photo or video to jurassictarantulas@gmail.com and we'll sort it out.

Home delivery isn't covered — and we don't offer it for live animals. The guarantee assumes the package was collected the day it reached the FedEx location, under the name on your order, and that the address you gave us was correct. Free or gift animals aren't covered, and we may ask for more information about your order before deciding a claim. The full wording is in the terms.

One thing worth knowing before you panic: a tarantula that arrives limp, curled or barely moving is very often just cold or stressed, not dead, and frequently comes back around within a day. Send us photos and ask — inside the two-hour window — before assuming the worst.

Molting

An animal in premolt may be shipped a little later than planned. Moving a spider mid-molt is genuinely dangerous for it, so we wait. If that affects your order, we'll tell you rather than let it go quiet.

Listings show the last recorded molt date where we have one, so you can see roughly where in its cycle an animal is before you buy.

Refunds

All sales are final. We don't refund a paid order, even before it ships, except when we cancel it ourselves, when a weather hold comes up and you'd rather not wait, or on a valid live arrival claim. Where we can make good on a problem, we may offer a replacement animal of equal value from what we have available instead. Unless we're the ones cancelling, shipping isn't refundable once the FedEx label is made. The details are in section 5 of the terms.