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Frequently Asked Questions about our tea and loose leaf tea subscriptions.

What Is Tea Runners?

Tea Runners is one of the most popular loose leaf tea subscription boxes in North America, and the only one that allows you to fully customize every box.

Our mission has always been to introduce you to new and wonderful teas to love, but we know everyone has very different tastes and tea drinking habits -- that's why we offer 4 different boxes, 3 different delivery schedules, and allow you to customize from 30+ featured teas per month.

We also offer the most flexible tea subscription you're going to find, with the ability to pause, skip, or rearrange your deliveries anytime from within your account.

These tools make our subscriptions perfect for anyone, from the occasional tea drinker to the avid daily tea drinker.

✓ Flexible subscriptions.
✓ Fully customizable.
✓ Top quality tea.
✓ Satisfaction guaranteed.

How Our Subscriptions Work

Please note the following FAQ are for subscriptions created after October 1, 2022 via tearunners.com. If you are signed up via Cratejoy or Amazon, these terms do not apply.

Tea Runners is the only major tea subscription company that allows you to fully customize your tea discovery experience. We usually have 30+ customization options available per month.

Your first box is customized when you sign up. For regular monthly shipments, you will receive an email on the 25th of the month notifying you that it is time to customize next month's box. Customization is open from the 25th until the last day of the month.

By choosing one of our four boxes, you are selecting what kinds of teas you'll get if you do not submit any customizations by the deadline.

We don't make you wait! Your first box will ship within 24 hours, Monday to Friday. You will receive a shipping notification via email when your box has been scanned into the postal system.

Ship dates can be minorly affected by public holidays.

Regular monthly shipments are made around the 4th-6th of the month. Billing for recurring subscriptions happens on the 1st of the month.

Example: You are billed on April 1st for the April box, which ships the around April 4-6.

Ship dates vary slightly depending on weekends and holidays, but shipments are always made in the first week of the month.

When you sign up for a Tea Runners subscription you are billed right away. Billing for renewals is done on the 1st of the month.

For monthly subscriptions
If you sign up on or before the 24th, your first renewal will be on the 1st of the next month.

If you sign up on or after the 25th, your first renewal will be on the 1st of the following month.

For example, if you sign up on January 26th, your first renewal date will be March 1st.

All prices on tearunners.com are in U.S. Dollars. 

All normal subscriptions renew until cancelled.

Gift subscriptions do not renew.

Yes. To skip an upcoming shipment or renewal, use the "Pause" feature inside your account.

1. Login to your account.
2. Select your subscription.
3. Click Manage Subscription.
4. Click 'Pause Subscription'.
5. Choose from 1, 2, or 3 months.
6. Click 'Yes, Pause My Subscription'.

Your subscription will resume after the amount of months selected.

Please note that this action must be made before the 1st of the month.  You cannot pause the current month's shipment from within your account after the 1st.

You can also choose to pause your subscription indefinitely. This option requires you to restart it manually when you're ready.

You can cancel your subscription anytime by following these steps:

1. Login to your account. 
2. Select your subscription.
3. Click Manage Subscription.
4. Click Edit Renewal Settings.
6. Select ‘Cancel this subscription’

Please note that cancelling will prevent any future renewals from taking place, but it will not stop prepaid shipments from being delivered.

Example: If you sign up for 6 boxes and cancel after 3, we will still ship the remaining 3 boxes but your account will not renew.

Gift Subscriptions

Tea Runners offers very powerful gift subscription management tools. Both the gift recipient and the gift giver will have access to control the account, which is especially helpful if your recipient isn’t very tech savvy.

No, gift subscriptions do not renew. If you purchase a 3-month gift subscription, it will automatically expire after the 3 months are up.

Yes. Gift recipients can customize all the boxes in their gift subscription except the first one.

Gift recipients cannot customize their first box (because in most cases it's a surprise), but the gift buyer can do it for them at checkout.

The gift subscription can be accessed by both the buyer and the recipient.

Yes, there is a place on the gift subscription checkout to add a gift message. This message will be emailed to the gift recipient, along with a description of their gift and who it’s from.

We offer the ability to start your gift subscription right away, or to schedule it for a future date. Scheduling a gift subscription is especially useful for birthdays, anniversaries, etc., when you want your gift notification email to arrive at a specific date and time.

Important note:
When you schedule a gift subscription, the date and time you select is when an email is sent to the gift recipient. It is NOT the date the first box will arrive. The first box is shipped from our warehouse the day after the email is sent.

Scheduled gift subscriptions do not appear in your account or the gift recipient's account until the gift date has arrived. To make any changes to a scheduled gift subscription prior to the gift date you must contact customer support.

Gift Cards

Gift cards are a great way to allow your lucky recipient to buy whatever they want from Tea Runners.

Gift cards can be used for tea, teaware, or subscriptions. You can purchase anything from us with a gift card, except another gift card.

When redeeming a gift card for a subscription, only the first purchase amount applies. Gift cards do not apply to renewals on a subscription.

No. Gift cards do not expire.

About the Tea

Questions about the tea itself.

Every box comes with 4 pouches of tea and each pouch contains roughly 0.75 - 1.2 oz of tea (depending on the weight and bulkiness of the tea).  Each box contains enough tea to make about 30-40 cups of tea, depending on the types of tea and how strong you like it. You can also steep most of these teas more than once, so realistically you could stretch it to 50+ cups of tea. 

Almost all of our teas are USDA Certified Organic when we buy them from our suppliers. However, we cannot label them as USDA Certified Organic unless each tea is individually certified for Tea Runners.  We ship up to 16 different teas a month and approval for each tea can take weeks, so it doesn't fit very easily with our tight deadlines for packaging and production. 

In short, most of our teas are organic but our business model makes it very hard to get the certification on our label. 

We also manage to get our hands on top quality Chinese teas that were never intended for the US market and, therefore, never bother with USDA certification. 

In general, tea that is properly stored has a long shelf life. Some teas are definitely better when freshest, however others may taste better with age (black teas in particular).

We put best by dates on our packaging for each tea.

In general, pure teas usually have a shelf life of 2-3 years. Blended teas (depending on the ingredients) are also usually good for 2 years. Flavored teas have a little less shelf life, but in general they will be good for up to 1 year.

Make sure to store your teas in a cool, dark, dry place for best shelf life. Properly stored teas will be good for a very long time.

You can buy more of the tea you loved in our subscription from our website. Use the main navigation of this page to discover all our teas.

We have over 400 teas on our roster and not every tea is always in stock, but you can sign up to be instantly notified via email or text when a tea becomes available. 

Shipping

Shipping rules for subscription boxes and standard e-commerce orders.

For subscription boxes, shipping is FREE to United States addresses (including overseas military addresses).

We use USPS First Class Mail and your box should arrive within 3-6 days once scanned by USPS.  You will received a tracking link via email.

If you purchase a teapot with your subscription, we may ship your first box with UPS.

Canadian subscribers should using www.tearunners.ca

Shipping is ship FREE for our subscription boxes to all Canadian addresses. We ship Lettermail via Canada Post from Delta, British Columbia.

Delivery times range from 4-6 days to western Canadian provinces, and 10-14 days to eastern Canadian provinces. Tracking is not available for Canadian subscription boxes. 

We offer FREE SHIPPING on order over $49. We ship most orders via USPS, but some are sent via UPS.

If you're a Canadian customer, you should be ordering from shop.tearunners.ca

Our Canadian e-commerce store warehouses our most popular teas, but far fewer than our U.S. warehouse.

You can order from tearunners.com, but you will be paying more expensive shipping rates and you will likely be charged for duty when you receive your order in Canada.

Once a month we open our entire U.S. inventory to Canadians and import all the orders, so you can pay Canada Post rates and no duty. Make sure you're on our mailing list to stay notified.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact us.