How to Order as a Holiday Gift

If you are planning to order a Mail Order Mystery as a holiday gift there are two ways to have it delivered. You can have your mystery packed up all together and shipped in one box, or you can have the mystery sent as separate installments mailed once a week for six weeks.

ALL IN ONE BOX: The advantage to ordering "All in One Box" is that we will ship it out as soon as we can, usually within 7 days. This means that in this uncertain year of toy shortages and supply chain issues, you will know that you have an awesome gift stashed in the closet and ready to wrap. You can choose the name on the shipping label on the outside of the box (so kids don’t know it’s for them) and the letters inside the box will be personalized to the kid(s) receiving the mystery. The envelopes are numbered on the back and you can give kids the whole box (make sure they open them in the correct order!) or hand out each installment at your own pace. When you order "All in One Box" you will receive tracking information.

SEND WEEKLY: If you choose the weekly shipping option we will send your letters once a week for six weeks. This is a great option for kids who love getting mail, but not great if you want your mail to arrive on a specific schedule. You choose the date we mail the first letter. After that we mail the letters a week apart, every Thursday, but we have no control over the speed at which letters travel through the postal system. There is no tracking information for lettermail, so we are not able to tell you where a letter is or when it will arrive.

WHEN TO ORDER YOUR HOLIDAY MYSTERY

We have three words for you: DO NOT WAIT. This is not the year to hedge your bets. We are not going to run out of mysteries. We have mysteries galore. But what we do not have is an infinite supply of people and time. Mail Order Mysteries are personalized and packaged with care. We only have so many hands and we won’t take more orders than we can personalize and ship. So if we hit the limit of what we are able to process and package, we will have to put up the “sold out” sign until we catch up.

ALL IN ONE BOX: We do our best to ship within 7 days. As long as there are no delays most packages within North America take about a week to arrive. Delivery delays could happen, however, and we make no guarantees about arrival times. Much like last year we expect that as we get closer to the holidays shipping services will become overwhelmed with packages. Ordering sooner rather than later is the best plan for avoiding disappointment.

SEND WEEKLY: If you want to time the first letter so it arrives just before Christmas, you should be prepared for the fact that it might not make it in time. Mail can be unpredictable at the best of times, and especially during the holiday season at the end of a pandemic. (It is almost the end, right?) If you order “send weekly” as a holiday gift we suggest you download the printable gift note to wrap up, and plan for the mystery to begin arriving shortly after Christmas or the beginning of the new year.

EXPRESS SHIPPING: We do have an express shipping option available for All in One Box orders in the US and Canada. Express orders ship within 1-2 business days and take 1-2 days to arrive. We do not offer express shipping for the weekly letter option or to international destinations.

INTERNATIONAL ORDERS: We are still seeing consistent and significant delays with international shipping. If you have questions about an international destination please contact our customer service team. The “send weekly” option is not available for international orders.

A FEW MORE THINGS

IF YOU ARE ORDERING FOR MORE THAN ONE KID: Mail Order Mysteries are personalized and we can include the names of multiple children in the same household. When you place your order please make sure to enter the names of each child.

IF YOU ARE ORDERING MORE THAN ONE MYSTERY: Please place your orders separately. We require a lot of information to properly package each order and we are not able to collect all of the information we need for more than one mystery in the same order. Please note that shipping is charged per item, so you will be charged the same amount of shipping whether you place separate orders or one order with more than one mystery.

PLEASE INCLUDE FIRST AND LAST NAMES: Please enter kids’ first AND last names. This is especially important for the Treasure Hunt mystery, as kids find out they have a pirate relative with the same last name as them. Only include middle names if they are regularly used as part of kids’ names.

CHECK THE INFO: Please take a moment to make sure that all of the information in your order is correct, including shipping information and the spelling of kids’ names. We cannot make changes to an order once it is printed and packed.

If you have any other questions please let us know. We hope we can help you add the joy and subtract the stress this holiday season!