What you can return, and when
Because tea.gratis ships 3–5g sample portions and seasonal sample boxes, our return window is shorter than a typical shop. You have fourteen days from the delivery date scanned by your carrier to open a return request. After that window, the order is considered accepted.
We accept returns in two situations. First, packaging damage in transit — if the outer mailer arrives crushed, soaked, or torn and the tea inside is visibly compromised, we will refund or reship at your choice. Second, wrong contents — if the box you received does not match the box you ordered (wrong season, wrong farm drop, missing pouch), we will correct it at our cost.
We do not accept returns based on flavor preference. A 5g sample is meant to help you discover whether a tea suits your palate before committing to a full pouch at shop.thetea.app or shop.puerh.app . If a tea is not for you, that is a useful data point, not a defect — and the cost of shipping a few grams back to us is higher than the sample itself.
To start a return, email hello@tea.gratis with your order number and one or two clear photos of the issue. Photos help us identify whether the problem is a carrier handling issue, a packing-line mistake, or something we need to flag with the originating farm. We aim to respond within two business days, in English or Russian, from Saint Petersburg or Berlin office hours.
Condition requirements
For a return to qualify, the sample pouches must be unopened, with their original foil seal intact and the farm-attribution label still legible. We use single-portion pouches precisely so that the rest of a box remains returnable even if you have already brewed one or two samples — but the unopened pouches must come back in resalable condition.
The outer sample box, brew-guide card, and any included paper inserts should be returned together. We reuse these whenever the inner pouches are still sealed and the box itself is undamaged. If the outer packaging is missing or destroyed but the foil pouches are intact, we can still process a partial refund covering the unopened portions.
Store returns away from heat, direct sun, and strong-smelling pantry items before you send them back. Tea picks up ambient odor quickly through paper outer packaging, and a sample box that has spent a week next to ground coffee or laundry detergent is no longer something we can offer the next person.
Farm-drop and charity-drop boxes have stricter conditions. These are limited-quantity awareness campaigns from a specific tea farm, often tied to a harvest window or a charitable cause documented on the /farm-drop page. Once dispatched, they are non-returnable except in cases of carrier damage or wrong contents, because we cannot ethically reroute a charity contribution back into general inventory.
If you are unsure whether your situation qualifies, write to us before sending anything back. A short email saves you the return-shipping cost when the answer would have been a reship rather than a return.
Restocking fees and shipping
There is no restocking fee on tea.gratis. Our sample boxes are priced at the cost of shipping only — the tea itself is provided free as part of our discovery program — so there is no margin to charge a percentage against. Either a return qualifies and is fully credited, or it does not qualify and the order stands.
Return shipping is handled differently depending on who is at fault. If the issue is ours — wrong box, packing-line error, or clear carrier damage that we accept on review — we send a prepaid return label by email, or we waive the return entirely and simply reship. You do not pay twice for our mistake.
If the return is at your request for a reason we accept (for example, an address change that arrived too late and the box came back to us undelivered), you cover the outbound shipping that was already spent, and we refund only the portion that remains. We are transparent about this on the checkout page so the math is never a surprise.
We do not refund original shipping charges on accepted-but-unwanted samples, because that shipping fee is what made the sample possible in the first place. This is the trade-off behind a free-sample model, and we would rather state it plainly than bury it in fine print.
For international orders, customs duties and import VAT paid on entry are not refundable by us — those funds go to your country’s tax authority, not to tea.gratis. You may be able to reclaim them directly through your local customs office once the goods are returned and the re-export is documented. We provide the paperwork on request.
Refund timing and method
Once we receive a returned box and confirm the condition, we issue refunds within five business days. The refund returns to the original payment method — there is no store credit substitution unless you specifically request one. If you paid by card, expect another three to seven business days for the funds to appear on your statement, depending on your bank.
For wrong-contents and damage cases where we agree before any return ships, we can refund immediately on photo evidence, without waiting for the box to come back. This is the faster path and the one we recommend for small-value sample orders, where the return-shipping cost would otherwise exceed the refund.
If you chose to receive store credit toward a future sample box or a full pouch at shop.thetea.app , we add a ten percent goodwill bonus to the credit value. The credit is delivered as a single-use code by email, valid for twelve months, and stackable with seasonal promos but not with charity-drop pricing.
We send a written confirmation by email at three points in the process: when the return request is opened, when the box is received and inspected, and when the refund is dispatched. If you have not received the third email within ten business days of posting your return, write to hello@tea.gratis with the tracking number and we will trace it.
We do not refund to third parties. If the order was a gift, the refund goes to the cardholder who placed it, not to the recipient — though the recipient is welcome to coordinate with us on a reship to a corrected address instead.
Exceptions for opened and perishable items
Tea is a perishable food product, and once a foil pouch is opened the contents are exposed to air, moisture, and ambient aromas within minutes. For this reason, opened pouches are non-returnable under any circumstance — including cases where the tea was not to your taste, where you opened the wrong pouch by mistake, or where you intended to return the box but sampled one portion first.
This is not a punitive rule. It exists because we cannot resell opened tea to the next customer in good conscience, and because health-and-safety regulations in the EU and Russia treat opened food packaging as no longer suitable for redistribution. If you have flavor feedback on a tea you have already opened, we welcome the note — it informs which farms and styles we feature next season — but it does not qualify for a refund.
Farm-drop and charity-drop boxes, as noted above, are exempt from voluntary returns once dispatched. Holiday and limited-edition seasonal boxes — for example, the winter blacks or summer cold-brew kit referenced on the homepage — follow the standard fourteen-day window but cannot be exchanged for a different season once that season has sold through.
Gift wrapping, handwritten cards, and any personalization fees are non-refundable, as the labor has already been performed.
Finally, if your country imposes import restrictions on tea or on certain herbal botanicals and the package is refused at customs, we cannot refund the shipping cost or recover the goods. We list these restrictions where we know them on the /shipping page, and we encourage you to check your local rules before ordering. For more guidance on the journey tea takes across borders, the atlas at tea.travel documents trade routes and customs context in plain language.