Prints coming soon!

Shipping

Shipping times

We don't make money on shipping - our charges are based on the average actual costs to ship.

In some cases, you may find that the cost of shipping approaches the cost of the books. We're sorry about that - shipping is expensive and our books aren't. Maybe we should charge more...

Shipments are based on the possible range of our processing times, plus the service standard for shipping. In general, the closer your order is made to the weekend (when we typically ship) and the closer you live to a major metropolitan area, the faster your shipping time will be.

If you live somewhere other than US or Canada, please seriously consider using the faster shipping method. The default method is reliable, but reliably slow and regularly at or beyond the upper edge of the published service standard.

The calculations are based on business days, so a single civic holiday during the shipping period could add as much as much as 3 actual days to the shipping schedule.

If you select faster shipping from the drop-down menu, choose carefully - choosing the wrong item could mean a partial refund and slower shipping.

Country	Shipping type	Shipping method	Order-to-arrival time
US	Default shipping	Expedited	10-23 days
US	Faster shipping	Xpresspost	5-13 days
Canada	Default shipping	Expedited parcel	3-17 days
Canada	Faster shipping	Xpresspost	3-10 days
International	Default shipping	Small packet surface	30-49 days
International	Faster shipping	Small packet air	10-20 days

Shipping packaging

Your books are well protected during shipping.

Books are sealed in a 1 mil poly bag, then boxed in an unmarked, corrugated mailer. The packaging helps keep your books dry, flat, and well-defended from velociraptor attacks.

Lost packages

Lost packages are a surprisingly rare occurence that virtually never happen. It's amazing, really.

However, the possibility exists.

In the event of a lost package, we'll make a claim. Once shippers determine that the package is indeed lost and the claim is settled, we'll ship you another book. If the package is very late, it usually doesn't take long for the claim to be processed.

If you wonder if your package is lost, give it some time - it may have been delayed going through customs.

The shipper will absolutely not allow a claim to be made until the package is a least two weeks overdue. Thus, if the package is late, the best thing to do is be patient - packages are often late, but rarely lost.

Customs and brokering costs

Shipping methods include brokering costs. There are no surprise fees - the price you pay is the price you expected to pay.

Customs in many countries (including US and UK) tend not to charge for books.

Ordering without a credit card

Orders are processed through Paypal, which allows many methods of payment, including debit cards.

Credit card processing

Credit cards are processed when the order ships, not before.

We never see your credit card number and can't charge an amount larger than you agreed to.

The price charged is in Canadian dollars. There are many online currency converters, including Google (for the day's exchange, search for "100 CAD in USD" or "100 CAD in EUR").

In some cases, your credit card company may hold a larger amount in reserve than you expected. The final charge will be correct, but here's why it happens: When you use your credit card at a restaurant or self-serve gas station, the exact amount of your final bill isn't known, so an arbitrarily larger amount is held in reserve. Once the final is known, the reserve is dropped. Normally you don't see this happening because the time between the reserve and the final charge is a few minutes. When you order in a foreign currency, the exact amount isn't known, due to small variances in the daily exchange rate. Once we process the order, your credit card is debited by the exact amount in Canadian dollars, adjusted for the daily exchange rate.

Privacy

We promise...

We will never sell, rent or share our customer data.
We will use the information we collect only for the purposes of fulfilling your order, sending email confirmations, billing and so on.
We won't use any sneaky "opt-ins" for mailing lists. If mailing lists are offered, the sign-ups will be clearly worded. By default they will be set to "No."
All communications with you will be discrete. Email will come from the URLs www.tbbbb.com, www.CompleteShibari.com or www.mentalgears.com (the publishing company). (For best privacy, we encourage the use of a personal throwaway Gmail account.)
Packages will be described accurately and honestly described as educational books. Although these books contain no prurient, lewd or objectionable material, we understand that possession of such a book infers very private information about your sexuality. We will do the utmost to ensure that your privacy isn't compromised.
We will use secure methods to protect your personal data.

Information Collection

In order to connect to this web server (or any web server), your browser provides anonymous information to enable the connection. This information includes your ISP's (Internet Service Provider) IP address, the type of browser you're using (IE, Mozilla, Safari, etc.) and so on.

The gathered data is used to generate statistics about the website. These statistics include web traffic, popular pages, unpopular pages, broken links and so on. This information is used only in aggregate form and isn't connected with information that identifies you personally.

To learn more about the types of information collected by web servers, see the page for the free web statistics program, Webalizer.

Returns

Most companies refuse to accept returns on any books. However, we have great faith that once you our books, you'll be thrilled.

In the unlikely event that you are dissatisfied with the book, the following conditions apply.

Returns must be made within 30 days from the date of delivery. To accommodate Christmas shopping, items shipped between November 1 and December 31 may be returned up to January 31 of the following year.
Shipping charges are not refundable.
The sender is responsible for shipping charges related to returning the item. Returns that are shipped collect will not be accepted.
To qualify for a full refund of the purchase price, the book must not show obvious signs of use or damage. If the book is used or not in a saleable state, we will refund 50% of the purchase price. Books showing signs of abuse, damage or missing pages will not be accepted for refund. Evaluation of the condition of the books will be at our sole discretion.
Refunds are made in the same form of payment originally used for the purchase.
You can expect a refund to be made within 30 business days of our receiving the book(s). You will be refunded the shipping cost if the return is a result of our error.

If there is extensive damage to a book upon delivery, contact us immediately.

Credit card security

We understand that the risk of credit card fraud is a serious concern for our customers. Mental Gears Publishing processes purchases through PayPal, a large company that services a significant portion of global companies. We process the transaction when we ship (not before). We never see your credit card number.

When credit card information is collected, it is done so using a secure server. The data is encrypted with a 128-bit SSL digital certificate. This method of encryption is a standard method of encrypting e-commerce transactions and ensuring that we are who we say we are.

When you are ready to provide credit card information, you are transferred to a secure server. Most browsers indicate that you are on a secure page, usually with a closed padlock icon.

To learn more about 128-bit SSL, see the Wikipedia entry about Transport Layer Security.

A Bit More

Except for the secure server used to complete a sale, the site is informational, not data-gathering. The site uses no cookies, web bugs, or hidden data-laden images. There are no pop-ups, pop-unders or redirects on exit. There are no banners, third-party advertising partners or affiliates. No secret downloads, spyware, code executions, ActiveX or Flash.

Just simple html pages, lovingly hand-coded in the same manner your great-grandparents made their homepages.