Legal
Returns and Claims Policy
Last updated: 4 September 2026
This page states what happens after a consignment leaves us, and what happens instead of a return. It applies to every wholesale order placed with AgarwoodWholesale.
The short version is at the top of clause 1 and it does not have an exception hidden further down. Everything after it is either the reasoning, or the things a no-returns policy does not remove — because a claim for goods that are wrong is not a return, and this page is careful about the difference.
1.Returns after dispatch
Once a consignment has been dispatched it cannot be returned and the order cannot be refunded on the grounds of change of mind, revised forecast, a customer of yours cancelling, or a decision not to proceed with a line.
This applies to every line we sell, at every quantity, including sample-sized first orders and including orders placed against goods held in stock rather than produced to your brief.
It is a business-to-business sale between commercial parties. No consumer right of withdrawal applies, and none is offered voluntarily.
2.Why the policy is written this way
Three reasons, and it is worth reading them because each one is also the reason a different part of this site works the way it does.
Material is allocated by lot rather than drawn from an undifferentiated pool. When a batch is assigned to your order the balance of it is reserved under your name and the rest of the market cannot buy it. A return does not put that lot back where it was; the batch has been broken and the reservation window has passed.
A batch record, and any certificate issued from it, covers a specific batch that stayed in our custody until dispatch. Once material has been outside that custody we can no longer say what it has been stored next to, at what humidity, or for how long. Re-selling returned incense or oil to a second buyer under the original certificate would make that certificate a document we no longer believe, and the certificate is the thing this business runs on.
The third reason is freight. On oils and koh-grade material the return leg frequently costs more than the goods, and on ceramic and glass a second transit is where breakage actually happens. Neither of us gains from moving the same cartons twice.
3.What replaces a return: everything happens before dispatch
Because there is no return after dispatch, the decision points are deliberately front-loaded, and none of them costs a full order to use.
- A paid sample comes from the exact batch you would be buying, not from a product-line specimen. The cost is credited against your first wholesale order.
- On approval of that sample we reserve the balance of the batch under your name for thirty days at no charge, so approving a sample does not commit you the same week.
- On private-label work, production starts only after written approval of a pre-production sample. Changes after that point are chargeable and reset the lead time, which is the honest version of the same trade.
- A certificate of analysis is issued against the packed consignment rather than against the product line. It is prepared on request and charged to you, so ask for it at order stage and we will quote it with the order rather than after dispatch.
- You may appoint a third-party pre-shipment inspection at your own cost, and we accept it as a matter of policy rather than case by case. Book it at order stage so the timetable allows for it, and we will confirm an inspection window once the batch is packed.
- We hold a sealed retention sample of every batch for three months from dispatch, so a question raised inside that window is answered against the actual material rather than against a memory. Three months is set to outlast the fourteen-day claims period by a wide margin.
4.What a no-returns policy does not remove
A return is a way of undoing a decision you are entitled to change your mind about. A claim is what happens when the goods are not what was agreed. The first is not available; the second is unaffected by this page.
Goods outside the tolerances published on the relevant product page, and on the batch certificate where one was issued, are replaced or credited. Variation inside those tolerances is not a defect — colour, resin distribution and burn character differ from lot to lot in natural material, which is exactly why the tolerance is published rather than implied.
Transit breakage above one per cent on ceramic lines is replaced. On every other line — incense, powder, oil, brass and glass — claims for shortage, damage or non-conformity must reach us within fourteen days of delivery, with photographs.
Latent defects that could not reasonably have been found on inspection are not caught by that fourteen-day window. Tell us as soon as you find one.
5.How to raise a claim
Photograph the carton and its contents before unpacking fully, and send us the images. That photograph is what settles a claim and it cannot be taken afterwards. A claim raised without it is not automatically refused, but it is much harder for either of us to establish where the damage happened.
Send the images, the invoice number and the batch number on the affected cartons. Where the batch number is legible in the photograph, that is faster than anything else you can do, because it lets us pull the retention sample for that batch the same day.
Where a claim is properly against the carrier rather than against us, we file it with the carrier and keep you informed. Carrier claim windows are shorter than ours and are set by the carrier. That is the practical reason for the fourteen days.
Our liability for any order is limited to the invoiced value of that order, settled by replacement, credit or refund at our option. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss such as lost profit or the cost of a delayed launch.
6.Orders that have not been dispatched
This page is about consignments that have shipped. An order that has not been dispatched sits differently depending on how far it has gone: whether material has been allocated to it, whether production has started, and whether artwork or components have been committed to a print run.
What is paid to confirm an order is not refundable if you then cancel it. That payment is what commits the material, the production slot and, on private-label work, the print run, and those are committed the day the order is confirmed rather than the day it ships. Anything not yet invoiced is not owed.
Tell us as early as you can anyway. We will set out in writing what stage the order has reached, and where the work can be carried over to a later order of yours rather than written off, that is what we will do. We would rather give you an inconvenient answer at that point than an agreeable one that changes later.
Where we cancel because we cannot supply — a harvest or distillation failure, a port closure, an export restriction — we refund what has not shipped. That case is covered in the force majeure clause of the terms of sale.
Sample charges are credited against a first wholesale order. Where no order follows, the sample has been supplied and consumed and the charge is not refunded.
7.Refused consignments and abandoned imports
We ship to the address on the confirmed proforma invoice. A consignment refused on arrival, or abandoned at customs because import charges were not settled, is returned or destroyed at your cost, and is not treated as a return.
Import duty, import VAT and clearance charges under DAP are yours and are not part of our price. Budget for them separately. A consignment left unpaid at customs starts accruing storage against you, not against us.
8.Where this page sits against the others
This page describes the same commitments as clauses 8, 10, 13 and 14 of the terms of sale, and the same claims window as the shipping policy. They are written to say the same thing, and if you find a place where they do not, the terms of sale is the document that governs.
Where a signed contract or purchase agreement says something different, that document wins over all three.
The commercial terms behind this page — payment, tolerances, title, liability and governing law — are in the terms of sale. Packing, Incoterms and the claims window are in the shipping policy. How a sample becomes a reserved batch is under batch sampling.
