Air Freight Shipping
Pre-orders for the some products have the option to upgrade their order to air freight shipping. This article explains what exactly that upgrade means, and why it's even an option.
What is air freight shipping?
Air freight shipping is one way to get products from the factory in China where they get made to our fulfillment centers in the Netherlands and in the United States.
The other way to ship all those keyboards is via sea freight shipping. Sea freight shipping typically takes a lot longer, but is substantially cheaper.
Note: The freight shipment (air freight or sea freight) from the manufacturer to our warehouse is not the same as the shipment from our warehouse to your front door.
Usually when we make the bulk shipment from the manufacturer to our warehouse, we stick with the cheapest option, which is via sea freight.
- Sea freight shipments from China to the US typically take 4-5 weeks to arrive.
- Sea freight shipments from China to the EU typically take 6-8 weeks to arrive.
Air freight shipping typically takes 2-3 weeks to arrive and is far more reliable.
How to Upgrade?
If upgrading your shipment to air freight shipping is available for your order, you'll find it as an upgrade on the Wooting Hub.
The cost of the upgrade depends on the weight of the product. This is either €8.00 / $8.00 or €12.00 / $12.00.
Don't see the option to upgrade? Don't worry!
Not all orders can upgrade to air freight shipping. Whether or not to offer air freight as an option is done on a per-batch basis.
The extra cost of the upgrade is fully passed through on average. To be fully transparent, since shipping prices change all the time, sometimes it costs us a little more than €/$12 per keyboard to upgrade, and sometimes a little less.
In some cases, Wooting will make the decision to air freight an entire batch instead of splitting some via air and some via sea. If this is the case, air freight will not be offered for the batch.
Why are we offering this upgrade?
There are two reasons why we are offering this upgrade:
Some customers want their keyboards as soon as possible.
These customers are willing to pay a little bit extra in shipping costs to receive their keyboard a whole lot sooner. The air freight shipping upgrade from the factory to our warehouse is much cheaper than upgrading the shipment from our warehouse to your front door, and saves more time too!
Air freight shipping is far more reliable.
Since the start of the Covid pandemic, we have experienced all kinds of delays and other difficulties related to sea freight shipping. We have specifically experienced these delays:
- Shipments getting assigned to different (and later) boats
- Delays in loading or unloading at any of the ports that the ship stops at along the way
- The ship our keyboards are on getting stuck in the Suez canal for two weeks
- Delays at customs at the destination country when one product in a shared shipping container has a copy right dispute, even if it's a totally unrelated product is from a completely different company.
Why is this upgrade not available for some orders or batches?
We make the decision to offer or not offer the upgrade for each batch of each product. This is because freight shipping costs and timelines change constantly.
For every bulk shipment we request quotes for both air freight shipping and sea freight shipping. Sometimes the time savings from air freight shipping just isn't worth the extra cost.
An example of when we decided it wasn't worth the price to split the shipment was for the North American orders for the Wooting Two HE. We got a quote for sea freight shipping that would only take 30 days, whereas the quote for air freight shipping was for 20 days but over twice the price!
How do I upgrade?
You can upgrade your order to air freight shipping directly via the order hub!
If you don't see the option to upgrade to air freight shipping for your order, then the upgrade isn't available for your specific batch.