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Why hasn't my order arrived?
We apologize; we have been experiencing a number of problems with our supply chain as well as shipping carriers since COVID began, and have struggled to keep abreast of all of them. Here are some very common scenarios...please see if your situation fits any of these categories. If so, we beg for your patience. If your order is more than a month overdue, please let us know right away. However, in some of the instances below, there is little we can do.
1. Did your order include a pre-order? If so, we ship all such orders only when the pre-ordered book is in stock. If you need the rest of your books sooner, please place a separate order.
2. Did you choose Media Mail as your shipping method? We are finding that quite a few of these packages are disappearing into black holes for weeks at a time with no updates...then they magically reappear and get delivered. Sometimes this is taking up to a month. It is infuriating and no explanation is ever given. However, in every instance that we know of so far, the package does end up being delivered. I hate to ask for your patience with this one, but it is outside our control.
3. Does tracking show that the label was generated but the Post Office is waiting for the package? Again, thank you USPS. The post office located nearest our warehouse has been doing this to us for a while. Their staff often fails to scan the packages upon intake. So it's hard to say where in the system they are...sitting on the loading dock? Halfway to you? No one knows until they suddenly show up. The good news is that we are getting around this by transporting packages to the next town, so we are hoping this problem will now be fixed. If you paid for Priority Mail and your package is caught in this limbo, please let us know ASAP.
4. Did you place an order for multiple copies of one or more books? See the answer for #6 below.
5. Did you place a large order of 10-20 books or more? See the answer for #6 below.
6. Did your order include one or more of our textbooks? We have been experiencing severe delays in receiving stock from our supplier. Combined with unprecedented demand for our books, especially our textbooks, this has led to a struggle to keep enough stock of certain titles on our shelves. In most of these instances, we will often drop ship your books to you directly from our supplier, so that you don't need to wait for them to arrive here and then have us ship them. Unfortunately, this still means that it could take up to a month to receive your order. Again, we apologize profusely for this situation, but we are doing the best we can to keep up with demand. Thank you so much for understanding.
My order arrived damaged/one or more items are defective. What should I do?
Sadly, this is becoming more and more common as the major carriers and manufacturers are experiencing disruptions in the labor force available. We do the best we can within reason to package your order carefully, but the reality is that we cannot waterproof and damage-proof every single package, and the least expensive shipping options carry no insurance. We cannot afford to replace every order that is damaged by the Post Office after it leaves our hands. The bad news is that if your order shipped via USPS Media Mail, Parcel Select or Ground Advantage, there is often little we can do.
Here's a checklist to help you if you receive your order in poor condition. In any of these cases, please submit a case through our contact form and when we respond, you can send photos.
1. Is the packaging damaged? This means that the damage was incurred in transit by the carrier. If your order shipped via USPS Priority Mail, UPS or Fedex, please hold on to the packaging for now, and send photos of it and the damaged items so that we can file a claim with the carrier. Unfortunately, if your order shipped via USPS Media Mail, Parcel Select or Ground Advantage, we have no recourse.
2. Is the packaging undamaged, but the items inside have been damaged? Notify us of this situation and please provide photos showing the state of the packaging and the damaged items. If we determine that we failed to appropriately protect the items in shipping, or that we inadvertently shipped items without noticing the damage, we will replace them at our cost.
3. Did you receive a defective book? Are pages missing or falling out, are they glued in upside down, are there torn pages or other manufacturing defects? Again, sadly, the quality control of our printers is sometimes lacking. When we did all our own shipping, we did our best to catch these problems, but now that we are using a warehouse service, we cannot expect them to open every single book to check for these defects. So unfortunately this happens sometimes. Please notify us as soon as you discover a defect, and send us photos. We will be happy to replace these defective book(s).
4. What constitutes damage or defects? Here we must sometimes be circumspect. We all would like our newly purchased items to be in beautifully pristine condition, but we also value the convenience of having them shipped to our doorstep. There is a trade-off here. A wrinkle in the gluing of a spine or a bumped corner that mars the perfection of a book, while not ideal, does not affect its usefulness. If we discarded every book that has these minor cosmetic issues, this would be wasteful. Please be fair in considering whether the defects you see are minor and understandable.
Why isn't your phone number listed? I have questions and would like to speak to someone.
There are two reasons why our phone number isn't listed:
1. Our business is also our home. Many people do not realize this and will call outside business hours, which disrupts our family time together.
2. Because of the size and nature of our small family business, we do not operate the way a large business does. We do not have someone on staff to answer phone calls, and as a busy mother of 6, I cannot always be available. Moreover, the demands of our growing business mean that while the work has doubled, the labor force has not.
It is always a blessing to meet our customers in person or over the phone. But I have to be realistic with the time I have. Please, if you have questions, see if they are answered below, or submit them via e-mail. I promise to respond as soon as I am able.
How quickly will my order be shipped?
We used to ship all our orders ourselves, however, in 2019 a perfect storm of issues arose. Apparently God decided it was time to hand over our warehousing and shipping to others. He was good enough to place this in the hands of a local Catholic homeschool family that we have known for years. They have done a wonderful job for us and we are so happy to support their business.
Like many other businesses right now, they are extremely busy but have limited staff. They also have numerous businesses whose orders require shipment. So while I would love to be able to make sure all orders ship within 24 hours, the reality is that this is no longer possible with the challenges we currently face. Sometimes it takes 2 days, or longer around weekends and holidays. This may seem slow, but I must say, I’m not interested in farming this job out to an Amazon-style company. So we sincerely apologize. Good things sometimes take time.
This is why we recommend that if you absolutely must have your order by a specific day, please just let us know so that we can flag your order to be expedited.
We hope that when you do receive your books, you will love them so much that you will forgive us for being the schleps that we are. :)
We would like to sell your books in our store/church, etc.--do you offer terms for resellers?
Yes! To receive more information regarding our standard wholesale terms and conditions, please visit our wholesale registration page and submit your information. Once we have received this form, we can process your request for a wholesale account.
Please know that, unfortunately, we cannot offer wholesale terms to those who wish to buy in bulk but are not resellers. We try to make up for this by offering tiered discounts for bulk purchases. If the books you are interested in do not have bulk pricing offered, let us know and we can add that.
Do you accept returns?
As much as we would like to accept returns, we do not have the sort of "cushion" that larger businesses have. Once items have left our hands, they can no longer be sold as new, and this means we would have to dispose of returned items some other way. Amazon throws returned books in the garbage. We simply can't afford this.
We want you to be happy with your purchase, and to this end, we have begun adding links to sample pages from each book, so that you can get a sense of what it's like before you buy it. If you don't see a link for the book you are considering, and would like to see sample pages, contact us and we'll see what we can do to help you.
All of this being said, if you have received an order that contains defective or damaged books, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can address the problem. While we cannot replace books that are damaged through uninsured shipping methods like Media Mail, unfortunately sometimes defective books slip past our notice during packing. Please be ready to provide photos of the damage or defects and any damaged packaging if applicable.
Do you ship internationally?
Yes, we can ship to most countries, but if you are located in Europe or Australia, you may want to check first with Cenacle House in the UK or with Freedom Publishing in Australia to see if they can ship your order for less. For our Canadian customers, you can find most of our books at Sunrise Marian for the same list price and domestic shipping, so be sure to check them out.
Please also be aware that international shipping can incur additional import costs such as duties, taxes and brokerage fees. St. Augustine Academy Press cannot be responsible for these additional costs. See our Policies page for more information.
At present, due to the current vat tax scheme in the UK, we have had to place restrictions on orders being shipped to addresses in the UK. We apologize for this inconvenience, but unfortunately, we have neither the time nor the resources to become tax collectors for a foreign government. Therefore, only orders over £135 can be placed going to UK addresses. Because the exchange rate fluctuates, and our prices are in USD, it is tricky to accurately set this limit. We have currently chosen to set the threshold for orders destined for the UK at USD $180.
How much will it cost to ship my order?
To estimate your shipping cost, add the products you would like to purchase to your cart. When viewing your cart, you will find a link that allows you to estimate shipping and tax. Click this link and enter your location details to receive an estimate of shipping costs.
For our international customers, you may get a more accurate quote by proceeding to checkout. Don't worry, no order will be placed until you submit payment, but you may find better options in the checkout area than are provided in the cart estimator. We have recently upgraded our shipping providers and the rates you will find are the best we can offer, and are sometimes surprisingly affordable.
I am worried about the safety of my data and would prefer to place my order by phone. Can I do this?
We definitely understand your concern, and we do our best to make sure that our site is kept up-to-date with all the latest security features.
There are a few things we need to let you know in terms of the safety of your data here on our website:
1. A few years ago, we were updating our account with MailChimp (which we use to send our newsletters), when by accident ALL our customers' e-mail addresses were added to our mailing list. We were mortified, but despite lots of effort, we could not undo the process, and did our best to apologize. This is the only time we have ever used customer data without opting-in. We never, ever intentionally use your data unless you have given us permission, and we never share it with anyone else.
2. We have to use the very same online interface to process your order that you would be using if you placed it yourself online. There is no way around this. We have no way of processing your credit card payment without using an online connection.
3. Now that we no longer ship orders from our premises, for your order to be processed and shipped, it must be placed through our website, because that is the only way it can be properly routed to our warehouse for shipping.
During the checkout process, we give you the option to send a check, so you are welcome to avail yourself of this option if you are uncomfortable with using your credit card online.
We are blessed to have watched our business grow a lot over the years, but we still have the same staff of one person with occasional help from family members. And I honestly love meeting our customers in person or on the phone. However, please understand that time spent taking orders over the phone is time we cannot spend in bringing you the great books you love.
Have you made any changes or updates to the books you offer?
The answer to this question varies slightly, but always revolves around very specific exceptions to a vigorous "Absolutely NOT!"
In particular, with regard to our Catechism textbooks, we were so anxious to reassure our customers that we had not changed anything at all, that we recreated all of them using high-quality photographic reprints of the originals...and that includes the teacher's manuals.
In general, our method of reproducing books is intended to bring you the exact content of these original books, even to the point where sometimes we won't update misspellings because they were common at the time the book was printed. In the books that we have retypeset, sometimes we will fix things like punctuation (the Victorian era was not given to using commas to help divide up their long run-on sentences) and if we come across things like the n-word (which was common in novels set in the deep south prior to 1950), we will replace them with terms that are less offensive to modern ears. Otherwise we are committed to leaving the text as-is.
Whenever we make any changes to a book, we will always say so. If it's just minor language and punctuation, etc. like we described above, you will find that noted on the copyright page. If the changes are more substantial, we will always add an editor's note to the front matter of the book in order to explain what we did and why.
There are a few notable exceptions to our "no changes" rule, and again, they all have very specific, very good reasons:
1. Mother Mary Loyola's book Soldier of Christ was written in 1900, during an era in which English colonialism was at its zenith and a good deal of the language that refers to the natives they fought in Africa is quite honestly grating to modern ears. There would have been a loud chorus of complaints had we left this untouched, so we found creative ways to smooth that language in several places, while being as faithful as possible to the original content. We also added extensive footnotes to help readers understand the many references to current events and colloquialisms that are no longer well known.
2. The Seat of Wisdom series by Mother Mary St. Peter had great content that was presented in an age-appropriate way, but the language was very condescending and sometimes poorly organized, so we carefully tweaked the language to make it less saccharine and more clearly presented.
3. After being asked dozens of times about the possibility of adapting The King of the Golden City by Mother Mary Loyola for boys (we were uncomfortable doing this, as it required major changes) we discovered that, back in the 1920's, the French did exactly that, and it was approved by the author. So we used the adaptations (and illustrations) from that French version for boys to create one in English.
4. Books like A Pictorial Catechism, The Stations of the Cross, Bible Stories for Baby Hands and My Picture Book of First Confession / First Communion started out their life in a slightly different format or language.
- A Pictorial Catechism had two very different editions in French and English; we combined the best qualities of the two and added some formatting that made the content easier to use.
- In creating Bible Stories for Baby Hands, we took gorgeous lithographs from several older books that had some dreadful, nearly unreadable Victorian text, and combined them either with actual Scripture (for the New Testament) or condensed and paraphrased stories from the Bible that seek to imitate the language of the original (for the Old Testament).
- The Stations of the Cross was never a book; we took beautiful old lithographs and added St. Alphonsus Liguori's text (and checked what we found against the original to make sure it was accurate).
- The Picture Books had to be translated from the original Dutch...but we found that the writing was kinda awful. So we used the basic outline they used and rewrote them, borrowing heavily from Mother Mary Loyola, in order to present a book that retained the sort of language and doctrinal solidity you would expect from a book produced in that era.
5. A Child's True Story of Jesus was actually an existing activity book, but it was missing any instructions or read-aloud text that was meant to accompany the pictures and paste-in text. So after doing extensive research to rebuild the intended method used for those books, we again borrowed heavily from Mother Mary Loyola in order to provide the missing content.
There may be others we haven't listed that have similar adaptations, but these are the big ones that come to mind.
We hope this gives you a strong sense of just how faithfully we seek to reproduce our books.
Which series of Religion textbooks is right for my family?
This is a natural question, one which I wish I had the answers for. It is difficult for me to advise you in this, because every family's needs are different. We have done our best to outline each series, using what information we have. You can read those outlines here:
In a nutshell, I find that the biggest differences between the two are:
1. The Our Holy Faith Series uses the updated Baltimore Catechism from the 1940s, whereas the Highway to Heaven series uses the original unrevised version.
2. The Our Holy Faith Series focuses more heavily on the Catechism, studying the First Communion Catechism, and Catechism # 1 and 2 over the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 8th grades. 4th grade studies the Mass and Liturgical Year, and 7th grade studies Bible and Church History.
On the other hand, the Highway to Heaven series is largely story-based in its earlier years, narrating our faith through the lens of the people involved. Therefore it takes the first two years to study the Life of Christ, with the first introduction to the Baltimore Catechism #1 in the 3rd grade. 4th and 5th grade study Bible History and Church History, respectively. 6th grade studies the Mass, and 7th and 8th grade study the Baltimore Catechism #2 in great detail.
3. The Highway to Heaven series, by its design, is not merely a religion course but a full religion curriculum that includes outside reading, hymns and artwork. There are also lots of teacher resources that help parents and teachers to deepen their own understanding of the topics and/or more effectively communicate the lessons to the children. Therefore, while it is entirely possible to use the series without any of these additions, its biggest strength comes from using the Teacher's manuals to incorporate this extra material. This may seem daunting from a cost perspective, but provides a fuller integration of the lessons into the life of the child and even the family.
I personally favor the Highway to Heaven series as you can probably see; however, I wish to stress that I have not had the opportunity to use it with my own children, so you should take that with some grains of salt. :)
I wish you all the best in discerning which series to use.
Can you publish my book / sell it on your website?
Unfortunately, the answer to this question is usually no. We have considered this option in the past, but the reality is that running a business as a family requires us to wear many, many hats, and can be extremely overwhelming at times. If we were to add the complexity of handling royalties and publicity for living authors, we would no longer be able to focus on the basics of what we do best: reprinting great out-of-print books that are sorely needed today.
We welcome suggestions for titles you would like to see brought back into print; however, please do not send us manuscripts for review or publishing. Any items sent to us will not be acknowledged or returned. Please respect our limited time constraints.