Guide to ordering Insects

How to buy insects

When ordering insects from the ARCade there are a few things you should know that will help you get the best experience.

We send every Tuesday.

Orders are sent out each Tuesday. Orders should be placed before Tuesday 9am to ensure dispatch on Tuesday afternoon.

We do all our packing and sending on Tuesday for a number of reasons including:

• So all our customers can plan on when to expect and receive delivery (usually Wednesday).
• To ensure even misplaced parcels can be tracked and found/delivered before the end of the week.
• So customers know when their product is leaving and when to be concerned or notify us if it does not arrive.
• So items damaged or dead in transit and arriving Wednesday can still be replaced that week in most cases.
• So regular customers can order any time during the week knowing the pack is sent the next Tuesday.
• To avoid public holidays and increased weekend mail/courier traffic.
• To reduce the risk of parcels being delayed and sitting over a weekend in transit.
• We have found that Tuesday is the best mail/courier day that achieves the highest rate of next day delivery.
• To keep costs down for you as we can negotiate cheaper delivery rates by doing bulk shipping on one day rather than asking for trucks to pick up less parcels on each of several days.

Extra orders and ongoing orders

We offer a unique service; you can place your orders to continue for a number of weeks or even to be ongoing indefinitely.

You will have a choice for each item as you select it to have it delivered once, multiple times or ongoing. That means you can make quite complicated orders with different items coming at different intervals to give your pets a change or a treat. Our website will present you a delivery calendar (in your account page) showing all products and when they will be shipped as well as charges and when they will be charged to your selected card.
Charges for ongoing orders are automatic and done on Friday afternoon. You will receive an email letting you know the payment was successful (receipt), or an email to say the payment failed. This gives you time over the weekend to attend to funds, choose another card to use – via your ARCade account, or fix expiry dates etc that may be incorrect. We will then attempt the charge again on Monday afternoon and send you another success/failure email.
No-one else offers such an easy automated service with you in control. From your ARCade account you can change anything, add items, cancel single items, change the card to use or even the delivery address (eg to a friend while you are away).
Selecting a size.
All our products are photographed against a ruler. On the main insect selection pages all the images are scaled identically. That means if you adjust your browsers view % until the ruler in one of our images matches a real ruler, you will be viewing all of the insects at actual life size. This will help avoid the common “it looked so much bigger on the screen” mistake.

No hidden charges at the ARCade.

Unlike most other websites selling insects, there are NO HIDDEN CHARGES at the ARCade. Each product you choose will be listed with its full GST and packaging inclusive price. Delivery will be calculated at the checkout as it will depend on the products chosen, the destination and the courier you select – which we will not know until you reach the checkout. But you will not get any nasty shocks with GST added at checkout, nor will you find any charges for packaging, security, fuel levy, service fee, handling fees etc.

Australia’s cheapest crickets.

On top of that, we offer the cheapest crickets. We are a conservation centre, not a profit-driven commercial business, so the normal profits are shared by you and our conservation projects. Not sure if we are the cheapest? – Just check our competitors (but make sure you go to their checkout so you can see all the nasty hidden charges!) And if you find a cheaper price, or you have a current cheaper supply we will beat it – just ask! You can email us at arcade@frogs.org.au

Express delivery

Despite the fact that we do not send immediately (unless you order Tuesday morning), we will always only use the fastest available shipping. For welfare reasons we will not send live insects of any kind in the post or by courier unless it is by the fastest possible means or in the case of Post – it must be at least express. It is not so that you get it sent from us same day you order – but so that when we send it (Tuesday) it arrives quickly and with minimum risk to the animals from cold/heat/food issues etc… We do it for good reason and to help you get good food safely.

Our Guarantee

We promise to get you your insects alive! If not we will replace what you lost (or most often more than you lost!). We pack about 20% over the advertised quantity so most weeks it’s a bonus! If you lose too many insects just email us ASAP and let us know what happened. We will either top up your next order (for small losses) or just replace the whole pack in the case of larger losses. Please let us know quickly if you are expecting an order and it hasn’t arrived (eg Wednesday night) and we will track it and see what can be done if it has been misplaced by a courier.
Once you are aware of how we do things you will find our service very reliable and performing exactly to your expectations. Which we find is generally the experience of all our customers.