ALL SALES ARE FINAL! BOTH IN PERSON AND ONLINE!
Please allow our shipping team 3 business days to fulfill your online order. If we run into any trouble, we will notify you by email or phone to discuss your options. With over 30 years of experience in the bonsai industry in the United States, please trust us to provide you with good quality products and services based on the existing general example images and descriptions in our product listings.
Chargebacks are not permitted once you agree to place an order or purchase because you understand the nature of the bonsai products and services provided during any order or purchase with House of Bonsai. As bonsai professionals, we work hard behind the scenes before the final products or services are completed and delivered to our customers. We honor our staff's skillful dedication, precious time, and energy by ensuring we are compensated appropriately so we may continue doing business with the general public through this fascinating global hobby of bonsai. After all, a piece of our small family-owned bonsai business will accompany you in becoming your new family member.
If you still haven't received notifications that your online order is being taken care of after 3 business days of placing it, please call the store at 562-804-6888 during regular business hours from Monday through Saturday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST.
If you're interested in adding Package Protection, please make sure to add Route before checkout. Route protects lost, stolen, or damaged packages on your order. It will appear as "1-Click Protect—Powered by Route" on your order. For more information on Route, please click here.
If you don't want Route, please make sure to remove it from your cart before placing the order at the end since our direct website store automatically puts it in there. It's more often a wanted service for peace of mind that there are options for possibly getting a fast replacement or refund for your order due to in-transit-related issues that were out of our control here at House of Bonsai.
Once your order is shipped and leaves our store, House of Bonsai is NOT RESPONSIBLE for any transit-related issues, such as your order getting lost, stolen, damaged, etc, when it was in the physical possession of the shipping carrier (such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc). We have absolutely no control over how your order's parcels were handled while it was being moved from our store to your delivery location. All Ground-level shipping labels (such as USPS Ground Advantage, UPS Ground, and FedEx Ground) automatically have $100 insurance coverage for the merchandise's declared value inside the parcel. The same can be said for higher-level shipping label services such as USPS Priority Mail, FedEx Express, UPS 3-Day Select, and other similar expedited services. Even though we use high-quality packaging materials to protect your order, this does not guarantee that you'll receive the order in perfect, undamaged condition every time. For these "once-in-a-blue-moon mishaps," this is where that included insurance coverage comes into play for most orders. Even the top US shipping carriers acknowledge that sometimes things can go wrong during transit, such as the parcel getting dropped when loading into a truck or trailer or it getting stuck on the conveyor belt at a distribution hub so one side gets crushed or dented, etc.
All you need to do is promptly submit an insurance claim to receive compensation for the transit-related issues that occurred on your order. The sooner you can submit the claim after the completed delivery time, the higher the chances that the shipping carrier company may approve it. Depending on the order's total declared value, additional insurance may have been purchased when the shipping label was created to cover all of the items in your order's parcels. Please look at your order details carefully to determine if this is the case before submitting an insurance claim. For those who chose to purchase Route's Package Protection, the claim submission process is even more accessible and faster with them than doing it directly with the shipping carrier companies on your own.
If you do notice damage on your items upon opening, PLEASE DO NOT THROW AWAY ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE ENVELOPES OR BOXES AND INTERNAL PACKING MATERIALS! You must keep everything you received with your order so that it's readily available to take more photos as needed to process the claim. Depending on the circumstances, a claims representative may need be dispatched to visit your delivery location in person to inspect the received order and related materials to determine how they will process your claim on their end. House of Bonsai has no input or controlling factor regarding how the claim will be processed since this is solely done by the shipping carrier (such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc), and we have no control over their actions. But if you require assistance because they need the order sender's response, please make sure to include your Order # in your email correspondence with us at houseofbonsai@gmail.com, and we will gladly cooperate with the claim investigation. Until you receive a final response about your claim from the shipping carrier, please continue to save all the damaged items, original shipping envelopes or boxes, and packing materials used inside. Once the claim is closed, you are then good to go on disposing of everything.
If House of Bonsai is notified of an order issue within 48 hours of the successful delivery's completion, we can provide assistance in addition to our above-stated claim handling policy. However, for all deliveries past this initial 48-hour window, we will assume that "no news is good news" and that your order has been completed. All sales are final.
Our product prices listed online are the same as if you're physically shopping in person at our 5.3-acre bonsai nursery store! We like to keep the pricing simple for everyone, customers and staff alike!
House of Bonsai is a highly production-oriented bonsai specialty nursery, so we don't have the means to constantly pull ourselves away from production to take more photos of our ever-changing pre-bonsai & bonsai trees. There are tens of thousands of trees in our 5.3-acre bonsai nursery specialty store. The actual plant you receive from us at House of Bonsai may vary from the example images provided. This is due to various factors such as seasonal variations, individual trimming and styling, and natural changes during growth. However, with our 30 years of experience growing high-quality bonsai material, we aim to provide you with a beautiful pre-bonsai or styled bonsai tree when you order with us. This policy ensures we can maintain a massive selection of species, shapes, and sizes at reasonable prices for the public. Please assume that the images you see are general example images. It is always highly recommended that you visit our 5.3-acre bonsai nursery store in person to select a tree yourself. House of Bonsai is located at 5214 Palo Verde Ave, Lakewood, CA 90713, and we're open Monday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. We're closed on Sundays and some major holidays. Please check our direct website's home page for up-to-date information about our store hours and policies.
Due to our limited staff size, our staff members ARE NOT ABLE to always provide recent photos of bonsai and pre-bonsai trees that are 2 gallon sized or less for you to pick from, even when a written and/or phone request is submitted in person, via email, eBay message, phone call, text, etc. Smaller and/or younger bonsai materials have similar appearances to each other when they are 2 gallons or less in overall size. Please note that this photo request service is only available for bonsai that are 3-gallon sized or larger, as older trees have more well-defined trunk and primary branch structures. We recommend looking for one of our numbered trees if you have a specific idea of what kind of bonsai you need. These trees are identified by a number at the end of the product title (such as 'Japanese Black Pine Bonsai Tree #44'). We provide multiple photos of the same tree from different angles, ensuring you get a clear idea of what you're purchasing.
House of Bonsai primarily relies on USPS to ship our online orders to most US addresses, which will be received within 2-4 business days once dropped off at a USPS Post Office Branch. Because of this, we can ship to all 50 US states and all of the US Territories such as Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands. However, please note that extra faraway locations from us in Lakewood, CA (such as near the New England region of Northeastern US, Alaska, Hawai'i, and the US Territories) may require an additional shipping cost payment before we can ship it due to our usual flat rate shipping charge not being enough to cover the purchase of a shipping label. Please understand that we have no control over the shipping rates since they are determined by the common carrier (such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, etc.) when we create the insured shipping label. The shipping rates can vary throughout the year due to various factors, such as changes in gasoline prices, weather challenges during transit, etc.
Our shipping team primarily ships orders containing live bonsai and pre-bonsai trees on Mondays and Tuesdays to limit the number of days your tree is stuck in a sealed shipping box. Ideally, we do not wish for it to get stuck in a shipping carrier warehouse over the weekend, as this will extend the transit time by 1-2+ days and likely increase the post-delivery stress on the tree. Most of these orders are received by Wednesday to Saturday at the latest within the same week in the continental United States, depending on your location from our store.
We continue to ship from Monday through Thursday for orders containing non-live bonsai and pre-bonsai trees, such as soil, pots, tools, wire, fertilizer, etc. Orders placed on Fridays through Sundays will be grouped to be fulfilled the following Monday (or Tuesday if that Monday is a federal holiday).
On occasion, we use FedEx Ground and UPS Ground to ship orders. Depending on the shipping carrier and time of year, your actual delivery completion timeframe may be vastly different than indicated in these estimated shipping transit map images, as shown on the total Shipping, Return & Cancellation Policy page. Please note that most of our products at House of Bonsai will have a flat-rate shipping cost. This amount is disclosed in the product's description. However, please note that extra faraway locations from us in Lakewood, CA (such as near the New England region of Northeastern US, Alaska, Hawai'i, and the US Territories) may require an additional shipping cost payment before we can ship it due to our usual flat rate shipping charge not being enough to cover the purchase of a shipping label. Please understand that we have no control over the shipping rates since they are determined by the common carrier (such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, etc.) when we create the insured shipping label. The shipping rates can vary throughout the year due to various factors, such as changes in gasoline prices, weather challenges during transit, etc.
If you order multiple items, (except for bonsai soil), House of Bonsai will try to combine them into fewer boxes. If there's any unused shipping money, we will gladly fit a helpful bonsai-related item into your package that's equivalent to the leftover money. If you want to avoid this kind of service and wish to receive a partial refund on the unused shipping money, please email us at houseofbonsai@gmail.com so that our staff knows to do so once the shipping label is created. If you need a combined shipping quote before placing an order, please email us with the title "Combined Shipping Estimate" at houseofbonsai@gmail.com and include your full delivery address and which items you're interested in to see if we can do this for you. Please note that there is no guarantee that we can combine all items, depending on the item's size and fragility. If we know that the item must ship by itself and is not eligible for combined shipping with other items, we will state that in the description.