Advice and Beans

Hey everyone, I know it’s been a while!  While it has been quiet on the blog, we have been very busy behind the scenes trying to serve our customers better.  I’ve been thinking about doing a video encapsulating our philosophy of doing business, and what makes us stand out.  We have the best return customer rate in the business, and I thought we would share some of the reasons why.  If you’ve been on the fence about ordering from us, I hope this gives you some indication of how far we will go to serve our customers!  If you don’t know the address, here is our online store!

1)  Same Day Shipping – In the beginning, there is very little to differentiate one seller from another.  One of the ways we have done so from day one is offering same day shipping for all orders that come in until 3pm.  And many days if I can manage it, I’ll ship everything that comes in until about 5pm, stopping by the Post Office on the way home to drop off packages which miss the regular pickup.  Getting your package in the mail ASAP is very important to us.  We work 7 days a week (about a half shift on Saturday and Sunday) to make sure you get your item as soon as humanly possible without using Express Service!

2)  USPS Priority Mail Shipping for most orders – Whatever else one might say about USPS, I can attest that Priority Mail is the best reasonably costed standard shipping method available today.  UPS Ground can compete for a certain geographical area, but no one else guarantees 2-3 day shipping times (In TN and parts of surrounding states, some folks have told us they got their package the next day!).  This includes Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  If you need your order as quick as possible, you can trust us to get it there.  Just today, we had several customers on the phone who thanked us on getting their order to them ASAP.

3)  We Value Your Privacy – I am a privacy nut myself, and so we go out of our way to protect yours.  First, we use discrete packaging, meaning nothing will ever show up on your door with a big ‘Survival Stuff Inside!’ or giant ‘Discount Mylar Bags’ plastered all over the box.  We have many folks who specifically request plain packaging, and this is to let everyone know we don’t have ANY outer packaging with our name on it.  The only place you will see our name is the return address as required by our shipping carriers.

4)  We Value Your Privacy, Part 2 – For all orders placed online, we NEVER see or have access to your credit card information.  It is handled in exactly the same manner as it would be at a department or other retail store…invisibly and behind the scenes.  Only our credit card processor actually sees your credit card number, so you never have to fear one of our employees gallivanting around Europe using your credit card!

5)  We Value Your Privacy, Part 3 – While I’ve thought about doing one, we don’t have a mailing list.  We don’t, and will never, sell your email to anyone for any reason.  I hate junk mail in my inbox, and many of the survival stores are terrible about sending out a ton.  The only way I would send an email to a customer is if they asked me to do a newsletter, and only then if they chose to opt in.  This is currently not in the planning stage, so if you’d like to see one, let me know.

6)  Free Shipping over $50 and on all kits – In the beginning I tested out ‘Free shipping on everything!’  That wasn’t very funny when I had dozens of folks placing orders for 2 Mylar Bags at $.25 each.  Needless to say, we lost our shirts and had to change that policy quickly.=)  We know $50 is a lot of money to some folks, and so we also offer free shipping on all our kits (located here).  Our goal is not to make money on shipping, and we only have the minimum charge to cover the cost of processing and packaging small orders.

7)  When We Screw Up, We Fix It – This is perhaps the defining aspect of how we run our business.  While we do our best to get all orders out the door perfect, inevitably we’ll mess one up.  However, you have my promise that I’ll fix it, quickly!  Your satisfaction with your order is our only concern.

8)  No Hassle Returns – Something not quite what you pictured when you bought it?  No problem, you are welcome to return anything at any time for a full refund!  Again, I only wish I could get the same from many of the places I order!=)  We’ve accepted returns from customers who had their product for a year and finally said to themselves ‘I’m never going to do this’.  And that’s OK, ship it back to us and we’ll refund it.

If there’s anything we can do serve you that we’re not currently doing, please let me know!  We are working on getting some new bag sizes in to fill requests of customers, so I hope you’ll check back!

There seems to be a good deal of misinformation and lack of information out there about folding of Mylar bags and whether it causes pinholes in the bags (it doesn’t). I have answered this question before in our FAQ, however because it has come up pretty frequently lately I thought I would do a post about it.

First, I think part of the challenge is because the idea seems to make sense, and so folks read something like ‘folding damages Mylar bags’ and accept the information at face value, understandably. Also, even some of our competitors who should (and probably do) know better do it, for whatever reason.

I think the main cause for the confusion is that folks often use different terms than what they really mean. For example, there is a difference between a pinhole and a puncture when it comes to Mylar bags. A pinhole is a natural part of every Mylar bag. It’s not a dirty word; it doesn’t affect the longevity of your food. Every Mylar bag, whether the lightest 2 mil bag to the heaviest 7.5 mil Mylar bag, has pinholes. There is a measurement that manufacturers use ‘Pinholes per meter squared’ that they use to describe the effect. So when you stick your head into a bag, or shine a flashlight into it, you will see pinholes. That is absolutely normal, and nothing to fear.

A puncture, on the other hand, is an incredibly rare defect in a Mylar bag, usually caused by it being poked by something. It almost never occurs naturally, maybe 1 in 500,000 bags. The main times it occurs is when a manufacturer gets to the end of their roll stock when producing bags, and will occasionally slice a bag. Even though we tell them not to, many times they will tape the tear (which always shocks and annoys me!) and ship them to us. Usually we catch these bags when we package and do not send them out. On a rare occasion, they will make it to a customer, and we apologize when that happens, and will always gladly refund or replace damaged bags.

To understand why pinholes are not an issue, let’s take a look at how Mylar bags are built. Mylar bags are usually composed from 2-5 layers of barriers (though we’ve carried some with 6 on occasion, and for some applications you can get them with more), adhesives and foil. A barrier layer is one that blocks oxygen or moisture, and is usually invisible; an adhesive layer is what holds the different layers of the bag together (and some adhesives even have barrier properties as well). And the foil layer is what we actually ‘see’ when we look at the bag, the metal that we refer to as ‘Mylar’. In actuality, Mylar is a clear polyester type material. Only because it is often bonded with an aluminum or metallized layer do we think of Mylar as ‘metallic.’

A pinhole is where the foil layer did not bond to the upper and lower barrier and adhesive layers of the bag. So every place you see a pinhole, there are still 2-4 layers of material protecting your food. Pinholes do not happen because a Mylar bag was shipped folded, or they get creased. They just occur at random places during manufacturing, and again, will show up in all Mylar bags to a greater or lesser extend.

To demonstrate, I did a Youtube video showing that I can crinkle, crush, and fold a Mylar bag, and it will still be airtight. I took a picture yesterday of a different bag to demonstrate the same thing.  It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the bag is holding about a gallon of water with no leaks.

Generally speaking, in our household we only use Mylar bags that have been returned from customers, often because the customer felt folding damaged the bags somehow.  Even after packaging and shipping bags two ways, we have never had a bag fail.  Foil is simply a material that ‘prints’, meaning if you even touch it it will retain the mark.  You can ‘write’ your names on Mylar bags with a coin or fingernail.  Doing this does not hurt the bag.

This business is our livelihood, and I care about our customers.  Many of them have become friends.  I would never do anything to put any of them at risk by shipping product in a way that could potentially make it not work correctly.  We ship hundreds of thousands of bags per month, and there has never been a case where a bag has been returned (except in the case of the tape issue mentioned above) where I have not been able to achieve an airtight seal.  There are several other prepper businesses out there that also ship their bags folded; none of us would even have a business if folding bags damaged them, because we either would have switched to a rolled shipping model, stopped selling them or gone out of business due to the number of returns.

So the next time you are on a prepper or survival forum and someone says you should stick a flashlight in a bag and if it has pinholes it should be returned, please drop me an email, as I will gladly go to the forum and gently reply with the correct information.=)

Keep on prepping folks!

Our 2nd attempt at an informational video. The camera is a little shakier without my wife to help; I’ll have to draft her from now on. We’ll keep getting better at the technical aspects I am sure. My wife said she needed a new photo camera; maybe we can find something that takes some better video/sound as well. Suggestions of videos folks would like to see are welcome!

Thanks!

It’s odd to me, but it seems I can make a video a whole lot quicker than a blog post.  So I’ve decided to do a hybrid for the blog.  When I start my next post series, I’m going to do a video synopsis as well.

My wife and I did this video this morning on two alternate uses of Mylar bags, as shipping envelopes and ice packs!  If we do ok on Youtube, we’ll definitely invest in some better equipment, as I know the audio isn’t great.

I hope you’ll let me know what you think!

Hey everyone, very quick note to let you know I’ll be on the Homestead Honey Hour with the awesome Katzcradul tomorrow night, July 5, from 8pm-9pm.  This is the promo trailer and let’s you know how to log in to the show and the chat room.  We’ll be talking food storage and prepping I’m sure, but most of the questions will be from the listeners, so it could range almost anywhere!  Hope to see you there, thanks!