Terms of Sale

UPDATE - The 2025 sale is tentatively scheduled for mid-March. Watch your emails for the official sales date around that time!

TERMS OF SALE

The tuber sales will be separated into timeslots on the same day for Loyalty (prior) customers, and Subscriber customers and then everyone else. Sales will be password protected for the Loyalty and Subscriber time slots. The passwords for Loyalty and Subscribers will be different. If you are a Loyalty Customer, but you miss the first window, you should also get a Subscribers Email and you should use that password for the second window.

All dahlia tubers sold are grown on my farm and all pictures used are actual dahlias growing in the field (Note: there is one exception noted in the details for the “Annie’s Wedding” variety). All photography is of our actual blooms and taken by Tailwind Farm Dahlias. All rights reserved, no permission given for commercial or personal use unless granted in writing. Copying and publishing and/or posting a photo anywhere with the caption ‘not my photo’ does not constitute permission to use Tailwind Farm photos or absolve you from copyright issues! I sell individual tubers, divided by hand. Diseased tubers found in the digging or dividing process are destroyed. I occasionally sample test for virus. I sterilize tools and wear disposable gloves while digging and dividing and sanitize snips when harvesting. The descriptions of dahlias provided includes American Dahlia Society size and form, where available.

Only viable tubers are sold with visible eyes and minimal wrinkles (if any). Inspect them immediately and properly store them per the needs dictated by your chosen storage environment. You must contact me within 3 days of receipt with any problems you have with the tubers sent. Tubers will arrive ready to grow when planted after your last frost date and in good growing conditions. Given a good tuber with a visible eye, I cannot be responsible for storing or growing conditions that cause your tuber to fail. No exceptions.

There will be varieties with low inventory due to the poor growing season I had last year in my microclimate; there will be a limit of 1 tuber per order for these varieties (listed in the description) and they will go fast. There are varieties that hadn’t eyed up enough prior to the sale date to include in the sale. There may be a Restock sale around the beginning of April. There may be additional tubers of cultivars that previously sold out and there may be cultivars added that didn’t make it into the first sale. Some tubers may be offered at a discount.

If I can’t complete your order due to storage problems, inventory error, etc., I will not ship a substitute without contacting you and offering you options which may include a refund for that tuber or your pick of another cultivar available.

As you may have learned from other sites and sales, the tubers are not saved for you when you put them in your cart. We are a small farm without the resources to have a complex website with a shopping cart that can put a ‘hold’ on your purchases until you pay. If you wait too long to check out, items from your cart may have been sold in the meantime. So be mindful of that! I try to avoid that by limiting the access to the site and delaying posting about the sale on all the dahlia Facebook groups and starting a stampede.

SHIPPING INFO

Shipping is by USPS Priority flat rate boxes. The Buyer is responsible for shipping fees. The buyer accepts the risk of lost, damaged, delayed or frozen packages and will file claims with the USPS if your package is lost, damaged, delayed or frozen. Tubers will start shipping in early April in order of purchase, but weather allowed depending on your location/weather and mine. I am in Rhode Island with cold winters, and I won’t ship if the weather forecast looks too cold. Package tracking numbers will be provided as long as I have a correct email with your order. With a few exceptions, my experience has been that the tubers are delivered in 2-3 days. I do not ship outside the United States.

RATES

Shipping rates are based on USPS flat rate shipping prices plus a small handling fee to cover shipping tape, etc.

Small Box: 1-5 tubers: $14.00 shipping

Medium Box - 6-14 tubers: $18.00 shipping

Large - 15-30: $26.00 shipping

X Large Box - 31+ tubers: $40.00 shipping

COMBINING ORDERS AND LOCAL PICKUP NOT OFFERED THIS YEAR

I will not be combining orders this year. I believe the division of the sale into blocks for prior customers and subscribers and everyone else is a good attempt to stave off the issues of crashing sites and items disappearing from carts. I also will be bringing new help into the shipping process due to personal, physical difficulties I am having this year, which requires the automation of the shipping process as much as possible. Combining orders is a very manual process which leads to mistakes even with the best of intentions. This leads to even more time fixing issues and processing refunds. If I have sufficient additional quantities for a restock sale, I will combine those later orders with the original sale orders as the quantity of restock orders is typically lower.

I have found that local pickup requires me to set aside blocks of my time for pickups for which people don’t show up. This is definitely not most people, but enough to make it difficult. My apologies if this doesn’t work for you, but it’s required for me this year.

IMPORTANT! - VERIFY SHIPPING INFO

Please carefully check your shipping information on your confirmation email. If you’ve entered anything incorrectly, send corrections as soon as possible via email to tailwindfarmri@gmail.com so it can be updated before shipping. There will be additional shipping costs charged for packages returned due to incorrect information entered during checkout that requires shipping again to the corrected destination. I cannot bear the cost of reshipping a box of tubers due to customer address input error.

PAYMENT METHOD

Payment will be via PayPal. Note that you can use a credit card with PayPal without having an account. An account does allow you to store your credit card and shipping information for faster checkout if you wish.