Please read this page carefully before ordering any of our products to understand the turnaround time required to deliver your products. This page will also serve as an informational process guide. We cannot and do not guarantee any delivery day or delivery date whatsoever. We can only estimate the delivery from the time you place your order.
Also note carefully before ordering anything from this website the approximate delivery timeframe from the information below. With that said, please refrain from expecting us to give you a delivery day or date after you placed your order.
Headstones: Most headstones are produced and delivered in approximately 6 weeks. Below is the schedule for production for all headstones.
Monday-Thursday (10 hour shifts)
No National Holidays and No weekends. (Also, during the week of July 4th, there is actually no production at all during the week, but the office is open for business).
By using the production days listed above (Monday - Thursday), it will take (7) production days to equal 1 week.
Example: August 1, 2012 is on a Wednesday. If you ordered a headstone on that day, 1 production week will be Tuesday August 14.
Keep in mind that many orders do come out earlier than 6 weeks and some orders will take longer. The reason for many orders taking longer to deliver is because of the factors below, but not limited to just them.....
* Color of the headstone. Some headstones may take longer due to the fact that the quarry may not have the actual color in stock, then they will have to order it for the order. Pink, Jet Black, Mahogany and a few other colors are harder to quarry because of their uniqueness, therefore, it may take longer to deliver those headstones of those colors.
* Size of the headstone. Larger headstones may take longer to produce simply because of their size.
* How busy production is. Our headstones are produced at a plant that does approximately 120 headstones orders per day. Sometimes it gets very busy and normal production time is longer.
Example. When did you order your headstone? If you order a headstone near any national holidays, it gets very busy and that can, and does take longer to deliver the headstones. With that said, keep in mind that your order isn't lost in the shuffle nor is it delayed, it is simply taking a bit longer due to the extra heavy workload on production.
* How long it takes for you to reply to the sketch emailed to you. Once your sketch is ready for your approval, it is faxed to our office and we then email it to your email address used to make your purchase. The headstones are NOT engraved until the sketch is faxed back to the plant being approved by you and signed by us. However, the headstone is cut to the specified size. The name(s) and dates are not engraved until approved by you and then signed and faxed to the production plant by one of our staff members.
There is a customer that was emailed a sketch for approval on July 18th, 2012, then also contacted by phone a week later and a message was left. The customer contacted us on August 17th, 2012 asking about the headstone, and was told that it wasn't engraved because there was no approval returned to us. Make sure to add @affordable-headstones.com to your "whitelist" in your email account so it doesn't get rejected or sent to your spam folder. Without a returned approval, we can NOT engrave the headstone and it will delay your order.
Vases: The vases are normally shipped the same day ordered (Monday - Friday) before 3:00pm CST. There are however instances when customers order vases and when we process the order, we're told that they're in stock, when in fact they're on backorder. Because the vases come from Italy and they must go through Customs in Texas, it may take several weeks before the vases get delivered. In such cases like this, we will inform you of the delay and will issue a refund if you request it.
Note: Our vases sell out very fast and some colors sell out even faster. With that said, if it has been hard for you to find the vases that we sell, it would be in your best interest to allow the process to work its course because if you try to order it later on, it may be out of stock again and you'll be waiting a longer time before they're shipped to the United States from being on a backorder.
Cremation Urns: The same applies as the vases.
Bronze Markers: The bronze markers have a turnaround time of 8 weeks. The 8 weeks are the same as for the headstones, (Monday - Thursday) no weekends and no national holidays. Also note that sketches will not be provided until the bronze marker is paid in full.
Benches: The benches are normally shipped the same day ordered (Monday - Friday) before 3:00pm CST. If the bench require any lettering or any other extras, it may take up to 2 weeks for delivery.
Statues: Some of the smallest statues (1 - 2 feet tall) are in stock and can usually ship within 2 -3 working days from the day you order. Statues that are 2 feet and taller are hand crafted and will take several months for delivery. The statues are hand crafted in Italy and are not production line items. For the statues that are 4 feet and taller, the expected delivery time will be between 6 - 9 months. Because of the timefrome for the larger statues, we only require 50% down to process your order. The other 50% will be due once it's ready to ship.
