Shipping policy

We despatch to every serviceable pin code in India from the mill at The Old Mill, Kannerimukku Road, Kotagiri, The Nilgiris 643217.

A handful of pin codes are not serviceable by any courier who will carry food, and a few more are not serviceable for chilled goods specifically. The checkout tells you before you pay rather than after. If yours is one of them, write to us — we can sometimes reach a nearby town you can collect from.

Counted in working days from despatch, not from when you place the order:

Metros — Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad — two to four days. The rest of India, four to seven. The North-East, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, the Andamans and Lakshadweep, five to nine.

Orders placed before 2 p.m. on a working day are despatched the same day. Anything later goes the next working day. We do not despatch on Sundays or national holidays, and a courier network runs slowly for a day or two either side of a major festival.

These are estimates from what the couriers actually manage, not guarantees. Weather in the Nilgiris closes the ghat roads more often than anyone would like, and when that happens we tell you rather than let the tracking page go quiet.

Free on orders over ₹1,499. Below that, a flat ₹79 anywhere in India — the same whether you are in Coimbatore or Itanagar, because a delivery charge that punishes you for where you live is a strange thing to build into a shop.

Items that have to travel cold — the A2 white butter, and anything else marked as chilled on its page — carry a ₹149 cold-chain packing charge. That one applies whatever the order is worth, and it is not a margin: it is the gel packs, the insulated liner and the courier's premium for a box they have to move faster. It is shown on the item and again in the cart before you pay.

All prices include GST. There is nothing added at the door.

You get a tracking link by SMS and on WhatsApp within 24 hours of despatch, and the same link by email. It is the courier's own tracking, not a page of ours that re-reads theirs.

You can also look an order up at any time on the order tracking page with the order number from your confirmation email.

If tracking has not moved for two working days, that usually means a scan was missed rather than that a parcel is lost — but tell us anyway. We would rather chase it a day early than a week late.

Available up to ₹3,000 on most serviceable pin codes, with a ₹49 handling fee. That fee is the courier's charge for collecting and remitting cash; we do not keep it.

Paying in advance skips the fee and despatches about a day faster, because a prepaid parcel does not wait for a cash-handling slot.

Cash on delivery is not available for chilled goods or for international orders.

We ship to 34 countries by DHL Express.

International shipping is quoted per order rather than priced on the site, and that is not evasiveness — dairy import rules differ by country and sometimes by state, and a ghee that clears customs in Singapore in a day is refused outright in Australia. Quoting a number the parcel cannot honour helps nobody.

Write to hello@theoldmillgoods.com with what you want and where you are, and you will have a quote and an honest read on whether it will clear customs within one working day.

Duties, taxes and customs charges in the destination country are yours to pay. DHL collects them at the door. We cannot estimate them for you and we cannot mark a parcel as a gift to reduce them.

Damaged in transit — photograph the box before you open it, and send the photograph on WhatsApp to +91 90000 41216. A replacement is despatched the same working day. We do not ask you to send the damaged goods back; with food it is not worth anyone's time or the courier's.

Lost in transit — if the courier's tracking has not moved for five working days we treat the parcel as lost and either replace it or refund it in full, whichever you prefer. You do not have to prove anything to us.

Refused or undelivered — if a parcel comes back because nobody was there after three attempts, or because the address could not be found, we refund the goods but not the outbound delivery charge, since that journey was made. We will always try to reach you on the phone number on the order first.