Shipping, returns & refunds

Everything Dairy Gold makes is made to order, and everything we ship is frozen. We do not hold finished stock in a freezer waiting for orders. When you confirm an order we schedule a production run for it and commit the ingredients and the printed packaging that go into it.

Both of those facts make this policy stricter than one you would find on a shop selling non-perishable goods off a shelf. Please read it before you order — we would much rather you knew where you stood up front than discovered it afterwards.

1. Shipping

We deliver only to the pincodes covered by our delivery zones. Enter your pincode on the product or cart page and the site tells you whether we can reach you, and what the shipping and packing will cost, before you pay rather than after.

Shipping and packing are charged on every order and are quoted from your delivery pincode. Dispatch timeframes shown on the site are working-day estimates from the date we confirm your order. They are estimates, not guaranteed delivery dates, and we cannot refund an order because it arrived later than an estimate.

These goods depend on an unbroken cold chain. Someone must be available to receive the consignment at the address on the day it arrives and move it straight into a freezer. Please open and check it in front of the delivery agent.

2. Returns

Once an order has been placed and paid for, it cannot be returned. Frozen food that has left our cold chain cannot be inspected, re-certified or resold, so we are not able to take it back and put it into someone else's order.

This applies to a change of mind, to ordering the wrong flavour or pack size by mistake, and to buying more than you turned out to need. Please check your cart carefully before you pay.

Section 3 sets out the one situation where we do take product back: when what arrived was not what we should have sent.

3. Replacements — damaged, thawed or short deliveries

We will always put right a problem that is ours. This covers product that arrives:

damaged in transit, or with the packaging breached
thawed, part-thawed or otherwise out of condition on arrival
past, or too close to, the best-before date printed on the pack
short — an item missing, or less than the quantity ordered
wrong — a different flavour, pack size or product from the one ordered
with a genuine quality defect in the product itself

Tell us within 2 hours of delivery

Contact us within 2 hours of the delivery being made, with your order reference and photographs of the product, the packaging, and the batch code on the pack. Take the photographs at the moment of delivery if you can — a picture of the consignment as it arrived settles almost every claim of this kind immediately.

We cannot assess a complaint about product that has since been discarded, so please keep everything frozen until we reply.

What happens next

Do not send anything back before we have replied. We will confirm in writing whether the goods need to be returned, and arrange collection where they do — return freight on a consignment that was genuinely our fault is ours, not yours.

Where the fault is ours we will replace the affected items on the next available production run, or refund them, whichever you prefer. A replacement is produced and dispatched once we have accepted the claim; where the goods are being collected, the replacement follows their return.

4. Cancelling an order

Before production starts

You can cancel free of charge, for a full refund, at any point before your order goes into production — in practice within 4 hours of confirmation, or until we tell you the run has been scheduled, whichever comes first. Email or call us; do not rely on a message sent any other way.

Once production has started

Once a batch has been started we cannot return the ingredients or reuse packaging printed for your order. A cancellation at this stage carries a charge of 25% of the order value, and the balance is refunded.

Once the order has been dispatched

A dispatched order cannot be cancelled. Frozen goods that have left our cold chain cannot be resold, so we are unable to accept a cancellation after dispatch for any reason other than those in section 3.

Changing an order

Tell us as soon as you can. Before production starts we can usually change quantities, flavours or the delivery address at no cost. After that, a change is treated as a cancellation of the original order plus a new one.

5. When we cannot refund

We are not able to refund an order in any of the following circumstances. Every one of them describes an order that left us in good condition:

A change of mind, or the product simply not being to your taste. Flavour is a matter of preference and is not a defect.
An incorrect or incomplete delivery address, or a wrong contact number, given at checkout.
Nobody available to receive the consignment, or delivery refused at the door.
A request to divert the consignment to a different address after dispatch.
Product left out of a freezer after delivery, allowed to thaw, or refrozen after thawing.
Product stored above the temperature printed on the pack, or used after its best-before date.
Packaging opened, relabelled, repacked or otherwise tampered with after delivery.
Damage or thawing reported after the window in section 3, or after a delivery was signed for as received in good condition — unless the problem could not reasonably have been seen at the time.
Events outside our reasonable control — transport disruption, extreme weather, strikes, power or refrigeration failure, or acts of government.

6. Where we cannot deliver

If your pincode turns out not to be serviceable after you have paid — because a route has changed, or a carrier has withdrawn from the area — we will cancel the order and refund it in full, including the shipping charged on it. We would rather refund an order than send frozen goods on a journey they will not survive.

7. How refunds are paid

Approved refunds go back to the original payment method. We cannot pay a refund to a different card, account or person from the one that paid.

Refunds are processed within 7–10 working days of being approved. How long the money then takes to appear depends on your bank or card issuer and is outside our control.

Where only part of an order is refunded, the shipping and packing already incurred on that order is not refunded unless the whole order was our fault.

8. How to raise a claim, a cancellation or a refund

We acknowledge every request within two working days and aim to resolve it within five. A claim under section 3 still has to reach us inside the window there, whichever way you send it.

This policy forms part of our terms & conditions. Nothing in it affects your statutory rights under Indian consumer law.