Contact Us
We have a FAQ's page that answers many of the questions we are contacted about, do check that out.
If you still didn't find an answer there and your question...
Please read this list before contacting us. If your question is still not answered and you need to contact us, scroll way down to bottom to our contact us form link.
An order placed an order on Amazon.com...
We don't sell on Amazon.com, your order was from another company who thought it was a good idea to start a company and name it something similar to our 24 year old company, thus thoroughly confusing their customers.
I'm from India, Indonesia, etc, and I don't see an option for my country...
There are a few countries where just about every order we ship ends up having some kind of "problem", whether it be a long delay in delivery or greedy customs officials wanting bribes.
Currently...
- If you are from India, we can't ship to you because your country prohibits tea imports.
- If you are from Indonesia, we can't ship to you because your country's overly aggressive customs officials demand phytosanitary certificates (for dried tea leaf, the only place we've been asked to do this in the entire world!), high tariffs, long delivery delays, and also high incidence of online fraud.
The amount shown in my currency on checkout and the amount on the invoice are not the same, why?
As we are based in Japan, our prices are based on the Japanese yen. As a convenience to our customers, we have a currency conversion system in place to give the customer an idea of what it will cost them in their own currency. This exchange rate is updated every few hours. While the amount shown is close, since currency rates are constantly fluctuating it is not usually exact. What is shown on our site is the exchange rate that the currency markets are showing at the time of checkout. However, there is usually a spread from what’s shown in financial markets and what one actually gets when the currency is converted. This spread and fluctuating currencies are out of our control and it’s impossible for us to show exactly the amount charged in your own currency, only a close approximation. Our prices when viewed in Japanese yen, however, are exact. If you wish to know exactly what will be charged, in Japanese yen, you will need to switch to Japanese yen in the upper right part of our site. From there, you can convert the currency manually on your side.
I can't login and/or the password recovery doesn't work!
- When you originally created your account, did you use social login like Facebook, Google, PayPal, etc? If so, you need to login again using that social login. We can't recover the password in this case because the password is set my your social login site, not on our site.
- If you didn't originally use social login like Facebook, etc, we have a password recovery link.
- If it still doesn't work, it's possible you may have registered multiple accounts at some time in the past and they are conflicting with each other.
- If your account is older than 2 years and you haven't signed in for almost that amount of time, it's possible your account was prunned during an update of our software.
- Sometimes customers make purchases as "guests" and never create an account. In this case, it's possible for us to register you an account manually.
- So if you originally signed up with social login like Facebook, please try usign that to login first. In case either your social login or password recovery doesn't work, please contact us and we'll fix you up.
I'm having a hard time checking out or adding items to the cart...
Here are some common causes:
- Using an old browser - Due to security issues our system requires rather recent web browsers to operate correctly.
- Stripe Checkout - A few people have had issued with the "Remember Me" feature whereby you enter your phone number, receive an SMS verification code, enter it, and recieve an error page. In this case, uncheck "Remember Me" check box.
- The "Place Order" button will not be enabled if your billing and shipping address, email address, phone number, etc, are not fully filled in.
- Make sure you see a "shipping" method to choose from (1st class, EMS, etc).
- Occasionally we are doing an update of our system and you may have caught us while we were doing that.
- If you are trying to checkout as a "Guest" without creating an account, sometimes creating an account will solve the issue.
- Your credit card may be failing.
- Sometimes clearing the cooking and cache for O-Cha.com in your browser will resolve the issue.
We would recommend that you first sign out, clear the cache and cookie in your browser for O-Cha.com, shut down the browser then restart it. If that doesn't work, please contact us and we'll fix you up.
I can't get my coupon to work!
Where is my order?
Ah, the #1 question we get. If you would like to know the status of your order, or track it (providing you chose a shipping method which had tracking), simply click the link at the very top of the site which says "Order Status." You will need the order number and the email address you used to make the purchase.
If you feel your order delivery is late, we've got a whole section devoted to this topic.
Will you reduce the declared value of my parcel so I can save on import duties?
Short answer: No. Longer answer here.
You wish to add additional items to an already placed order
Questions about bonus points
Questions about green tea, where comes from, & how to brew it...
Product specific questions
Can I purchase from you wholesale/will you send us your tea wholesale with our label on it?
Short answer - no. Long answer here.
Can I send sensitive information to you securely? (Yes, click on the link)
Additional FAQ's
Can I have an Express Mail or Registered parcel left at the front door "unsigned"?
Short answer - No. Long answer here.
How safe is it to order green tea online from O-Cha.com?
I think my order is lost, will you send me another one?
Country Specific Restrictions & Issues
What are your shipping fees?
Customs Duties
Tips for avoiding high customs fees!
Will you reduce the declared value of my parcel so I can save on import duties?
Once upon a time, we would do that. Unfortunately, we cannot do that anymore for a number of reasons. In the case of EMS, there is insurance involved and if the parcel becomes lost they will only cover the amount declared. It also requires a lot of paper work to re-make invoices, and there are various thresholds of customs duties throughout the world that we cannot possibly keep track of. If a customs official is even remotely suspicious, they will return the parcel on the spot (especially in Germany and the EU) which will cause both you and us a lot of headaches later. We do understand your pain, but unfortunately we cannot reduce declared value of parcels. If you order and leave us a note in your order asking us to do this, we will "most likely" not do that.
You wish to add additional items to an already placed order
If you used a credit card, it's possible for us to add additional items, but only if you wish to add then within a relatively short amount of time from your initial order. If you used PayPal as your payment method, we cannot from our end add additional items, you will need to place an additional order from your side. In either case, the easiest way to add additional items is to...
- Place a second order
- Contact us immediately afterwards (by scrolling down to the bottom of this page) and let us know you wish to ship additional items together with your original order
- We will then refund the additional base shipping charge.
- Note: We are very fast shippers so if you place a second order there is a good chance we may have already shipped your first order and won't be able to combine.
Product Specific Questions
We're glad you asked! As of November 2015, if you navigate to any product page, there is a "Ask a question" link - please click on that. We will not only answer your question (if it has not been asked yet), it will remain on the site for other customers to view.
Wholesale Sales
We focus on direct-to-consumer sales. Our prices are currently priced as low as we can price them which seldom, if ever, (well, never) leaves room for wholesale pricing. At this time we do not our products wholesale and we do not answer inquiries regarding wholesale.
Other FAQ's
When does your "Shincha" Gyokuro or "Shincha Matcha" come out?
Green Tea & Radiation in Fukushima
Top 10 reasons why your tea didn't turn out green
If you have a specific question that we have not been able to answer, your order needs adjustment, etc...
