Ordering Information & Terms
A Little Background - Our family's roots are deeply connected with agriculture here in America. Although initially a classic mail-order catalog business, we established our web-presence in 1999 with the goal of making shopping easy and secure for you, our friends and customers.
Unless otherwise stated, all of our seeds are sold by weight and not by count. Any information provided on the site regarding seed counts by weight is to be considered as approximate and is based on averages for a particular species or variety. These numbers do tend to be variable from year to year. We offer these approximate seed counts to help with your garden planning.
Our standard business hours are Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. We are a small company and do not have the resources to staff a bank of people answering phones. At this time, we have one, unstaffed phone line. Using e-mail is the fastest, most efficient way to get your question answered. We do not accept orders over the phone.
Click here for our "Contact Us" page
Shopping online at VictorySeeds.com is easy, safe, and private. We use SSL encryption to ensure the security and privacy of your order information. The information you provide is encrypted (scrambled) as it travels over the internet. You can read more detail about our security measures by clicking here.
Create an Account or Shop as a Guest
You do not need to create an account to make purchases at Victory Seeds. You may shop and complete your orders as a guest. We do require your email address so that we can confirm receipt of your order, notify you when the order ships, or contact you if there are any problems with the order.However, we recommend that you do create an account the first time you place an order with our store. The next section below explains the many benefits of creating an account with us. If you don't already have an account, you will be given the option to create one when you checkout. You can also create a new account by clicking on the Account menu button that looks like a person icon in the header at the top of every page.
Advantages of Creating an Account
There are many advantages to you for creating an account with us. It is safe and we do not store credit card information. As a matter of fact, we have our site configured in such a way that we cannot see your card information at all. The transaction occurs, over a secure connection, between your computer and the credit card processing company. Click here for more information. Here are more of the benefits:- Using accounts allows you to check the status of new orders.
- You will be able to see a record of all your previous orders with us when you log in to your account. For items that you order regularly, you will be able to easily reorder from your My Account page.
- You will be able to keep a shipping address and a billing address on file so that you don't need to enter that information each time you order (remember, no credit card information is stored).
- Having an account will qualify you for special promotions and savings for our members. (You will need to join our email / newsletter list to receive the notifications.)
- Tell the world what you think! You will be able to review and rate products with our Review this item feature. And you can even earn store credit for doing so! You can also use our Email a friend feature to tell your friends about an interesting product that you came across on our site.
How to Use Our Shopping Cart
It is really pretty easy and intuitive. Place items you would like to purchase into your shopping cart by clicking on the Add to Cart link below the displayed product or click on the product to reach the product details page and you can order from there.Once an item has been put into your Shopping Cart, you can view the contents of your cart at any time by clicking on the View Cart button in the upper-right of the page header. The icon looks like a shopping bag.
For items that are in the Shopping Cart you can change a quantity or remove it from your basket. Just be sure and click the brown Update Cart button at the bottom of the cart each time you make a change. You can also remove an item from your Shopping Cart by clicking on the brown X to the right of the item. From any page, you can always see how many items are in your Shopping Cart and their total amount by looking at the right side of the header bar the top of the page.
Once you are done shopping, you can apply any gift certificates or coupon codes that you might have and then click the Proceed to Checkout button from within your cart. You then have the opportunity to calculate and choose the shipping and handling and then make payment using either Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express cards. If you are uncomfortable using cards online, please CLICK HERE to read about the security measure we have taken.
Mail Order:
If you prefer mail order, place your order as if you were going to complete it online, calculate the shipping, print out the page, and mail it to us, along with full payment, using a money orders or check drawn in US dollars. Refer to "Terms of Payment" below for more detailed information. You can also download and print out a PDF version of our mail order form by clicking here.
Do not send your credit card information. We only accept card payments online. It is simply much more secure.
Victory Seed Company
8404 Sterling Street, Suite A - Irving, Texas 75063
For your security and protection, we only accept VISA, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, as well as PayPal, for online purchases.
Purchase Orders and Federal EIN
As a small retailer, we do not accept purchase orders. They are expensive and time consuming to process. Most times the costs associated with processing a purchase order far exceeds the value of the seed order itself.
Additionally, we do not give out our Federal EIN unless we are supplying your organization over the $600 per year threshold. Some institutions use this number in their accounting practices as a vendor identification number. If this is the case, simply assign an arbitrary vendor identification. Since the amounts folks order are for small amounts of consumable merchandise, they are not reportable on a 1099-MISC. Therefore neither a W-9 form, nor our EIN is required.
We are doing our best to offer our high quality seeds at the lowest possible prices. You will probably still be able to find packets of seeds cheaper on discount racks, but please compare and consider the variety, weight, storage conditions, and germination guarantees before buying. An additional factor is to consider who you want to support with your purchasing dollars. Your purchases at the Victory Seed Company directly fund our plant variety preservation work. All items are subject to availability and pricing may change.
We keep our web site as up-to-date as possible, however on rare occasions we can run out of a particular item. Since many of the varieties that we offer are rare and not being grown on a commercial scale, we do not "backorder items" that you have purchased, nor do we accept pre-orders. If you wish, you can select the option during the checkout process requesting us to substitute with a similar variety (and we will do so), otherwise, our standard practice is to refund you for anything that we cannot immediately supply you.
A complimentary feature of our cart system is our "Waiting List" program. We are excited to be able to offer this for two reasons. If an item is listed as "OUT OF STOCK" you can click on the "Add Me To The Waiting List" button and record your interest in being notified when the item is again available. For you, it is a sure way to get emailed when something that you are interested is relisted and you are by no means obligated in any way to make a purchase. For us, we can use it as a tool to help determine which varieties or items are important to folks and schedule seed grow-outs or inventory purchases accordingly.
We make every effort to update our Web site so that it reflects items that we have in stock and are available for shipping. We generally fill and mail orders within two business days. During our busy periods, the time between receiving an order and mailing it can jump to 3 to 4 business days.
Orders sent to U. S. addresses typically take between two and ten days. Canadian orders take from one to five weeks (that is the worse case so far). Please consider all of this information before placing a last minute order.
The Victory Seed Company shall not be responsible for loss or damage caused by delays in delivery from strikes, acts of war, fire, casualty, inability to obtain materials or other causes beyond our control.
In order to keep the packet prices as low as possible, we do not hide shipping costs in them. Doing so is unfair. It is not fair to our gardening friends who place big orders for their large gardens nor to local customers.
The cost of filling a mail order is not simply a matter of placing postage stamps on an envelope. For the safety of the seeds, we only ship in padded packaging so that they survive the rollers of the USPS's sorting machinery. We do not attempt to "make money" on shipping and handling, we charge whatever the actual cost is, and the website store software automatically computes the shipping cost for each order based on its weight.
Along with the obvious cost of postage, there are:
- Merchant fees to process card payments. Card processing companies charge a flat fee per order plus fees based on card type, type of transaction, on top of the fees they collect for your credit card issuer.
- Packing Materials - Padded envelopes, forms, labels, etc.
If we didn't cover costs, we wouldn't be in business very long and our seed variety preservation work would be put at risk. Please use a valid email address and phone number. They will only be used to aid in processing this order and required to help prevent fraud. Refer to our privacy policy for our feelings on the use of personal information.
We ship packages using the U. S. Postal Service (USPS) using their Delivery Confirmation service. It is the most economical for the majority of the orders that we fulfill. Please provide a valid USPS qualified address. If you are unsure, you can test your address at http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp. Important note: We do not knowingly ship to freight forwarding addresses. We make our best effort to identify orders going to freight forwarders, and when we find them we cancel and refund these orders.
Domestic (U.S.) Insurance and Shipping Damage Claims
No matter where you are spending your money, all business transactions involve two or more parties, the customer and the merchant. Mail order purchases add a third party, the carrier. As "the merchant," we do our very best, to ensure that your order is securely and properly packaged and that it is safely entered into the US Postal Service's system. The customer's responsibility, aside from making payment, is simply to provide us with a valid, USPS mailing address that can safely receive packages.
99.99% of the time, there are no issues involved in fulfilling orders and since the USPS now includes some insurance coverage on their Priority and Express Mail services,* the majority of folks are completely protected. However, as a small organization operating under extremely tight margins, we just cannot afford to absorb losses over which we have no control.
In the rare event that your order is not received, contact us as quickly as possible so that we can start by having our postmaster put a trace on the package. If your local post office is stating that they delivered your package, you will need to work with your postmaster as well to report the loss. In our years of experience, the majority of the time they are able to trace and locate packages. We do purchase proof of shipping / tracking and this is provided to you in your order confirmation email. If the post office cannot locate your package and you are covered under package insurance, contact us so that we can get the problem quickly resolved. We want you to always get what you order from us and to reap the rewards of gardening with Victory Seeds®.
The bottom line is that we will make every effort to get your order to you, and if the postal service fails to deliver your package, we will send another one out to you after a reasonable amount of time has passed.
WUnderground.com U.S. Forecast Maps
* - The USPS states, "Available only for certain products and to certain destinations. Restrictions and exclusions apply. Insurance does not cover certain items. For details, visit 609.4.3 (Non-payable Claims), 609 (Filing Indemnity Claims for Loss or Damage), and 503.4 (Insured Mail) of the Domestic Mail Manual available at https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/dmm300_landing.htm." For Priority Mail shipments valued at more than $50 and Express Mail shipments valued at more that $100, additional insurance is available for purchase.
As a small organization, we do not have the resources to staff an export department nor are we able to provide any form of special documentation your country might require. Our seeds meet or exceed standards in the United States of America and Canada, and are properly labeled for sale here. We cannot take responsibility for lost, stolen or confiscated packages shipped outside of the United States postal system. We will only ship to United States or Canada addresses. By placing an order, you agree that:
- You (the purchaser and importer) guarantee that the material being purchased is not on a restricted list within your country. Check with your Ministry of Agriculture or Customs Departments. Import rules are changing regularly and we cannot possibly keep track of all of them. So check your country's import regulations before placing your order with us.
- You have obtained all necessary documentation to allow entry into your country. We cannot provide phytosanitary certificates or any other documentation that might be required by your government.
- We package and label your parcel clearly with content and value information on the customs tag so as to avoid customs intervention. However, we cannot guarantee that customs for your country will not open your package and determine that extra charges are due, or perhaps even confiscate the order. These risks are the sole responsibility of you, the purchaser. We are not responsible for loss, additional tariffs, quarantine fees, taxes, customs charges, etc. that may be levied.
- You assume responsibility for your package once it enters the mail stream and will not hold the Victory Seed Company responsible for the shipment once it leaves our farm.
Due to the increased difficulty sending seeds internationally, we are currently only shipping to the US and Canada. If your country is not listed in our shipping system, we apologize and recommend that you use a larger company set up to export seeds. If your country is listed within our shipping system, you are still ultimately responsible for being the importer and agree to the following.
- Payments are in US dollars. Credit cards generally will automatically perform the necessary conversion. If you choose to place a mail order, please check the actual shipping cost and use an international money order payable in US dollars.
- Shipping is based on U.S. Postal Service International Mail.
- By placing an order, you agree to and accept our general terms of sale as well as to the international shipping policy.
Special Note About Shipping to Canada: Shipping across the border to Canada is no longer inexpensive and is not always as seamless as it once was. The USPS, along with all other shippers, keep increasing rates. And although the USPS lists delivery times as 6 to 10 business days, due to customs and Canadian Post delays, orders can take occasionally take two to six weeks (in extreme cases) for delivery. Although we cannot predict how long it will take to receive your order, we do send you an email when your package is mailed out. All of that said, in nearly two decades of mailing packages to Canada, every one has eventually made it to their destinations. It may take a while, but our postal systems have always come through.
Merchandise Return Policy
Seeds are not "durable goods" that can be returned and resold to another customer. They are living organisms that are to be treated like other perishable products such as a loaf of bread. Using this analogy, unless there is something very wrong with the loaf of bread, you cannot return it because you made a mistake or changed your mind for what ever reason. And if you did, you certainly would not expect the merchant to be in the practice of accepting returns like that and selling you something that someone else decided they didn't want.
Since we have no control over how seeds are handled once they leave our facility, we cannot resell items that are returned. The products therefore must be destroyed or donated and frankly, we are just too small to absorb losses that are not our fault.
If you believe that we are at fault for some reason and have a compelling reason for justifying your returning your purchase, contact us for proper authorization and shipping instructions prior to returning any item. The return address may be different from the published or shipping address. Return authorization is required before returns are accepted.
Once return authorization is received, the customer is responsible for all shipping and insurance costs. A refund will be issued, for the product only, minus a 20% restocking fee to help defer the destruction cost. Unauthorized returns will be refused and returned, at the customer's expense.
Worm Orders cannot be returned. Shipping and handling is non-refundable.
- If your order has not yet been physically pulled, you would only be responsible for the non-refundable credit card processing fees we incur and forms. You card will be refunded for the amount of the purchase minus those fees. As of January 1, 2020, they are 3.39% + $0.49.
- If your order has already been pulled, your refund will be the order amount, minus the fees mentioned above, minus an additional restocking fee of 15%.
- Since we package seeds as orders are received, if your order included large quantities of the same variety, or if your order has already been package and posted but not yet mailed, the restocking cancellation fee increases to 30% plus the fees mentioned above.
- If your order has already been shipped, the Merchandise Return Policy above will apply.
Although there are no known problems with our seeds, and some lots are WFB tested, testing is an expensive and inaccurate process and not feasible for the small amounts that we grow ourselves or obtain from smaller seed growers. We work to ensure that our seed is of the highest quality but it is necessary for us to require that you read, understand, agree to the policies pertaining to the purchase of watermelon seed. By ordering seed, you are agreeing to these policies.
Background Information: Watermelon fruit blotch (WFB), Acidovorax avenae subsp. citrulli, is a serious disease that has become a significant risk in areas of watermelon cultivation. The pathogen causing WFB can be introduced into a field by infested seed, infected transplants, volunteer watermelon, mechanical means, or naturally spread from alternate hosts. More Information:
This waiver process has become industry standard and is necessary for protecting our organization. |
Notice, waiver, and complete release agreement, including limitation of warranty and limitation of liability.
Victory Seed Company (VSC) and you, the customer, acknowledge that this sale of watermelon seed is a commercial transaction. Therefore, as a condition of sale of all watermelon seed by VSC, the customer acknowledges that they have been informed of the risks associated with the potential presence of WFB, Gummy Stem Blight and other diseases, and hereby waives any right to assert any claim against VSC, whether for breach of contract, tort, negligence, or otherwise. The customer also releases VSC, its agents, dealers, and suppliers from any and all claims relating to WFB with respect to all watermelon seed supplied by VSC. Furthermore, the customer expressly acknowledges that his/her exclusive and sole remedy against VSC for any loss resulting from the use of the seed is limited to the purchase price of said seed. Additionally, if any seed is repackaged, redistributed or melons sold, all remedies against VSC will be waived, including return of the purchase price, and VSC will have no liability whatsoever to any other parties. Refer to our warranty for Third Party Restriction information.
By ordering seed, you are stating that you (the customer) have read the warranty and Watermelon Fruit Blotch Information, understand it, and agree to be bound by all of its terms. You also acknowledge that you have had the opportunity to consult with an attorney regarding this notice. You understand this notice is part of this contract and a condition of sale. Thank you for your understanding and feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you might have.
Some plants that are naturally occurring or have been cultivated for years have been deemed by some governments, (local, state, provincial and federal) as being classified as a noxious weed. We will not knowingly supply seed that breaks a local law so please check the laws in your area before ordering and planting. If you proceed to purchase these seeds from us, you do so under the agreement that you will use them for non-planting purposes. Federal & State Noxious Weed Information