Shipping & Returns
Everything you need to know before you order — where we ship, what it costs, how age verification works, and what happens if something arrives wrong.
Shipping
Rates
$15 flat on orders under $200. Free on orders $200 and over. Adult signature is included in both — no handling fees, nothing added at checkout.
Timing
We pack and ship in 1–2 business days. UPS delivers in 2–5 business days after that, depending on where you are. You'll get a tracking number by email the moment your order leaves.
We don't ship on weekends or federal holidays. Orders placed after noon Eastern go out the next business day.
Summer heat. Cigars don't do well sitting in a trailer over a hot weekend. From roughly June through September we may hold an order a day or adjust the service level to keep it moving. If we do, we'll email you. We'd rather your cigars arrive a day late than arrive cooked.
Where we ship
Anywhere in the United States except Utah, Hawaii, South Dakota, and Delaware. State tobacco regulations keep us out of those four for now.
We ship UPS to street addresses only — no P.O. Boxes, no APO/FPO, no U.S. territories, and nowhere outside the country. UPS doesn't deliver tobacco to those addresses.
If you order to a state we can't serve, we'll cancel it and refund you in full before anything ships.
Somebody has to sign
Every cigar shipment requires the signature of someone 21 or older, with ID shown to the driver. UPS will not leave tobacco at the door. There's no waiver and no way around it — it's federal law, not our policy.
It doesn't have to be you. Any adult at the address can sign.
If you're not home during the day, the easiest fix is to redirect the package to a UPS Access Point — a partner storefront near you — and pick it up on your own schedule. You can do this from the tracking link as soon as the package is in transit. It's the single best way to avoid a missed delivery.
UPS attempts delivery three times. After the third, the package comes back to us. Email us and we'll get it back out to you for the cost of shipping.
If you're in California
California's STAKE Act requires us to confirm your order by phone after 5:00 PM Pacific before we ship it. That call is a legal requirement, not a sales call. Make sure the number on your order is one you'll actually answer, or your shipment sits.
Taxes
Sales tax is calculated at checkout where we're required to collect it. Where a state charges tobacco excise tax on cigars, it's already reflected in the price you see — no surprise line item.
Age verification
When you click Verify age and check out, you'll confirm your date of birth. Your details are then checked against public records by AgeChecker.Net, an independent service, when you place your order. Most people clear in seconds.
If verification doesn't pass, your order won't ship and anything charged is refunded in full. We'll email you first so you can correct your information.
If public records can't confirm you, you'll be asked for a photo of a government-issued ID. Takes about half a minute. Once you've done it once, you generally won't be asked again.
If verification fails, it's almost always one of three things: your date of birth doesn't match your ID exactly, the name doesn't match your order, or part of the ID is covered or blurry. Fix it and try again — nothing is lost. Still stuck? Email us.
We never see or store your ID. We get back a pass/fail, a timestamp, and a reference number. That's it. More detail on our Age Verification page.
Returns
Cigars
Cigars can't come back for change of mind. They're perishable, and once they leave us we have no way to know how they've been kept.
If they show up damaged, defective, or just wrong — that's on us. Contact us within 7 days of delivery and we'll make it right.
Don't ship cigars back. Photos are enough. Consumers generally aren't permitted to ship tobacco, and we're not going to ask you to try.
Ashtrays and accessories
30 days for damage or defects. 14 days if you change your mind on something unopened.
Change-of-mind returns need an authorization number first, and return shipping is on you.
If something ceramic or glass arrives broken, don't ship it back. Photograph it, then get rid of it safely. We're not going to make you repackage broken material to prove it happened.
How to file a claim
Email contact@21cigars.com with Claim – Order #[your number] in the subject line, and send:
- Photos of the outer box and shipping label
- Photos of the inner packaging
- Photos of the damaged items
- A photo of everything that was in the box
We answer within one business day. If it's approved, you pick: replacement, store credit, or a refund to your original payment method. Your choice, not ours.
Hold onto the product and packaging until we've sorted it out — we can't verify a claim after everything's in the trash.
Changed your mind about the whole order?
You've got 24 hours from placing it. Email us with your order number. After that we'll try to recall the shipment, but once it's moving we're at UPS's mercy.
Bitcoin refunds
You get the same number of sats back that you sent. Not the dollar value — the sats. We don't adjust for price movement in either direction, and neither do you.
Refunds go out as a BTCPay claim link emailed to you. Open it, enter your own receiving address, claim the payment. We never touch your address by hand and never ask you to send one over email.
USD store credit is available instead on any bitcoin order, if you'd rather have that.
The short version
We're one person and a small brand. If something's wrong with your order, email us before you call your bank — we'd much rather fix it than fight about it, and we answer fast.
contact@21cigars.com
(813) 336-2066 — Monday to Friday, 9–5 Central
This page explains our policies in plain language. The binding terms are in our Shipping Policy, Return and Refund Policy, and Terms of Service. Where they differ from this page, they control.