Invoices are e-mailed to you AFTER the items have been made ready for shipment. That way you get the actual shipping charge instead of an estimate.
FYI: I do not provide packing slips, pre-invoices, or written estimates.
I apologize for the inconvenience, but I just don’t have the staff to do anything but build your order, ship your order, and then invoice the order, in that order.
The rental prices listed next to each item on any page is the price for any rental of fewer than 31 days.
That is not the same as saying that it is the “monthly rental price”, because after the first 30 days I don’t charge you for an entire second month.
Whether it is for one month or one hour, the initial rental fee is the same. [From my experience, if rentals are on a weekly basis theatres will want delivery on items only a day or two before first tech. We all know that having the props earlier is safer for the actors, and if theatres can pay the same price for one week or for four, they are more likely to order early and get the props in the hands of the actors well before tech week.]
Ah, but anything beyond thirty days is pro-rated per day, and is based on only half the first month’s rate. That’s right, the price drops way down after the first month.
So let’s say you need a sword, and you see that it is listed at $40, but you need it for 6 weeks. The rental fee is going to be $50. Not $80, not $60 … $50. Get it?
“Yeah, but what about transit time?”
The rental clock doesn’t start until the items are delivered to you, and it stops on closing night. Then everyone gets a two-week grace period to get the items back to me. So, no, you are not charged for the time in transit.
“What if my show is extended?”
If your show is extended, congratulations! Just let me know the new closing night as soon as possible. You will get a new return due date and be charged a continuation of rental.
“What if my show is part of a competition?”
Ah, and you don’t know exactly when your “closing night” will be, right? Then just let me know that when you order. I’ll put down the last possible competition date as a place holder for the computer, but I know that the items will return when they return. An initial invoice will have a grand total on it assuming that you will progress the entire way (assuming correctly, right?)
What will actually happen is that when the items are returned, I take that delivery date and subtract 15 days from it (because all of my clients get a two-week grace period to return the props after closing night).
I take that new date as the “closing night”, then recalculate the amount due.
“I see that you’re selling off your rental stock? Are you going out of business?”
Only the sky lasts forever, and I’m not getting younger.
- My “retirement” for now is shifting from working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day, providing everything under the sun to working three days a week renting out a very limited range of weapons. As long as I still have something on the rack and can still type out a UPS label, I’ll continue to rent.
- The new rapiers and dueling swords that we still build, we still sell. So for now I won’t sell off my rental stock of those items. [If I do that it would undercuts my sales business.] Which means that as long as my swordsmith can keep on welding and grinding [ten years? fifteen? three?] I won’t be selling those rental swords, but rather will continue to sell new items. Once we are no longer physically able to work in the shop to build new swords, then I will sell off those used items as well.
- On all of the other used items, (swords, guns, misc items, etc) those prices are dropping all the time. Literally. Every price is tied to a countdown equation that is taking it from what was the full price back in 2014 down to $1 by a future date. At some point each theatre will decide if the price on any particular item makes it worthwhile to have that item in their stock.
So if your theatre has an ongoing need for a particular rental item, why not buy it now? For as they say, “everything must go!”.