What ‘flexible’ actually means, in days and percentages
Tea.taxi runs two parallel things. The first is on-demand 100g delivery — one-off orders that arrive in one to two hours across our covered cities. The second is the monthly rotation: a curated subscription where members receive two to four 50g portions chosen by our tea team, with one slot left open for the member to swap. This FAQ is only about the second product. If you ordered a single tin and are wondering where it is, the answer lives under order tracking, not here.
The rotation works on a four-week cycle. Each cycle, our team — usually Zhou Xiang for the green and hóng chá (红茶) slots, Fang Ting for the oolongs and shú pǔ’ěr (熟普洱), and Chen Hui Yi for the white and yellow lines — proposes a sequence two weeks in advance. You receive an email with the lineup, a tasting note for each tea, and a quiet button to swap one of the picks for any in-catalogue alternative at the same price tier. After 72 hours, the lineup locks, packing starts, and the parcel ships on cycle day one.
The questions below cover the three things members ask most: how to pause without losing their slot, how to swap or upgrade a tea, and how to cancel cleanly. We also cover refund timing, what happens if you pause mid-cycle, and how the subscription interacts with one-off taxi orders.
A note on tone. We write these policies the way we write tasting notes — exact, unhurried, without padding. If a window is 72 hours, we say 72 hours, not ‘a few days’. If a refund is 80% of the cycle price, we say 80%, not ‘most of it’. The reason is practical: tea is bought from producers in 中国 (Zhōngguó) on long lead times — Lǎo Bān Zhāng (老班章) sheng from Menghai prefecture is purchased six months before it reaches a shelf in Moscow or Yekaterinburg — and our refund policy has to reflect the producer-side commitment, not pretend the leaf can be returned upstream.
For context on how subscription pacing fits into a longer learning arc, members often cross-reference our notes on tea.community, where the discussion threads cover real consumption habits, and on tea.school, where the eight-week structured courses run on a similar four-week beat. If you are subscribing partly to build a personal cellar, the storage guidance on puerh.app is more detailed than anything we publish here — pressed cakes from the Yiwu mountains behave differently in a Moscow flat than they do in Kunming, and that conversation belongs in a longer-form home.
You should come away from this page knowing four things. One: pausing is free, instant, and protects your slot for twelve weeks. Two: swapping a tea costs nothing if done inside the 72-hour preview window and is generally not possible after. Three: cancellation is one click, no exit interview, and any unshipped cycle is refunded at 100%. Four: shipped tea cannot be returned for change of mind, but quality issues — broken seal, water damage, wrong cake — are replaced without question, usually inside one working day for our covered metro areas. The infusion colour of a wet Bai Hao Yin Zhen leaf should be pale apricot; if yours looks brown, that is a quality issue and we want to hear about it.
Common questions
How long can I pause my subscription?
Up to twelve weeks per pause, which covers three full rotation cycles. You can pause from the account dashboard in two clicks — no email required, no reason requested. Your slot, your tier, and your saved swap preferences are held intact for the duration. If you need longer than twelve weeks, the system will prompt you to either extend in four-week increments or convert to a dormant account, which keeps your order history but releases your pricing lock. Most members who pause come back inside six weeks, often around a holiday or move.
Can I pause mid-cycle, after a parcel has already shipped?
You can pause future cycles at any time, but a parcel already in transit cannot be recalled. If you pause on, say, day 5 of cycle 3, you still receive cycle 3 — it left our hub on day 1 — and the pause applies from cycle 4 onward. The next charge is suspended immediately, so you will not be billed during the pause window. If the timing is awkward and you would rather skip the in-flight parcel, contact us within 24 hours of shipping and we will discuss a partial credit case-by-case.
Does pausing cost anything?
No. There is no pause fee, no reactivation charge, and no minimum pause length — you could pause for one cycle and resume, or pause for twelve weeks and resume, with identical mechanics. The only thing pausing does not do is freeze promotional pricing locked in during a campaign window. If you joined during a launch offer, that pricing holds through your active cycles but may not survive a long pause if the promotion has formally ended. We will tell you this clearly before you pause if it applies to your account.
How do I swap one of the teas in my upcoming rotation?
Two weeks before each cycle ships, you receive a preview email with the proposed lineup. One slot is marked ‘swap eligible’ — usually the rotation pick rather than the anchor tea. Click swap, browse the catalogue filtered to the same price tier, and confirm. The change locks in immediately. After the 72-hour preview window closes, swaps are not possible because packing has begun. If you reliably dislike a category — say, shú pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) — set a permanent exclusion in your taste profile and Fang Ting’s picks will route around it.
Can I swap for a more expensive tea by paying the difference?
Yes, within reason. Tier-up swaps are allowed up to one tier above your subscription level — so a standard-tier member can reach into the premium catalogue and pay the difference at checkout. Reserve-tier teas, including the single-tree Lǎo Bān Zhāng (老班章) lots from Menghai, are not swap-eligible at any tier; those require a separate reserve membership. The price difference is charged on the same card as the subscription and shows as a separate line item on your monthly invoice.
What if my preview email gets buried and I miss the swap window?
The preview email goes out fourteen days before shipping, with a reminder at seven days and a final notice at three days. If all three are missed, the default lineup ships as proposed. We do not chase further than this because we have found that more reminders feel like nagging. If you regularly miss the window, switch on SMS notifications in account settings — they have a higher open rate. You can also nominate a backup contact, useful for gift subscriptions where the recipient is the decision-maker.
How do I cancel my subscription?
Account dashboard, subscription tab, ‘cancel’ — one click, immediate confirmation by email. We do not run an exit flow, ask for a reason, or attempt a save offer. Any cycle not yet shipped is refunded at 100% to the original payment method within five working days. Cycles already in transit are not refundable for change of mind but remain yours to keep. Your account stays active for one-off taxi orders from our 100g catalogue, which is unaffected by subscription status.
What is the refund policy if the tea has already arrived?
Shipped tea is not returnable for change of mind — once a sealed pouch leaves our hub, it cannot re-enter the food-grade chain. Quality issues are different. If the seal is broken, the leaf is damaged, the parcel arrived wet, or you received the wrong tea, we replace at our cost within one working day in covered metros and three working days elsewhere. Send a photo through the order page, and the refund or replacement is issued before any return is required. Honest mistakes happen — broken seals especially in winter cold cycles — and we handle them quickly.
Is there a minimum subscription length?
No. You can cancel after the first cycle without penalty, and any unshipped cycles are refunded in full. We mention this because most subscription services have a lock-in and members often assume we do too. We do not. The reason is that the rotation is designed to teach a palate — if it is not teaching yours, staying does neither of us any good. About 8% of members cancel inside the first three cycles, which is roughly the rate we expect for a product that exposes people to unfamiliar categories like huáng chá (黄茶).
Can I change my address or delivery day during a pause?
Yes — both can be edited freely during a pause and they take effect on resume. Address changes inside an active cycle work too, provided the parcel has not yet shipped; the cut-off is 24 hours before the scheduled dispatch. Delivery day changes are limited to the windows your city’s taxi route covers — Moscow and Saint Petersburg have Monday-through-Saturday slots, smaller covered cities have two fixed days per week. The available windows show up live in the calendar when you edit.
What happens to my taste profile and history if I cancel?
It is retained for twelve months after cancellation, then anonymised. During that window, if you resubscribe, your full history reloads — past rotations, swaps, exclusions, and the notes Chen Hui Yi or Zhou Xiang may have added after your tasting sessions if you have attended any. After twelve months the profile is reduced to aggregate statistics for our catalogue planning and your personal data is removed. You can request earlier deletion at any point through the privacy form in account settings.
Can I gift a paused or cancelled subscription to someone else?
Active subscriptions cannot be transferred between accounts — they are tied to a payment method and taste profile. What you can do is buy a separate gift subscription, which is prepaid for three, six, or twelve cycles and ships to a different address with the recipient’s name on the parcel. Gift subscriptions cannot be paused by the giver mid-term but the recipient can swap teas and set exclusions like any standard member. They also cannot be refunded once the first cycle has shipped, only the unshipped balance.
If I pause, will I lose access to member-only events?
Active and paused members both retain access to member tastings — the small in-person sessions Fang Ting hosts in Moscow and the online cuppings Chen Hui Yi runs from Guangdong. Cancelled accounts lose event access at the end of the cycle they cancelled in. If you want to keep event access without receiving tea, the route is to subscribe at the lowest tier and set a permanent pause — but this is unusual and most members simply book individual events through tea.events at non-member rates instead.
What if my card fails on a renewal?
We retry the charge three times across five days, with an email notice after the first failure. If all three fail, the subscription auto-pauses rather than auto-cancels — your slot is held for thirty days while you update payment details. After thirty days with no update, the subscription is cancelled and your taste profile enters the standard twelve-month retention window. No fee is charged for failed payments. We would rather pause and wait than push a member into involuntary cancellation.
Still have questions?
If something here did not answer your question, the support team replies to written messages within one working day. The fastest route is the message thread inside your order or subscription page — it carries the context automatically, so the person reading does not have to ask which cycle or which tea. Email works too, at the address on the footer of every confirmation email, but adds a step. We do not run a phone line for subscription queries because the questions almost always involve a specific cycle date or tea name that is easier to handle in writing.
A few topics live better on sibling sites in the constellation. If your question is really about how a particular tea is meant to taste — whether your Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) from Fuding should actually be that pale, or whether the shú pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) from the Menghai factory is supposed to be that earthy — the tasting forums on tea.community have years of member notes worth more than anything we could write here. If you want to go deeper into a single category, tea.school runs eight-week courses with Zhou Xiang and Fang Ting that include live tastings. Storage and ageing questions, especially for pressed cakes, sit on puerh.app where the climate-by-city guidance is genuinely careful. Equipment — gaiwan size, kettle wattage, the question of whether to filter Moscow tap water — lives on tea.equipment, and travel plans to the source regions are handled at tea.travel.
For anything that touches billing, refunds, or account access, please come back to us directly rather than asking elsewhere. We have the records and we can act on them. The other sites are for the tea itself, which is, in the end, the reason any of this exists.