FAQ's

Frequently Asked Questions

[Click on a question below to show or hide the answer.]

Registration Page Questions

1. What do I need to know if I'm shopping for a student's school uniform?

If you are shopping for a student, especially a contract school student, then you must check the box marked "School Uniforms " when you come upon the question, "What will you be shopping for?" This will then display another question, "How many students are you shopping for?" Select the proper number and fill out the boxes that appear for your student's or students' information (like seen in the Example image below).

Your account will be filed under the corresponding school(s) in our database, and we will grant you access to the proper school categories of our online catalog.

If you would like access to both the Contract School section and the Retail Departments section, then check BOTH "School Uniforms" and "Personal/General Purchases".

For information on the security of your student's information, click here.

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2. What do I need to know if I'm shopping for a business or organization?

If you are shopping for a business or organization that we already have a contract or agreement with (i.e. you are ordering for employees, or you are ordering dress code apparel for yourself), then you must check the box marked "Business/Organization" when you come upon the question, "What will you be shopping for?" Fill out the box that asks for the name of your business/organization (like seen in the Example image below).

Once this is complete your account will be filed under the appropriate business account in our database and we will grant you access to the proper business categories of our online catalog. Along with access to those business categories, you'll also have access to our Retail Departments.

When you are ready to check out please make note of the "Employee Name/Number" and "Purchase Order (P.O.) Number" fields at the bottom of the shipping selection and payment selection pages. See question/answer #7 for more information on this.

3. What do I need to know if I'm not shopping for student, business, or organization?

If you are not shopping for any of the schools, businesses, or organizations that we are associated with in any way, then you should check the box marked "Personal/General Purchases" when you come upon the question, "For whom are you shopping?" (as seen in the Example image below)

You will not need to fill out any additional information (unlike those who check "Business" or "Student") and your account will be filed as a "Retail" customer in our database. This means you will only be able to access the Retail Departments of our online catalog.

Issues with Catalog Access

4. Why are some areas of this online catalog restricted?

At Absolute Uniform we service a wide variety of customers. Some of these customers have very specific needs and we have set up special areas of our catalog to cater to those needs. They may also have pricing that differs from the regular retail price, which may be because their items have special customizations (i.e. silk screening or embroidery), or simply because we have negotiated a contract with them. For these and other reasons we want to make sure all of our customers can shop our online store without having to worry about accidentally wandering into an area that does not have products that they can use.

If you have any trouble accessing an area of our catalog that you should have access to, please first read through the next few Questions/Answers for a solution. If those Questions/Answers do not provide any solutions, you may call us during our business hours or e-mail us at any time.

5. Why do I get the "Restricted Access" page?

There are several reasons why you may be getting this page, the most common are:
-You might not be logged in.
-Your account might not have been granted access yet. (see note below)
-Your account might have recently been granted access BUT you must log out and then log back in before the change can take effect.
-You may have to clear your cookies or enable your cookies. (click here for an article that explains more about cookies)
-The permissions for a particular category or product may be set incorrectly. This is an error on our part. In this case please let us know specifically which product or category you are having trouble with and we will correct this as soon as possible.
-You may be trying to access our website from a computer that has such a high level of security that it is preventing you from browsing our catalog. Try lowering the security settings on your firewall, and/or setting http://www.absoluteuniform.com and https://www.absoluteuniform.com as "trusted domains" for your web browser. Or, try accessing our website from a computer with less restrictive security.

NOTE: It may take up to 24 Hours from the time you have registered for your account to be granted access to the areas you will be shopping. Granting the access is a manual process done by our personnel.

6. I keep getting kicked back to the Index page after I try to access a particular area. Why?

If you are logged in, have received the "Your Account Has Been Updated" email, and are being forced back to the Catalog Index page after you click on a link to get to any other part of our catalog, or if you are having an issue similar to this, it may be a problem with the security settings on your computer. Many times this will happen when a customer is trying to shop from their office computer - offices may restrict their employees from accessing certain kinds of websites. In this case the only solutions will be to either contact your system administrator and request that "absoluteuniform.com" be set as a "trusted domain," or try to access our online catalog from a different computer (i.e. your home computer).

If you are having this problem from your home computer, you may need to adjust the settings on your firewall and/or your web browser. Please click this link to go to our page with a step-by-step process for setting AbsoluteUniform.com as a trusted domain in your web browser.

If you are still having problems accessing our catalog even after all these tips, please contact us.

Checkout Process Questions

7. What do I need to know if I'm purchasing for an employee?

When you are ready to check out please make note of the "Employee Name/Number" and "Purchase Order (P.O.) Number" fields at the bottom of the shipping selection and payment selection pages (as seen in the example image below). These will need to be filled with the appropriate information for each order. If one or both of these does not apply to your business or organization, then you may leave them blank.

Unless you do not require the Employee Name, Employee Number, or P.O. Number, please do only ONE order per employee. This will help keep things organized so we know exactly what items go with which Employee and P.O.

8. How do the Discount Coupons work?

Currently we do not offer any discount coupons for our online store. Should we ever give customers online discount coupons we will provide them with explicit instructions on how to use them.

9. Why do I get kicked back to the Payment Information screen during checkout?

First, look for an error message at the very TOP of the web page as shown in the example image below.

You may click on this image to view a larger version.

This message will indicate what went wrong. The most common error, as shown in this image, is that "The address provided does not match billing address of cardholder." This means that the Billing Address that is shown on the Payment Information page is different from the one you have for you credit card. To correct this, click on the Change Address button on the Payment Information page (if you refer again to the example image above, this button is shown at the bottom of that image). From there you may select a different address from your Address Book or you may enter a new one. Your Billing Address is where your credit card statement is mailed to and it may be different from your Mailing Address, this is fine, you may enter a different address for both!

Once you are certain all of your information is correct, try to complete the check out process again. Note that the Confirm Your Order page (Step 3 of 3) will let you review your entire purchase and billing/shipping information one last time before you complete your order.

If you continue to have any problems, please contact us.

10. Why did I do I see multiple charges on my Credit Card or Bank Statement?

There are two main reasons why this might happen:

[1] When you have attempted to checkout online and your card was declined for any reason, the Credit Card company or Bank may put the charge ON HOLD for a few business days. This is out of our control, but rest assured that your money will return to your account. We recommend that you contact your Credit Card company or Bank to notify them that these charges have indeed been declined and need to return to your account as soon as possible. We can provide you with written proof of the declined charge(s) upon request.

Or,

[2] You may have hit the CONFIRM ORDER button (on checkout page 3 of 3) too many times. Multiple clicks of this button can cause the webpage to upload multiple orders, thus causing multiple charges to your card. If you have done this, or think that you may have, please try to Contact Us via phone as soon as possible. Charges can be voided if we can catch them before the end of the business day. If we cannot catch them in time, we can still refund you the amount but it may take a little bit longer for the funds to return to your account.

You will know if the Confirm Order button was clicked multiple times if you are emailed more than one order confirmation email with different order numbers (i.e. if you get a confirmation email for order #123 and order #124, and you only meant to place one order).

Other Questions

11. Where can I find more products that Absolute Uniform offers?

You will find a full selection of the products we offer on our Web Links page. You will find our retail pricing listed on the first two links on that page (San Mar and Broder Brothers). All items listed on those links are available via Special Order only. Come visit our store to view our full selection of in stock items.

12. Where can I find information on custom embroidery, heat transfers, silk screening, vinyl banners, or other promotional items?

Please refer to our Customization Pricing page.

13. How can I tell if an item is in stock or not?

Unfortunately, we currently cannot link our software that keeps track of our stock in our retail store with our software that runs our online store, so we do not post the stock levels of any of our items online.

Alternatively, you may wait until after you place your order for the first Status Update that we write out for you and let you know whether the items you have ordered are in stock, and/or have any work that is required (i.e. embroidery) before the item(s) is/are ready.

If you want to check our stock before you place your order online, you may contact us and ask whether particular items are available (please provide the Style #, the Color, and the Size of each item).

14. How long does it take to process an order I've made online?

Generally, once your order is being processed it will take only a small amount of time longer to be processed than it would if you were shopping in our actual store. This of course, depends on whether or not items are in or out of stock, and whether any items have or will require embroidered or heat transferred logos, and how busy our store is. For example, our back to school season obviously is a much more busy time of year for us than any other time.

IF YOU ARE SHOPPING DURING OUR BACK TO SCHOOL SEASON (FROM JULY THROUGH SEPTEMBER) WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU COME IN AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. QUANTITIES ARE LIMITED AND WE CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT LAST MINUTE PURCHASES WILL BE READY IN TIME FOR YOU STUDENT TO START CLASSES. THIS IS THE SAME REGARDLESS WHETHER YOU SHOP ONLINE OR IN OUT STORE.

You will receive Status Update emails whenever we are doing something new with your order. Those Status Updates are:

Pending - This means you have just placed your order and we have not started doing anything with it yet. If you have placed your order during regular business hours, we generally will not start working on your order until the END of that business day.

Processing - This means we have started working on your order. Quite literally, we print out your order's invoice and start shopping from our store for you. This may take from a few minutes up to an hour or so depending on the amount of items you've ordered, the amount of orders we've received that day, the availability of the items you've ordered, among other things.

Embroidery/Heat Transfer Needed - This means you have an item or items on your order that are in stock but will require embroidered or heat transferred logos to be put on them. Depending on how busy our embroidery room is, this may take anywhere from 1 to 5 business days. We strongly recommend that you shop at least one week in advance of any date that you may need your uniforms by, and during our back to school season we recommend shopping in advanced by up to two weeks or more.

HOLD - This means that there is an issue that needs an immediate response from the customer in order for us to continue processing your purchase. If for any reason we put a Hold on your order, we make sure to use all means available to us to contact the customer (email, phone, and/or fax) for a prompt response. If you see that you have a Hold on your order, please check your email, voicemail, and/or fax and respond to us as soon as possible.

Item(s) on Special Order - This means an item or items that you have ordered are out of stock and that they have been placed on what we call Special Order. Once these items are received in stock they will be allocated to your order immediately. In general this may take 5 to 7 business days, depending on availability from our venders. We strongly recommend that you shop at least one week in advance of any date that you may need your uniforms by, and during our back to school season we recommend shopping in advanced by up to two weeks or more.

Ready for Pickup - This means all items on your order are in stock, have any required logos or other work to be done on them completed, and is ready for you pick up at our store. (For our Contract School shoppers please be aware that your account in our store is saved under the student's name, so when you pick up give us that information)

Ready for Shipping - This, like Ready for Pickup, means all of your items are in stock and ready to leave our store. We generally ship things out the next business day.

Shipped - This means your items have left our store. We usually use UPS 1-Day shipping, so you should expect your package to arrive at its destination the next business day. (Unfortunately we cannot offer tracking ID numbers)

Other Status Updates may be received but the ones listed above are the most common. We also try to provide more detailed information and time frames when we update the status of your order with any status that shows your order is not complete.

ALL TIME FRAMES GIVEN ARE ESTIMATES. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO START SHOPPING FOR UNIFORMS THAT YOU NEED RIGHT AWAY!

15. Do you offer a Lay Away program?

Yes, Absolute Uniform is pleased to offer our 25% Down/90-Day Lay Away program. For more information on our Lay Away program, including terms and conditions, please contact us.

16. Can I place a Lay Away order online?

No, unfortunately we cannot offer Lay Aways for online orders.

17. How do I get my school, business, or organization involved with Absolute Uniform?

Do you have a school, church, business, organization or any other group that you would like to have your own section for on AbsoluteUniform.com? First what you should do is browse our vendor catalogs and pick the items you'd like. Once you have those, contact us (be sure to tell us the item numbers, specific colors, and the sizes you may need, as well as any embroidery or silk screening you may want to do on those products) and one of our salespersons will get back to you with a quote (or there may be more information we must gather from you before we can give a quote). When all pricing has been worked out we will create a section on our website for you and/or your group to shop from. Refer to some of the earlier questions addressed on this FAQ page for more information on how our school and business accounts work with regards to shopping. Feel free to ask any questions you may have at any time.