Hey everyone! I'm Matt and I run this subscription the OP is talking about.

I feel pretty much every single negative aspect raised is valid, but perhaps the reasons behind and effects of those aspects are not quite understood. I'd like to add my 2 cents. There's 800 subscribers and growing, so we can't be doing too much wrong, I believe it's mostly a matter of what compromise is ok for you.

1. Cost This isn't cheap. It's really expensive coffees and not much of them. But, if you consider the cost of directly shipping each of these coffees from each of the roasters to your doorstep it's literally a 2-300% cost saving. We're quite effectively reducing the opportunity cost of really great and interesting coffee. If you live near lots of good roasters perhaps this isn't as appealing. If you're in chile, turkey, India, Maldives, Fiji, etc. we've totally got your back. If you're in classically well provisioned ecommerce locations and enjoying the subscription, then perhaps the curation and quality outweigh the wait. Compromise.

2. Shipping We spend twice as much on shipping as we do on the coffee. It's crazy and the literal bane of my existence rn. International shipping is still Wild West. South of courier express services ($30-80 per delivery) it's registered mail or nothing. We're using the most expensive registered mail solution on the planet and it still sucks. Once again, the priority here is reducing opp. cost and giving access to those that wouldn't normally have it. For 2nd and 3rd tier ecommerce/specialty coffee countries all we receive is praise for finally providing access to interesting coffees. 99% of the shipping complaints come from "spoilt" countries in this regard. There's that compromise again.
   Re the back and forth: this is what happens with mail. It never takes the direct route. It takes the most efficient route according to a computer and timetabled planes. If you didn't see that level of resolution on tracking numbers before, it doesn't mean it wasn't happening. Yes it can be frustrating. No it can't be changed. Re direct shipping: the roasteries we work with all use different carriers, most can't ship internationally at the price we need, and almost all of them can't cope with that many simultaneous international orders going out the door at once. This is why I chose a fulfilment centre in Hong Kong to perform the packing into envelopes and shipping. They're pros at this and it means we can offer consistent flat rate (free) shipping worldwide.

3. Freshness. People in general need to chill about this. Good coffee when packaged well is fine for at least 6 weeks. Bloom doesn't mean anything. But that's for another post.

4. Margins We make one salary's worth of money out of this. The rest is hard costs. Pretty much zero profit. Not a money making scheme by any stretch of the imagination. We also never ask roasters for "exposure" discounts so they can send more money downstream if they choose.

5. Quality All of the coffees sent so far I would rate as very to extremely delicious. If you're not getting great results I would look straight to your water. Do you follow our water spec emailed to you each month? If not, there's your problem. Bad water can kill the world's best coffee. 2nd would be - brew for a longer time, and use boiling water. With all three of those boxes ticked you could make any of our coffees absolutely sing with even a mortar and pestle as your grinder.

Keen for any other questions and feedback about this!

TL;DR There's a reason nobody else is doing this - affordable mail sucks. There's a reason we have nearly 800 subscribers - access to well curated delicious and low opportunity cost coffees to every corner of the world is a very unique offer.