On-site shoppers:

We accept cash, check, or debit/credit cards. To encourage the use of cash or check, a 3% discount on your order total is offered when paying by these methods. Washington residents are charged sales tax at the rate of 8.5%; please inform us if you are visiting from out of state.

Mail-order shoppers:

The preferred method of payment is by a good old-fashioned personal check, made payable to The Desert Northwest. You can request an advance price quote via mail@desertnorthwest.com or just fill out an Order Form and mail it in with your check. (The order form is not mandatory if you already have a price quote from us via e-mail.) We will also accept a debit/credit card at no additional charge, but you’ll have to provide us with your phone number and a good time to call.

Mail-order shoppers within Washington will need to provide their specific postal address when requesting a price quote so we can look up your sales tax rate, ensuring that we can charge the correct amount. I'm not sure where we would be without the Washington State Department of Revenue to make this process as complex as possible.

A third option is payment via cryptocurrency (probably BTC or USDT). Please contact us if this interests you and if you are comfortable with it. We will absorb the fees to send it, if they are not too unreasonable. CashApp provides a relatively easy way to purchase Bitcoin, once you have downloaded and installed the app and verified your identity. CashApp will let you send up to $250 worth of Bitcoin per day; orders under this amount can be withdrawn to our BTC wallet directly (address provided on request). If you already have a Bitcoin wallet you prefer to send from, and/or have enough familiarity with cryptocurrency not to require CashApp, that’s fine as well. In the long term, we are working on a more user-friendly cryptocurrency payment solution for the web site. Please do not send us any cryptocurrency without discussing it in advance, so we know who it is coming from and when to expect it.

Retail/landscaper customers (must have Reseller’s Permit!):

Cash, check, and cryptocurrency are all acceptable methods of payment. No debit or credit cards please.

A few notes of explanation: The main change from previous years is that we have decided to dump PayPal, which has numerous problems. In the long term we also hope to get away from credit card processing altogether, but we don’t wish to make that change abruptly and lose business.

The reasons for these changes have to do with the state of international political turmoil in which we presently find ourselves, and recent reminders in various parts of the world of the ability of banks and governments to freeze digitally held assets without warning. We suggest that all people take as much control and custody of their assets as possible, and endeavor to avoid heavy reliance on institutional support, including entities such as traditional banks and PayPal.

Finally, in case anyone is wondering, we will note that selling cryptocurrency is counted as taxable income; hence, it is still subject to taxation when traded or cashed out (i.e. by us) at a profit.