"I used Dover for many years, but noticed a few years ago that they didn't keep up with the times by offering free shipping and returns (an industry standard) until recently. I ordered an Ariat shirt in March and it seemed that it didn't actually get shipped until I inquired about its whereabouts. It eventually came a few weeks later. Strangely, it was shipped by DHL and I also got messages from the Postal Service for this order. It was confusing.
Good news is that it arrived and I like the shirt. However, the tag on the Ariat shirt - the Ariat list price - is $49.95 and they charged me $56.95. That's 14% above the manufacturer's price.
Why is that?
"
"They have cancelled my saddle order twice. Advertised in store and website but somehow sold it to someone in store and also to me. Gave no viable apology, solutions, option, and wouldn't admit fault or error on their behalf. Unprofessional, grumpy and unwilling to help. They can't even say sorry. They just say they understand why I am confused. How insulting is that?
Never again. The worst. I have list all faith in all of their Cynthia s and carolines."
"Cancel my order below and remove me from ALL of your mailing lists! By law you have 30 days to comply. If I receive even 1 anything with your company’s name on it after the 30 day period I will file suit! I pay $9.95 extra for Christmas delivery and you can’t even contact me to inform me the item which was in stock when purchased is now Backordered? I sat on chat online for 15 minutes and nobody ever came on. I had to call from work to find out about my order. Terrible customer service! "
"Well since calling and emailing is getting me nowhere, I guess I will air my grievances here
I placed an order November 23rd. I initially was putting together my cart on my gmail app, and it was being buggy. i closed it and did it on google chrome instead. When this happened, i accidentally combined the carts and ordered. I immediately realized my mistake, and called to cancel. Spent 10 mins on the phone with dover struggling to figure out how to edit an order I just placed. They ended up saying they'd leave a note. I asked they confirm the edits in writing when they were made.
4 or 5 days later, crickets. I email just incase. guess what? my order hasnt been edited. they say they will try to edit my order, or refund me for the stuff I dont want and I can donate it.
4 or 5 days after that, still no confirmation, no shipping. How can you not fix an order you havent shipped yet???I email again, and magically my order is shipped. I am assured I will be refunded for any extra product in 2-3 working days.
2-3 working days, I still have not been refunded. I email again. They say "there was an error" and it will be through by tuesday. Well, its freaking tuesday. Its been almost a MONTH of me trying not to buy this stuff. How is this possible???
I will NEVER buy from dover again and will keep bumping/sharing this until I get refunded. This is absurd "
"Because I did not do my homework regarding their return policy I ordered and returned a pair of breeches. I then ordered a different size and had to return those also. Bottom line is it cost me plenty to try on two pair of breeches. I will never order from this company again. They are way out of line with their shipping charges. "
"We have had many experiences with a defective product and every single time there was terrible customer service.
Our first experience was with a Dover Store. We drove (140 miles round trip) to the store to fit and buy a helmet. Once we got home we looked at the helmet and noticed cracking. The Dover store was not willing to help and we had to drive another 140 miles to go return and exchange a helmet. All they gave us is a $10 voucher for an expensive trip that was not our fault. That was the first bad experience.
The second bad experience was that we ordered a jacket. It was on sale and about a week later they called us to let us know that they were no longer available. By then they were out of stock of any color or size of that product. They didn't help us and we just got money back. Not too bad an experience just disappointing that they didn't tell us until a week later.
Our third and most frustrating experience was quite recently with a R.J. Classics Rose Competition Show Shirt. It was on a really good sale so I ordered it. It came in and I took it out of the package and there was black grease marks all over the shirt (the entire front of collar and the chest area). We called in and in the end talked to 4 different people. My father finally talked to the supervisor and got a different shirt because they didn't have the R.J. Classic shirt in my size and color. They were quite rude about sending us a shirt and only did it to make us shut up. I ended up finding the R.J. Classics shirt from a Dover store in a different state and is shipping to my door. It was absolute terrible service and I was horrified at how rude they were to me. "
"I ordered a few small supplies and agreed to pay $6.99 for standard shipping. I received my order confirmation and e-mail from paypal with the correct billing amount. However, when deducted from my account it was $18.95 more as they decided to ship my order 2nd day air. I called customer service and they were less than friendly. Frist said, "You must have called to request this" then said "there must have been an error when the order came in". They wanted to offer me a gift card. After placing me on hold they told me they would refund the extra charges. However, I have not received it yet ten days later. I have opened a case with paypal. Buyers beware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Just try to take advantage of a Dover Saddlery sale. It will never happen! Either they are sold out of the advertised item or they will get you in the back end of the deal by charging exhorbitant shipping fees. Horrible place to do business. Don't waste your valuable time."
"i don't know what happened to dover saddlery. years ago they were great, i have to assume the company as a whole is not doing well because their policies and their personnel are terrible. they don't care if you have a good shopping experience. they care about money, making money, sucking the customer dry for money, money. really horrible policies. an on-line is worse than the store experience. you buy your items, you put them in your cart, you pay exorbitant shipping fees and then they bill you more. and they don't really care. in my case it was only $4. seems the manufacturer raised their prices overnight, so despite having a receipt for my purchases for $64.92, they charged my credit card $68.92. and the excuses (not a refund and no desire to honor their prices or their reciept) are amazing. i am being told the price went up from $18.99 to $26.99 at the manufacturer (i guess they can't add) and the nonsense they are putting me through over this is incredible. first, they will not allow me to cancel the order. i have called back 27 times,i get every excuse there is. i am told 'it is already packed', 'let us find out what happened'... and now i am being told they can not cancel it or confirm in writing that it has been canceled and 'they will pass it to the manager'. AND i am being told they will no remove me from their mailing list... seriously. for $4 dollars they have destroyed my confidence in dover saddlery and forever ruined their reputation."
"I hate to write bad reviews, but I'm so surprised by how bad Dover Saddlery's customer service is that I feel compelled to warn other horse newbies away. They have such beautiful catalogs. I got to go into one of their stores while visiting a cousin in NC and got great help from one of their clerks. I felt safe ordering from them -- they seemed on all levels a fully professional company.
I work in web tech, so I know how ecommerce sites should work -- Dover seems to ignore all best practices for selling on the web. I'm still incredulous.
I ordered a couple of pairs of breeches. They showed in stock, but it took Dover 5 days to ship. Okay, not great, but it was a holiday week so I guess I could see it. Then I realized that I hadn't paid close enough attention when ordering and noticed that my shipping cost was nearly $20! That's crazy in today's Amazon Prime world. Really getting not so happy now, but part of it was my fault, so okay, lesson learned. I'll pay closer attention next time.
Days go by, and still no package. I log in to the website and notice that there is no link on my account to show past orders. There isn't any way to track my order except by the email confirming that it was sent. That's insane. Even the most basic ecommerce software does this. Now all my web tech experience is telling me NEVER ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY ONLINE AGAIN, because if it doesn't even do this most basic function, who knows what else they aren't doing correctly?
I track down the email, track the package and discover that after two weeks of waiting, the package couldn't be delivered because of the address it was shipped to. Bizarre -- maybe I didn't type in my address correctly... so I checked my order confirmation email, and the shipping address was correct. Time to call Dover.
It took three tries to get Dover because I got a busy signal the first two tries. Not a good sign. On the third try, I got a person, which is better than a maze of machines. First positive, unfortunately short lived. The person confirms the address they show, and it's wrong, missing one digit. I can't see how that's possible, since the ADDRESS WAS CORRECT ON MY EMAILED RECEIPT! Did they address the package by hand and get it wrong? For a company that does such an excellent job at looking good on the sales side, their infrastructure, shipping policy and web presence is shockingly bad.
Still haven't gotten my package.
By the way.. I also ordered a pair of breeches from SmartPak a couple of days *after* I placed the Dover order. Free shipping. Got the breeches and have already worn them a couple of times.
"
"I ordered this item in mid dec. 2014. They were not able to ship it until May 13 2015. I received the item may22 2015. This is a Half of a year later and The Price Changed 30%.
They simply say I am free to return it at my expense! I would save every receipt, catalog etc. on orders from this operation. Order from the other horse stores in the future. Hope this is helpful to you. Very disappointed!!!!!! As customer service was so unappreciative or understanding."
"We run a small farm animal rescue, non-profit approved through the state. We generally do not need fancy riding gear and such. However we were happy to find the old fashioned thermometers for horses on the Dover Saddlery website, so we ordered three to have on hand. When the items arrived, I noticed a $9.95 shipping charge (for a $25.95 order) and figured the shipping was high because of the nice, big, heavy catalogue they included with my little light weight order. So I contacted the company via online chat, not expecting any type of refund but more to let them know I didn't think that was very nice. I was pleasant, stated my concerns, and asked that my comments be passed along to someone who might be interested. The agent explained that they charge by dollar amount of order, not by weight/size (which is what the post office does). I thanked her for the answer then stated that because we run on such a budget, I most likely would not be ordering from Dover again, she replied, "Sorry you feel that way." Meanwhile I had opened the thermometers and discovered that one of them had a broken case. Chat session was still open so I made a comment about the damage and thought that for the price they charge for shipping perhaps they could package the items a little better. I waited for a response. And waited. And waited. Nothing. I again thanked the agent and wished them a pleasant evening. Waited. Nothing. Yeah, lousy customer service."
"Wow, what a terrible "customer service" department they have. They ran a "create a wish list, get a $10 gift certificate" promotion which my horse-loving daughter went ahead and did. Several days went by with no gift certificate, so we contacted them as we were trying to do Christmas shopping. At first, they claimed the $10 took "48 hours, business days only" to arrive. So we waited. It didn't show up, so we emailed. They replied that we "didn't have a wish list." We checked online, and sure enough it was gone! So, I recreated it. I called. No one could figure out why it was gone. I figured out on my own that if an item on your wish list becomes unavailable, it goes away--and so does your wish list. So, I recreated it and reached out to them. This time, they claimed it wasn't public--which it is. They said we'd have to make it public, and, then give them time to search it on the internet and find it, and then give them three days to generate the $10...meanwhile, Christmas items are disappearing in desired sizes and colors, including items in our cart. This is a relatively high priced merchant and the $10 helps on a cart full of high priced equestrian items. After days of wrangling and numerous phone calls and emails with impotent content, we give up. We will go ahead and shop with a discount saddlery merchant. Wish I could post what I'd like to say to doversaddlery online, but, it wouldn't be appropriate."
"At least one poster got an apology! I have been inconvenienced and still have yet to hear that they were sorry. I placed an order with them the same day I placed an order with another company. 5 days later my order from the other company arrived but I had yet to even get an email confirming Dover had processed and shipped my order. When I contact them they told me "Oops... it was a glitch in our system". They offered to upgrade the shipping to expedited ground but it was supposed to have been another week for it to get to me since we were going into the weekend. I told them to cancel it as I was going to have to purchase the items I needed in my local tack store and they said they would and promised to refund me. Another week later and still no order and no refund. Another phone call reveled they shipped the order and it was supposedly delivered here... but I certainly haven't seen it! The lady told me to go check around my house and on my front porch... I'm pretty sure I would have seen a big box sitting outside of my house! They are promising a refund again but I highly doubt I'll see one unless I dispute this transaction with my bank. They used to be very efficient and they used to provide great customer service. It's too bad they seem to lack such care now. Apparently some of my other horse friends have experienced things like this also so they have stopped ordering from Dover. I will be doing the same. Not even an apology for inconveniencing me!! "
"Still have not received my first order. Shipping was expensive even though they use Fedex Smartpost, the cheapest and slowest shipping speed possible. Customer service is extremely unhelpful as I only placed one small order and they don't feel its justified to help me out in any other way except saying they are sorry. I feel scammed."