"What happened to Jerry's Artarama??!!! It seems like, overnight, they have gone from great to horrible! I used to order from them all the time without any problems. Customer service was always helpful and responsive.
But all of a sudden, with my last order, part of it wasn't shipped to me. I waited a couple of weeks and tried contacting customer service. 1st email - no reply. 2nd and 3rd email - no reply. Tried calling; but after spending 20 minutes on hold, got nowhere and gave up. Received some sort of automated message about them "consolidating their warehouses", but not a SINGLE human reply! Disputed the sale with my credit card company. Thought maybe that would get their attention. Still - nobody from Jerry's Artarama contacted me.
Wow. I mean, wow. They've gone from being my favorite business to being a scary, scary place to deal with.
I don't care what kind of changes your business is going through, you can NOT use these changes as an excuse for a complete lack of customer service! How disappointing. Now I have to find a new art supplies vendor. "

"I purchased a gift card online; the experience was very painful as the website took forever to load and was cumbersome to use."

"Tuesday, June 16, 2009

NEVER NEVER NEVER shop at Jerry's Artarama. Not only is the quality of the product inferior, the customer service is LOUSY!

With great anticipation, I ordered some linen canvases online. When a friend forwarded an e-mail touting great deals through Jerry's Artarama online store, I was happy to jump on board. Imagine my complete dismay when the package arrived, and the quality of the canvases was grossly sub-par. Within moments, I sent an e-mail trying to find an amicable solution to a big problem.

Days later and still no response from the e-mail, I called the 8oo number. I waited 37 minutes to speak with someone, who, in the end, basically told me to go #@** myself. The one small concession was that we could return the product at our local store and get a full refund. Houston is a big town. The local store is a 45 minute drive -- one way. But, hoping for resolution, my husband and I went. Turns out, local stores have nothing whatsoever to do with the online part of the business. They didn't even carry the same product line. The person on the other end of the 800 # call knew full well, and sent us on a wild goose chase anyway. The local store told me I was screwed. But, a week later I actually got a call from someone at the company...not saying, "Oh, we're so sorry. What can we do to help?" Instead, they said, "Prove it."

Then, they said, "We're bigger and more important than you. You are a tiny insignificant speck. We don't have to do anything to make this right. You're up *%#@ creek without a paddle. HAHAHAHA!"

So again, NEVER purchase anything from Jerry's Artarama. They are very bad people."

"Normally I would rave about Jerry's Artarama. I love the store.

However, it is the online store which has been a nightmare. I purchased photo cards for my business April 10, 2009. Email notification advised my order was released. After 2 wks I called and was unable to get a shipping date due to a new computer system. I emailed a supervisor with no reply (3 times) After 3 more weeks I received my order.

I sent my Mother a gift certificate for Mothers Day (may 3rd) . I advised her to wait to use thinking the problems with the new computer system would be resolved.

She used it right away. Because of her persistence and numerous phone calls she found out it will arrive in SEPTEMBER!!! Holding time on the phone for customer service, for myself and my Mother, averaged 40 min.

Do not order online. Just a warning!!"

"I placed an order for various mats, backing, and plastic bags on Nov 11. Several items were on backorder, but I was assured that they would be available within two weeks. It is now more than two weeks later and none of the backordered items have come into inventory. So I requested that the available items be shipped now. I sent two mails and left two voice mails, but have yet to get any response. I need these items by next weekend and expected that a month would be sufficient time for an order to be filled. What a mistake!

The local store is great, but the mail order service is terrible."

"I ordered a French easel and some paints and other supplies on Sunday over the Black Friday weekend, the main thing being the easel, which was on sale. The website said it was in stock, even today, Wednesday, when I checked it. I contacted them using their online contact form, asking where my easel was. I received an email saying that it was backordered and not expected for more than a week, and this wait time keeps growing. This is ridiculous and unacceptable! This is called bait and switch, and is illegal. I will be disputing the charge with my credit card company, and will never do business with this company again. I suggest no else does either, unless they enjoy being cheated!"

"Disappointed in the quality. Not as much pigment as Acryla brand - Too watery. Gouache needs to be capable of being opaque and Acryl didn't have that quality. Brushes were snappy, which I don't care for."

"Product -as expected. Service -as expected. But once they have your contact information you will be inundated with almost daily email solicitations and several trees worth of catalogs will arrive in your mailbox in perpetuity. Even after speaking directly with a human who assured me they would stop, all of it just keeps on coming. Pretty annoying. Otherwise you won't be disappointed with your experience. "

"I really like going to my local Jerry's Artarama. The staff are friendly, knowledgeable and very helpful. And it carries many of the basic supplies I use, though I wish it had Golden OPEN acrylics and a full line of Princeton brushes.
However, after my latest experience ordering from Jerry's online, I probably will use other companies for things I need to order. Here's why:
1. My local store doesn't carry most of the easels that are on Jerry's website, so I ordered a couple to compare. They were badly packaged end-to-end in two long boxes that were taped together, making one very long carton. During shipping, the tape didn't hold and the boxes split apart. Nothing was lost or damaged, but it was a poor job.
2. Unfortunately, neither of the easels worked for me, so I wanted to return them. But apparently the local stores generally don't accept returns from online orders. Why ever not?! Their competition permit store returns, and none of them have everything in stock that's on their websites. Since the order number can track the source of the order, returns needn't count against the store's sales. Some internal method could be devised to return the items to the warehouse or to give the store incentive to sell the items instead."

"This is about the online store. I have not been to a retail outlet.

Pros: I found what I was looking for and the info provided for the mouth atomizers was adequate. I knew the shipping before placing the order. It arrived within a reasonable amount of time - about a week.

Cons: All the pros are irrelevant because the all five mouth atomizers were defective. Improperly assembled. In effect garbage. When I called customer service I had to leave a message (it was during business hours), but I did get a call back within the hour. Although it was difficult understanding the customer service rep he did say I would get a refund of the purchase price only within 7-10 business days. Interestingly he said I did not have to send the items back and he didn't seem surprised which I find odd. I have to wonder if they know what they are selling is defective just do the refund. Of course they keep the $7.95 s&h. As small as these items I bought were they could have been shipped for less than $2.50 so they still make something. My refund will only be 10.95 but it's the principle of the thing. It appears they do not care they are shipping out defective products. There were no apologies, assurances they would look into the problem - nothing. Hopefully the refund will show up.
Fool me once, shame on them. Fool me twice shame on me. I won't shop there again. "

"On April 14th I placed an order online. I ordered 4 items. I received 2 frames in a box with no paperwork. The other 2 items I ordered have never arrived. I tried to check my order by number online and there is no record. I tried to use live chat, and it would not let me place a comment. I tried calling customer service 3 times and spent a total of more than 40 minutes n hold and never got a response. I sent 2 emails to ****@**** and never received a response. I need the rest of my order (#3220208J) for a class and I'm going to tell everyone in the class not to order from Jerry's anymore unless I get my stuff!"

"This review is about the online sales of Jerry's Artarama. ( The company has retail stores in several cities. I have never shopped at one.)

I was satisfied with the merchandise (a roll of canvas) and I had a simple question about it. However it proved impossible to contact the online version Jerry's Artarama.

Their email correspondence says to email ****@****. When I tried this, the email I sent bounced. I think the relevant part of the notification I got is this:

:
66.46.182.46 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 No such user (****@****)
Giving up on 66.46.182.46.


I called the customer service number given in the emails ***-***-****. I got an automated phone system. I picked the choice of asking a question about an order. I left a message. The emails from Jerry's referred to my order by two different codes. In my message I used the longer code which was in their more recent message.

I got no response. After a few days, I called the customer service number again. This time I selected a choice to ask a technical question (not about a particular order). The voice said "This mailbox is no longer in use.".

I went to Jerrys Artarama website and picked the "contact us" option. I began to fill out an online form. When I pressed the Enter key to begin a new paragraph, the form exited and (I assume) sent only a fragmentary message.

I went back to the website. I wrote about the problem of their email address being bounced. I tried to paste the bounce-back email in the form. A window came up that said "An error has occured" and that the technical staff had been notified.

I tried to write another message without pasting anything into the form. It also produced the "An error has occurred" message. I think this error happens whenever you try to write a long message.

I went back to the website 3 times more and wrote 3 short messages dealing with the problems: their email not working, their phone number not answering and the defects in their online form.

Just for the heck of it, I called the customer service number again and pressed the selection to ask a question. This selection still said "This mailbox is no longer in use". I randomly pressed some keys on the phone and I was surprised that I got into some automated system that asked me to enter the name of the person that I was trying to contact. I made the natural choice: 53779 ("JERRY"). I got an extension number. I didn't really think that this would be the "Jerry" that owned the Artarama, but I was running out of options. So I called Jerry's extension 3 times and left his answering machine 3 short messages concerning the Artarama email not working, the phone answering system not working and the online form at the website not working.

These adventures happened last month. It's June 9 and I still haven't heard anything from Jerrys Artarama. I suggest that you verify that they have gotten their communications working before you place an order. Try to get a response from the email, the phone or the form at their website. Maybe they've discovered the problems themselves and fixed them by now."

"Everything's been on backorder for over 2 weeks and still no work from our original order...they have a great selection but for it to be all on backorder for so long, not so great..."

"Great Product Great Prices Prompt delivery"

"Ordered. Delivered. Put to use."