"While on a paper/office supply hunt, I was starting to get a little distraught with the whole slew of too-expensive, namebrand pads and refills out there--stuff that would satisfy posh-item aficionados and are oh so far away from practical pricing or long-term usage... until I came across USA Custom Pad Corp.

Technically, NotepadRefills.com, but explanations anon.

It was a breath of fresh air being able to get what I wanted:

1) Obtaining the right-sized items, and...

2) No scalping for bulk purchases.

Both of these requirements are incredibly difficult to fulfill considering how saturated the paper market is with trendy crap. Moleskines, Rhodia products, or even Mead's Cambridge line items are of wonderful quality--and there are many less mainstream brands that offer unique quality goods, but none of that stuff is disposable without consequence.

What about refills for the wares that *require* them? For the trendy stuff, they rip you off if your primary concern is retaining paper quality. If paper quality is negligible, the issue becomes one of obtaining the *correct* pad size--usually unavailable for cheap, so you splurge or (for the insane) cut and bind your own.

If you don't have money to burn, USA Custom Pad Corp/NotepadRefills.com gives you a large enough selection of sizes (in bulk) that should fit your needs. If not, they even offer custom notepads, but I haven't yet looked into them.

The only disconcerting thing is how the company is organized. Stumbling upon NotepadRefills.com was great, but a little hard to find. I first encountered their LeatherandVinylDirect.com site, which presented a lovely assortment of leather and vinyl desk/office-type items (expected), but found it unhelpful. From there, I checked out Deskpads.com, found nothing that I needed--just more in the vein of Leather and Vinyl (excessive), and decided to visit USApad.com since it was the only consistent facet of the sites as a listed email. But... I discovered that they had no options to order refills online without first talking to a human. (Can you say "tedious"?)

FINALLY, a tangential search called up NotepadRefills.com in a too isolated, random way. Seeing how this site was tied to USA Custom Pad was weird because there was no *obvious* way of accessing the NotepadRefills site through the main one, or any other. How would anyone know to use NotepadRefills.com without first finding it on their own? (This goes for JournalsDirect.net, too, although that has no online purchasing options without direct human contact.)

Albeit shady, NotepadRefills.com had prices that were tempting enough for me to take the plunge. (There's no paypal option, but not a bad thing in retrospect since my CC wasn't charged extra.) The flat shipping rate was fair--much less than expected, and thus, no tracking. I got the order in a timely fashion, and there were no frills whatsovever. (Apart from the order confirmation, I've never received another email from them regarding sales or anything trivial; draw your own conclusions about this.)

The whole process of figuring out what site/company belonged to what, and in what capacity, was perplexing at first, but is perhaps pardonable--given that I got what I wanted without issue. So, if there is a second purchase later, this post gets an update.

For now... recommended."