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2016-05-16
1/5
It may be where America buys its office supplies...
"...but apparently Hawai'i can bugger right off.
I placed an order for a few items before the weekend, and woke up on Monday to an indication from paypal that my payment had been refunded. Looking at the site, my order is "closed".
There was no explanation offered, and I have heard nothing from the company itself. The website was quite happy to take an order shipping to Honolulu, and its not like this was a free-shipping-but-not-for-you deal, as the total included a charge for S&H. I wasn't buying anything particularly large or heavy; it's not as if I was expecting them to send me several hundred pounds of equipment.
What an utter waste of time."
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2012-11-29
2/5
"I'd love to tell you how ValleySeek had the lowest price on a NAS box I was going to buy for work and how they had reasonable shipping rates to Hawai'i, but unfortunately I can't.
You see, despite being perfectly happy to quote a (fairly decent) rate in their shopping cart page to ship the system to Honolulu, my attempt to actually *buy* from them fell flat on its face in the bowels of Google's checkout system, with a warning that there was no possible shipping method that could get the item from there to here.
I realise we're on a rock in the middle of the Pacific, but it's not *that* unusual for FedEx or UPS to occasionally stop by and deliver stuff, you know.
Ho hum. Off to your competition I go..."
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Merchant Member
2011-07-06
1/5
"This is an updated review of Optics Planet, following the the complete collapse of my (now) not so recent order with them.
For the TL;DR crowd, run away as fast as you can. Hit that back button as quickly as you can isntead of ordering from Optics Planet.
They have fundamental flaws in the way they conduct their business, and can't be trusted to deliver on their promises. They appear to lie up front about "shipping" your order so that they can charge your credit card as early as possible, and then go completely hands-off on the remainder of the process. It's up to the customer to detect and attempt to correct problems - if an order hits a problem, they appear perfectly content to let it languish until prodded.
Optics Planet claims to be able to turn prescription glasses orders around in 2-3 weeks. That's not particularly speedy in the day and age of same-day B&M stores such as Lenscrafters, but they do have a major selling point: price.
A few years ago, my wife got a pair of D&G glasses from Lenscrafters. They were standard prescription lenses (no bi/varifocals or anything) with AR and anti-scratch coatings, and cost a fair bit.
She liked the frames so much that when her prescription was changed a month or so ago, she wanted new lenses on the same frames. Unfortunately, Lenscrafters don't carry those frames any longer, and it's not possible to put new lenses on the old frame as rimless frames are cut once the lenses are installed.
Googling about led me to Optics Planet, who reportedly had the frames in stock. I built up an order, and the reported price was unexpectedly low for pretty much the same set of glasses with a slight prescription tweak (roughly half of what we'd paid a few years ago). Their rating here is generally positive, so I decided to give them a go. In hindsight, that was a mistake.
The order was placed at the beginning of June, and promptly ground to a halt. I had chosen to pay with Amazon Payments (there's a choice halfway through the checkout process), and apparently orders placed with that form of payment are stillborn. None of the prescription information from the order made it to Optics Planet, nor did any of the lens choice information.
It took them a week of silence to realise this, and I was forced to repeat the prescription and lens info via email, which isn't a happy thought. Still, I figured I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.
About a week later, I received a notification from Amazon that the order had shipped. I thought that was pretty fast turnaround, given they claim 2-3 weeks, so I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised. How wrong I was.
3 weeks later, we were still waiting for my wife's glasses. Optics Planet ignored the first couple of emails sent across the space of a few days, and I ended up calling them, only to be handled by a fairly disinterested and unapologetic customer rep. that didn't have the first clue as to what's going on.
The one thing I did learn is that the shipping notification is completely meaningless in every way - it means that they SHIPPED THE FRAMES TO THE LAB that they use, not that my order was completed. There's probably another term for that: "lying" is the first springs to mind. This seems designed to allow them to collect their money via Amazon early on, instead of waiting for the merchandise to actually ship.
That's a real class act you've got going there, guys.
Anyway, back to the plot: I got a promise that I'd hear from them the next day, but didn't. After some more prodding, they claimed that the lab broke the first frame, and that they were waiting that frame to be restocked so they could send another to the lab. The expected delay was supposed to be two weeks.
I should have backed out then, but knowing how much my wife wanted her glasses, I gave them another chance. Call me a sucker, because that's what I am.
Three weeks later, having hear nary a peep from Optics Planet, I emailed them again. In return I got some sob story about how the manufacturer had stopped making them, they were no longer available, etc.
I was given the choice of picking a new frame or a refund. Guess which I chose? We'll see if they can at least get that right. I can see this ending up as an Amazon Payments dispute if it's not settled immediately.
The bottom line: if you're ordering anything custom, be prepared to deal with some considerable level of incompetence and be prepared to wait much longer than they claim on their site. If your order arrives at all, give serious thanks, because the odds definitely seem stacked against it. Apparently that's the real cost of what are otherwise quite good prices.
Despite their quoted proces being low, I'm rating this as high-priced. I've been without by two hundred bucks (plus change) for a couple of months now, for no benefit whatsoever. Add to that the amount of time I've had to spend chasing after this company, and I fail to see how any savings were made, especially as the ultimate conclusion of the order was cancellation.
The best part? I used to live just up the road from Northbrook, IL, which is where they operate from. I would have loved to head over there and do some yelling, but alas that's no longer an option."
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2011-05-19
5/5
"For the TL;DR crowd: solid service, good prices and incredibly decent worldwide shipping rates, but pre-sales could use some work.
As a Scot "stuck" in Honolulu, getting a hold of stuff that I could buy at a million and one shops back home can prove to be tricky. The internet increasingly makes items more accessible, but often at a price.
With the conclusion of this year's Six Nations (with Scotland narrowly avoiding the wooden spoon in the same way they've done since 2007) I figured it might be a good time to try to pick up a couple of rugby shirts. Back home they typically are marked down on sale after the tournament is done, but I didn't rate my chances at getting anything at a reasonable cost from nearly 9000 miles away. Nevertheless, I hit google in the hope of turning something up.
The first thing I found were a bunch of online stores based in the U.S. that import jerseys. They typically wanted the better part of $100 plus shipping (often with fairly unreasonable rates to Hawai'i) however, which made them last-resort possibilities, so I kept looking.
I had a peek at the Scottish Rugby Union's online shop. It's operated by Greaves Sports, and I can easily visualise their shop in Sauchiehall street in Glasgow, but their worldwide shipping is expensive, which would have negated any savings from sale prices.
I finally discovered Pro Direct, but I don't remember the part I took to get there. As well as their home site, they also operate Pro Direct Rugby (http://www.prodirectrugby.com/ which is where I originally landed) Soccer, Tennis and so forth.
Browsing to their Scotland section, I found that (like most other UK retailers) they were having a sale, and a decent one at that (40% off). On top of that, their actual prices for overseas customers are lower still as they don't collect VAT, which is now a mind-blowing 20%.
Despite the sale, they had pretty decent stock (unlike the SRU store) Their worldwide shipping rates also looked very reasonable, and were actually lower than what the U.S. stores wanted to move the same merchandise a fraction of the distance.
Things were looking up, but I needed to sort out sizing. The last shirt I bought was some 7-8 years ago, and I wanted to make sure that the manufacturer's sizing hadn't changed since then. I couldn't find a sizing chart on their site, so I emailed their customer service department for clarification. It took them the better part of 6 days to reply, by which time I'd seriously considered not bothering with the whole thing.
Thankfully, patience paid off. Based on their advice, I submitted an order for a couple of shirts. A confirmation email arrived promptly, and was followed up about 1 day later with a shipping notification, which was a nice touch. Their shipping department definitely appears to be much more on the ball than sales.
No tracking was available during transit as the package was shipped by post, but it arrived on my doorstep (signature required) 11 days later, which is pretty typical for mail between the UK and here. Their advice on sizing was spot-on, so full marks to them for that.
All in all, I'm quite chuffed at the way the order went. I got two new rugby shirts shipped halfway round the world, ultimately for the same price as buying a single jersey from one of the various U.S. sellers. Given that sort of savings, the earlier communications delay doesn't seem so important."
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2011-05-18
5/5
"An outstanding little company.
After first deciding to ditch my old electric and get back into wet shaving, and then to try out double-edged safety razors (instead of the octuple-blade nonsense from the usual subjects), the question then became: where should I buy from?
It's both a blessing and a curse: the internet invariably means that a multitude of companies are accessible for pretty much every niche you can think of, and shaving is no exception. Even the mighty Amazon (plus its marketplace) carries pretty much anything you could imaging in terms of shaving supplies.
Having lurked at the forums of badgerandblade.com for some considerable time, one of the names that kept popping up was West Coast Shaving. Founded by a forum member that originally got started by offering blade "sampler packs", WCS appears to have grown to become a very highly-regarded supplier of shaving gear.
I had a poke around and found that their prices were pretty competitive. Quite competitive, actually, even beating out the likes of Amazon for Merkur razors and such like. Some competitosr may have had a couple of items that I wanted at a lower price, but WCS' overall price was among the lowest I could find.
Their reputation, pricing and the clean, functional look of their website (which didn't throw up any surprises, unlike some) meant I was sold.
At the time I ordered, they also had a promotion for free shipping on orders of over $80. This was notable because there was no small print - most such offers usually have an asterisk and a teeny tiny disclaimer stating that it doesn't apply to Hawai'i, but that wasn't the case here.
Speaking of shipping, their preference for USPS with next to no markup on cost means that smaller orders that don't qualify for the promotional shipping offer still don't break the bank to ship to Honolulu - poking about, a pile of blades ships first class for only two or three bucks, and priority for six.
I ordered a shiny new Merkur, a brush, a blade sampler pack and a few other odds and sods, and then sent the order on its electronic way. An acknowledgement landed in my inbox within minutes, and a shipping confirmation followed less than 48 hours later. That's pretty impressive for a small store, some of which understandably don't have the most streamlined shipping process around.
The postman delivered my package a few days later, and everything was present and correct.
Once I'm done figuring out which blades I prefer, I'll definitely be ordering again from WCS, doubly so if I come down with a case of Razor Acquisition Disorder..."
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2007-08-25
1/5
"The short version: if everything goes to plan, then they're great to shop at. However, if there's a problem, their customer service response is laughable. Imagine a world where Computer Geeks can't/won't answer their email and you'll get where I'm coming from.
We're going to be having a party at the tail end of September for my daughter's first birthday. My wife got the idea that she'd quite like to be able to take photos of everyone as they sign in, print 'em out there and then, and put them in a guest book so that by the time everyone has arrived, we'll have a nice little photo album.
To that end, I went looking for a decent compact photo printer. I found that Computer Geeks had a refurb Epson Picturemate Deluxe going for fairly cheap, whic looked like it fit the bill - small, standalone printing from a memory card or an attached camera and a decent-sized colour screen with which to make simple edits and to check that the correct print was being made.
Despite the high shipping charges to Hawai'i (50% of the price of the printer), the low price of the refurb made the overall deal fairly competitive. Since I have ordered from Computer Geeks a couple of times in the past (when we lived in Illinois) and was happy, I figured I would have no trouble getting one of these printers from them. I guess I was wrong.
On the Saturday before I took off on business for a week to a remote site with next to no phone coverage (albeit with slow internet access), a box arrived from Compgeeks. I opened it up, and found that the wrong model of printer was in the box. I had ordered a Picturemate Deluxe (quite clearly specified as model B351A) and received the basic version (model B271A) instead.
If I were planning to print from a PC, this might not be a problem. However, since no computer will be involved, I can't live without the screen.
Now, to be fair to Compgeeks, this looks like it was Epson's fault. Inside the Compgeeks box was an Epson refurb box containing the printer. On the side of that box was a label for a refurb Deluxe model with the same serial number as the enclosed printer, but the model numbers don't match. It looks like Epson sent the wrong item in their box, and Compgeeks passed it along to me.
That's not what I'm annoyed at. What I am annoyed at is that they have completely ignored the four or so attempts I made in the past week from said remote location to contact them.
Compgeeks has two methods for people to get in touch. You can either call tham (not an option at the weekends, nor from where I was working during normal working hours for me this past week) or "email" them via a fill-in form on their website. You have a choice of places to send inquiries, including Tech Support and Inventory Control:
http://www.geeks.com/geek_tech.asp
http://www.geeks.com/Geek_Inventory.asp
The forms are slightly different, but they seem to behave the same way. I sent four messages via these two forms, and they just disappeared into the ether. Not one of the messages resulted in any sort of confirmation from their system, never mind an actual response from a person that can sort this mess out.
I got back to civilisation today (Friday) slightly too late to catch them by phone, so I now have to wait until the beginning of next week to try to resolve this.
I find it utterly pathetic that a bunch of self-professed "Computer Geeks" can't deal with enquiries via some non-standard "email" that they chose to set up. They couldn't have picked a more ironic name for themselves if they tried.
I don't need this kind of nonsense this close to a big event like this, especially if I'm not in a position to resolve it during the work week.
This may well get resolved on Monday, but this review stands - Compgeeks chose to deal with Customer Service issues in this manner, and their broken system will still be there regardless of what eventually happens with this order.
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Edit (08/28/07):
Well, it looks like Compgeeks pays more attention to RR than they do their email, because on Monday morning I got one of their staff on the phone to me before I had a chance to call.
Anyway, they overnighted a replacement to me, and guess what? It's the exact same wrong printer. I now have two of these beauties sitting at home. Maybe I should start a collection?
Now they're going to have to dare to go down to their warehouse and actually check whether what they're actually selling is what they claim to be selling. Here's hoping they follow up on their promise to call back once that's done.
I wonder how many other people have gotten burned by this bad batch or whatever and didn't even notice?"
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Merchant Member
2007-08-04
4/5
"The short version: we got a couple of little LED keychain lights for a great price with no hassles.
Deciding I'd had it with my AAA Maglite Solitaire, I wanted to get a little LED light for both my self and the missus to put on our keychains. While I'd love an Arc AAA, I couldn't justify that sort of price for an occasional-use light, so I settled for a couple of Photon's Freedom Micro lights.
After searching around for prices, I came across batteryjunction.com, who were offering these at $10 apiece, which is a bargain compared to the $17 asking price on Photon's website. The next lowest price I found was $15.
On top of that, I found a 5% off coupon. Not much, but every little bit helps defray shipping costs.
Speaking of which, batteryjunction.com offered to ship both lights for $5 via USPS. This is a big advantage over other online shops that only want to ship to Hawai'i via Fedex or UPS, and charge exorbitant amounts to do so. $5 is a little steep for such a small, light package and I'm sure they're making some money off that price, but it beat the competition, so I can't complain too much.
The lights arrived in retail packaging in a little padded envelope about a week later. They seem to be as advertised, including the handy little magnetic clip for handsfree use.
Anyway, overall I'm pretty satisfied with this order and with this site."
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2007-08-04
5/5
"The short version: everything went smoothly, including porting our numbers.
We decided it was time to replace our aging phones as their battery life was getting ridiculous. The missus decided she liked the blue Motorola Krzr (or however you spell it) offered through AT&T, so I had a hunt around for pricing.
letstalk.com listed them for free (and shipped via 2-day for free) without rebates with a new contract. This was $100 less per phone than the asking price after rebates at the local rebranded Cingular stores, so that seemed like a deal in itself. Neither of us had any love for our former provider (T-Mobile), so we had no problems with switching over to AT&T. Despite the less than glowing reviews here, I decided to give them a try, and set up an order for two Krzrs and AT&T's cheapest family plan, requesting that both our numbers be ported.
We placed the order late on Sunday night and received an order confirmation through email in good time. However, on Monday morning, their website was showing the phones as backordered.
I had a sinking feeling that the reviews here were coming true for us. I picked up the phone and called customer service, only to be told that the phones were in stock, the credit check and number port had went through and that they would ship later that day. True to their word, we got a tracking number that afternoon and Fedex started showing progress on the package soon afterwards.
On wednesday morning I got a call from the missus saying that calls to my old mobile weren't getting through, which showed promise on the number porting effort. The two phones arrived on Wednesday afternoon. I popped in the SIm cards, turned 'em on and crossed my fingers.
Both phones came up on the network without any problems, and both responded to their expected ported phone numbers.
All in all, letstalk.com did a fine job of getting the phones out the door and in handling the new service activation and number porting paperwork.
Now we'll see what happens with the rebates. letstalk were advertising that we're eligible $50 rebate on each phone, so we'll see how that pans out. If we get messed around on that, then this review will get bumped down to a somwwhat satisfied.
Still, without that, the phones were free and the process went very well for us, so I can't say I'm anything other than very satisfied at this point."
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2007-06-28
1/5
"Ugh. This is by far the worst experience I've ever had in the 7 or so years I've been shopping at Amazon. It's so nice to know that they can turn round and casually shaft their repeat customers without a care in the world.
This particular order was for a little over $200 of miscellaneous stuff. Part of the order was for a couple of SD flash cards, which I figured (correctly) we would need for an upcoming holiday.
The order was placed in plenty of time, but Amazon decided to wait a week before informing me that part of the order was delayed. By the time the cards shipped, there was no way they would be able to make it here before we left, and as a result I had to run to a local Best Buy the night before the trip to buy replacements.
After we got back, after consulting with customer service I refused the package when the post office tried to deliver it. This is supposed to be an acceptable method of a return with Amazon.
This evening I received an email with details of the return and the refund. Instead of the full $36 refund amount, Amazon then had the nerve to:
1. Deduct from that some $5 for the use of a prepaid shipping label that they claim was used in the return (it wasn't),
2. Deduct the amount quoted as saved for free shipping (despite a policy that if the return is due to their error, no such deduction will be made),
3. Perform the elementary school math so badly in subtracting the two deductions that the final amount is far less than what the simple sum would otherwise come out to if someone competent had done it. Perhaps Amazon needs a calculator? They have pages and pages of 'em listed on their site, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one.
I have written back to customer service contesting the whole thing, but I'm not going to bother waiting for their reply to post this writeup. This whole transaction went badly enough before they tried to pull this nonsense, and this is simply the final straw.
Amazon, don't expect me to order anything from you again. This farce you dare to call a refund is bordering on criminal, and I'll get the remaining funds back from my credit card company if need be.
Edit: one of their reps wrote back to me and (in less than apologetic tones and with no explanation for the discrepancies) promised the full refund. The review still stands - this has been the worst experience I've ever had with Amazon."
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Merchant Member
2007-06-28
5/5
"The best camera shop on the internet? Possibly.
B&H have great prices (often the lowest legit prices anywhere), an amazing selection of products and are very up-front about what's in stock and what equipment is USA market versus imported. They're one of the few companies that deserve implicit trust in their ability to deliver what you order with no nonsense.
Their only flaw that I can see is that they seem completely incapable of estimating when an out of stock item will be available again.
For example, I chucked a tripod into my card as part of this order to save on shipping, and was told when I later tried to check out that it was out of stock. When I contacted customer service, they were unable to tell me when they would get more in, so I just picked the next model up (the difference was about $10 on a $1200 order, so I wasn't that bothered) and checked out.
A couple of hours later, the tripod I had originally selected was indicated as being in stock again, yet the customer service rep was unable to tell me that there were more arriving that day.
Anyway, that's a minor quirk, and it certainly wouldn't stop me from ordering again from B&H in the future. I'd take their real-time stock indication over other companies' vague guesses any day of the week.
Very much recommended."
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2007-06-19
5/5
"I ordered a "factory demo" Nikon 18-70mm lens for my incoming D80 from Cameta. I didn't want to go bid for it at their eBay store (too much sniping), so I called and placed an order for one directly.
Their "factory demo" lenses are purportedly unused by any consumer, and are instead demo units that have gone back to Nikon for a quick inspection. Indeed, my lens arrived in a Nikon-marked box with a Nikon refurb 90-day warranty slip, the same as I've seen offered as refurb lenses from other merchants.
The "factory demo" lenses are described as being functionally perfect and may have slight cosmetic blemishes from handling. However, mine is in perfect shape - I would never have been able to tell it apart from a new lens.
I paid significantly less than I would have for the same refurb item at other stores, and better still, Cameta backs these items with their own 1-year warranty. OK, so it's still not quite the 5-year warranty Nikon offers on new lenses, but at some 2/3 the price of buying new, that's not too shabby at all (and is the same length of warranty on Canon's new lenses anyway).
If I were to have any gripes at all about Cameta, it would be about their reliance on eBay and about their order confirmation process.
I'm not a huge fan of eBay, and less so of paypal. I'd rather just buy direct and use my credit card directly. I can't do that at Cameta's website, but thankfully I can just call them instead, which is a great thing.
It also took them longer than expected to get an order confirmation to me. That said, their idea of confirmation is a notification that the order shipped already, so I don't have a lot to complain about there, either.
All in all, I'll definitely be taking a peek at Cameta for future lens bargains..."
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2007-06-19
5/5
"A little gem of a site for Mack camera warranties.
I just got the chance to go buy myself a new Nikon D80. Since this is a rare opportunity that probably won't come around again for quite a while, I wanted to pick up one of Mack's extended warranties just to make sure. However, the store I bought the camera from (like many, many others) wanted $90 for a camera of that price.
Some random googling turned up Quality Digital Camera, and I'm really glad it did. Instead of the others' asking price for the infamous Mack warranty #1016, QDC were only looking for $35 for one. Even better, instead of the nonsense shipping costs that a lot of other places seem to think is reasonable to move a couple of pieces of paper from A to B, QDC will chuck it in an envelope and send it through the mail for the princely sum of two dollars plus change.
OK, so on the downside, their website sort of reminds me of a bad myspace page. Their front page has a monstrous picture of a Mack warranty that definitely gets the point across, but it causes the text that flows around it to make the page really wide, which is a bit of a pain. There are also links on the left to a bunch of jokes and the likes, which is odd but fun. To be honest, I wouldn't have ordered at all from here on the basis of their website alone, but the few reviews posted to RR were all glowing, so I took a chance.
They responded quickly to confirm my order, and they then sent a further email with the serial number of the warranty, in case I needed it quickly to go register it on Mack's website. Although I didn't need it that quickly, that was a very nice touch.
Basically, if you're looking for one of Mack's warranties, you could do far worse than this place. They have exceptional pricing compared to the competition (including some badly-needed sanity in shipping rates) and some nice touches in the way they do business."
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