Hi Caity,
Thanks for your recent post to the FML. While I don't find that you no
longer recommend us to people offensive, I do want anyone who has read
this thread to know a few things...
>We've noticed that delivery from TFS has become much slower in recent
>months, and they have acknowledged taking a week or more just to ship our
>order. I'm not talking about delivery time, mind you, I'm talking about
>how long it takes them to pack the order and send it. Their service is
>nowhere near as good as it once was, though it's still within reason.
I tried to pull up your account to look into this, but I could not locate
it. This is nowhere the standard, and something must have gone terribly
wrong... I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but a week before shipping...
We have never been operating that far behind. We do have some instances
where this does happen, but the longest backlog of orders we have on record
is 3 business days (which if you do include Saturday and Sunday, it would
make 5 days - but again, this is quite unfair as Fed Ex and UPS do not pick
up on weekends...).
><What we have also noticed is several jumps in price on a number of our
>favorite products. We went back to buying Totally Ferret locally: one
>good store in our area (Discount Pet in Raleigh) is now keeping a decent
>stock (finally) and has much better prices, plus a 10% discount for
>members of Triangle Ferret Lovers (TriFL). So... TFS lost some business
>from us. Another product, Yesterday's News Ferret Litter, has become
>totally unreasonable, but none of the local stores stock it any more.
>Whenever we try changing their litter our ferts all become
>un-litter-trained and decide they have a digging toy instead. So... while
>we hate paying so much for litter, we keep buying it. I guess it's worth
>it not to have to pick up after them.>>
The one thing most people don't realize is what the cost of shipping really
is. Don't forget that your local pet store does not pay incoming or
outgoing shipping charges. For example, when we ship one 10 LB bag of
Yesterday's News to California, the cost to ship this bag is $9.63, or if
you live in a "rural area", we pay $10.68. This cost has to be factored
somehow into the cost of the items. "Free shipping" is something we do so
that people who order from us don't have to waste their time placing an
order, only to find out that the "shipping charges" are $x.xx.
With us, you know what the total of your order is as you order, and you
know when to stop. You won't get caught off guard at the end. So many
companies disguise price increases like $5.99* and the * means an extra
$4.00 is charged for whatever reason, in addition to shipping charges. I
believe that catalogs that do this are just difficult to shop from and
totally dishonest. We could take the cost of Yesterdays News and price
it online at $4.99* (+$4.00 overweight charge, and $4.95 for shipping).
I guess what I am getting at is this, apples to apples, pet stores and mail
order catalogs are two different things. It is not fair to compare a store
to a mail order catalog. Another factor: almost every manufacturer raised
"our costs" this year, and shipping in general has increased about 5% - in
fact, the US Post Office has raised Priority Mail 2 times this year.
Health insurances for full time employees went up almost 20%...
What I can say is, no local pet store or online catalog will ever enjoy
ferrets as much as we do, and donate products and money to ferret causes
like we do. For the size of our company, we give much more back to the
ferret community than most larger companies do...
Thank You,
Joe Palko
NEEPS, Inc.
The Ferret Store
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Joe Palko - NEEPS, Inc.
http://www.theferretstore.com
The Ferret Store
Phone: 1-800-440-3356 Ext. 9201
Fax: 1-888-329-8384 / (570) 208-1948
We're More Than Just Ferrets!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[Posted in FML issue 3509]
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