Your report is particularly good to hear, shaner2000, given the communication problems people have reported with mygearstore in the past. It was an interest in hearing recent accounts like these that led to my thread necromancy. Since mygearstore was visibly active on this thread in the past, you'd certainly
hope that someone there took the complaints to heart, and realized there were problems on their end that had to be corrected. The email you received appears to be a sign of at least some improvement in keeping their customers updated when orders are delayed. Hope you'll keep us posted on the outcome! (BTW: Can you tell us if they already charged you for the backordered merchandise?)
As to my own experience, I'm very pleased. Everything went fine, and communication was near-instantaneous from Amazon's systems. In fact, my order was delivered 2 days after I ordered it, on Wednesday the 25th. Not
too shocking since it turns out the package was sent from Bethpage, Long Island -- whch is less than an hour's drive from here. But it's still impressive considering I took the free shipping option on my $22 order, and the (very conservative) estimated arrival date was Tuesday Sept. 1. So, in a sense the package arrived a full week early.
As Nate025 mentioned, the packaging was a bit spare: just a comically enormous, thick-padded soft mailer. In my case it didn't matter, Ice Creme comes packaged is a hard plastic "tube".
[*] Still, the postal service did their level best to mangle it during its short voyage. The local carrier who delivered it deserves a special commendation recognizing his/her achievements in experimental physics, having managed to ram the package into a standard apartment-building mailbox.
Regarding appview's comments:
appview, you said your items arrived 5 days late each time -- did you have tracking information so you could see where the delays occurred, or is that not available for international airmale? (I was surprised I received tracking info for my order's El Cheapo brand free-shipping.) Can't really blame mygearstore for the carrier taking a side-trip to Package Limbo after the order's left their hands, IMHO. (Which I'm sure is why so many online retailers no longer offer regular mail as an option, and use only managed delivery services.)
FWIW, if they use Priority Mail (for its tracking and confirmation) instead of First Class Mail, the cheapest rate the USPS shows me to the UK is $13.45 for a flat-rate envelope. And a rate quote run thru my login on UPS.com produced a rate of $48.48 for the same theoretical 4-oz shipment! Frankly, I'm shocked how much it costs to ship outside the US. So, if you can ship *to* us for only $5, be thrilled you're getting such a great rate!
I know that overseas shipping is often scrutinized (== delayed) pretty heavily, and can be a nightmare -- I've been looking at a certain product that only seems to be available direct from its UK manufacturer, and I'm dreading the thought of ordering it that way. I agree $25 sounds insane, especially on a product that doesn't even cost that much... for heaven's sake, why did you keep ordering from mygearstore when the cost is so high after delivery!??!
...Anyway, as I said my one experience was very good. I know I probably sound like a shill, so I'll just say that I have no connection with mygearstore except as a satisfied one-time customer, I don't stand to gain anything directly or indirectly from posting this, and I'll probably never even order from them again simply because I order online perhaps 3-5 times a year total. (No credit card -- anything ordered by mail requires that I enlist a friend's services as middleman.) But as things currently stand, if I'm ever shopping for more portable "stuff", or if I know anyone who is, mygearstore will be at the top of my list of potential sources.
If I'd had a bad experience in any way, I certainly would have reported it just as honestly, and I hope my previous comments in this thread show that I have standards for how a company should operate if they want my business. I just feel the 'net is overpopulated with people rushing to their computers to complain loudly about... well,
anything. Yet when the reverse happens and they have positive experiences, they're silent. So, when a company makes me happy, or even exceeds my expectations, I like to say so.
[*] - Completely unrelated to mygearstore, but Ice Creme is packaged really oddly, TBH. Radtech stacks the two bottles of liquid and the applicator pads/swabs all in a single vertical line, so the package is more than three times as tall as either of the individual bottles! I assume the packaging is intended for retail display, to have the highest possible visibility. Radtech also has a direct-order web store, and I can't imagine they package it in such a strange manner for their own shipping!
