One more review and one that I should have posted ages ago: the second half of my bonnet commission from Mrs. Parker's Millinery and Mercantile. The bonnet itself is simply wonderful and everything I could hope for. Especially considering I was a demanding customer and totally changed my mind about the design at the very last moment.
The bonnet feels very sturdy and the quality is wonderful. It even survived some heavy-handed handling during the shipping, none of which can be seen any longer.
Both sides.
This is what happened:
When the bonnet was shipped to me the first time it arrived to Iceland just fine and the customs, naturally, caught it. Icelandic customs are good at catching things. However, they're not always good at letting the recipient know their parcel has arrived. I didn't receive a single notification that a parcel had arrived (as opposed to the usual e-mails and written notifications), they didn't even write the parcel in their system so that the tracking could have told me its whereabouts. As things were, the tracking constantly showed the parcel to be in Chicago.
After a month they decided I had "denied the parcel". This was a bit puzzling because denying would mean at least acknowledging the parcel but maybe they just automatically do that after a month, who knows. Personally I was always under the impression that to deny a parcel I would have to do it myself and in case a recipient was not found, the parcel would simply be returned, not returned "denied by recipient".
Besides this, when the sender received it back the parcel had been through some serious action. The bonnet was mildly damaged iow there was a large dent in the brim, but Ms. Robles was capable of fixing/hiding it so that it cannot really be seen. I'd like to mention she also did this completely free of charge which I found nothing less than amazingly good customer service.
This whole experience was quite a lesson to me. Never will I ever wait for weeks again if the parcel seems to be stuck somewhere - it could be the customs office of Iceland has simply forgotten about it. My failure to act cost me double the shipping costs, additional service fee to the office for having "stored" my parcel for a month plus of course the custom fees once the parcel did eventually arrive the second time. This time, happily, I was notified the usual way, by a letter and an e-mail.
Type of feedback: positive!
Communication: 5/5
Accuracy of the item: 5/5
Was the item shipped when agreed upon: yes.
Packaging: 5/5
Overall experience: 4/5 but only because of the blunders of the customs office. It also didn't make me feel much better that they then asked me to pay them extra for having made those mistakes.
The freaking customs, doing what they do best: Screw everything up in ways you didn't think possible.
ReplyDeleteBut wow, great service from the lady who made the bonnet, seriously. Such a pretty piece!
I know! I was so surprised, in a good way, since it was not her fault in any way that the bonnet was damaged. The boxes she sends the bonnets in are very sturdy, it would take quite a bit of effort to successfully damage something packed that well. :S?
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