cough Amazon cough cough
Seriously, I open a few Internet tabs, and I check with Amazon, Chewy.com, and a few others that pop up on Google searches, find the best deal and place my order. I also use Ebates, so I can factor in where I’m getting money back from as well. Smartpak has never been the lowest price unless you buy the 'paks, which I don’t.
I reluctantly placed an order for the SP supplement I’m using on one of my horses today (he’s for sale, so I haven’t wanted to experiment with switching right now). As I checked out, I got this:
"Please Note: We’re experiencing considerable shipping delays. As a result, we’ve updated our estimated arrival to be as accurate as possible, so please review the dates below."
But it still shows that I should receive my order on 1/18, which would be the normal 2-day shipping time with no delay, so we’ll see…
Yeah - I’ve ended up back at ValleyVet and Schneiders lately. It’s unfortunate; I wish I could just order through SmartPak and be done with it - keeping track of what is coming from where and when for eight horses is hard!
Honestly, the shipping doesn’t even bother me - it’s the lack of response to this thread. My biggest pet peeve in life is people who ignore problems - even just replying “hey, we’re aware of the issue and are working to get things back on track” goes a long, long way.
<sigh> I just got off the phone with SmartPak regarding an exchange for a defective pair of expensive riding boots Mr Gary gave me for Christmas.
I shipped the boots back on the 3rd of January and Smartpak received them on the 10th. I was just told that I should be getting an email the middle of next week regarding the status of my exchange. An email the middle of next week?? How about getting my boots to me by the middle of next week??
I’m debating just cancelling the order. They’ve had $$$ of Mr Gary’s money since the middle of December and no boots to show for it. :mad:
I’m in the same boat. I returned a blanket and wanted to exchange it. They got the return today and sent this email
[I]"Thanks for shopping with SmartPak!
While we’re bummed that you had to return something, we’re happy to report that the package has arrived safely in our warehouse. The box will now make the journey from our receiving docks to the fabulous folks in Returnsland, and it may take up to 10 business days for your refund or exchange to be fully processed. However, we’ll be sure to email you again as soon as it’s all set. If you have any questions in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact us at CustomerCare@SmartPak.com or 1-888-339-9695.
If there’s anything we can do to make your next experience better, faster or easier, please let us know. You’re the reason we’re here and our smarts are at your service." [/I]
The bold is mine and it has given me pause about the exchange. SP is saying it may take 2 weeks to fully process the order and I would guess shipping would start after that time. I guess my advice to SmartPak would be to shorten the hell out of the time of the “journey” from the receiving docks to Returnsland.
Yep, I received that same email on the 10th.
I’m so disappointed he’s not Mr. Squirrel.
(Sorry, now back to your regularly scheduled programming…)
From here on out I will refer to him as Mr. Squirrel! 
Well, I just ordered at pair of white breeches and a stock tie for a show this coming weekend on Saturday, when it said if I ordered within 2 hours I’d get it this Friday. Well, it’s Thursday and the items have still not shipped yet, and now they are estimating it’ll be here in TWO WEEKS.
Wish I had seen this thread first!! 
Turns out my order that shipped right away was expedited. I didn’t ask for that, but I did email to complain about a previous delay.
So I sent an email over the weekend about my order…asking if it was backordered or if I should order from somewhere else (needed a halter for new horse). Monday morning, there was an email that my order had shipped…and another that my return was processed. Monday afternoon I got an email from Smartpak that everything looked to be taken care of. I did get the halter 2 days later. Not sure if my email expedited things or was coincidence.
Nice outcome for you! When Smartpak first started my husband, not a horse person, use to flip through the catalogs and remark that the company “had it going on” for horse women. Good photos, descriptions and the shipping was prompt. This past year he’s seen the decline in shipping service for the orders I’ve placed and recommended I avoid using them until they figure out their order/warehouse/shipping issues. I keep thinking well, it’s been 3 months since my last order and surely they have improved…LOL.
I don’t know what’s going on with Smartpak, but it’s an incredible disappointment. I’ve not experienced the shipping delays that everyone is talking about, but I’ve experienced some major shipping issues which they were reluctant to be very helpful with.
I added a new smartpak to my horse’s existing supplements to compliment his stall rest. It was the day past “change your smartpaks” day, and I needed this supplement ASAP. They exercised wonderful customer service to get the newly added supplement shipped out ASAP. I thought all was well.
Until I looked at my bank statement, and got several “shipped” emails. I expected two, and had FOUR. Four. They shipped both supplements TWICE and charged me TWICE. The total for these supplements was like, $75, and my horse JUST went on stall rest, and I JUST had a huge vet bill, in addition to all the major expenses surrounding a horse being on stall rest (more hay, more shavings, enrichment toys, etc). I was PISSED. I emailed them, and all they offered me was placing next month’s shipment on hold so we could “catch up”. While that might be a great option for someone who doesn’t notice $75 missing from their account, to me, it was a big deal. I wasn’t expecting to spend that $75 until next month, and while, yes, it does “catch up” and “even out”, it doesn’t help the fact that I am $75 short right now…
Anyhow, I let that go. Until I forgot that I had added a third supplement after the fiasco with this. It was after they double shipped and before they decided to put next month’s order on hold. The issue was, I added another supplement, but because next month was already on hold, I wouldn’t get the new supplement until the end of March…Things were getting really out of hand with that, with me jumping through hoops, being confused, etc, all for something I had no real part in…so finally I unloaded on them. They fixed the issue, but I’m still $75 short for this month. And their customer service seems to be falling rapidly. I straight up told the rep the only reason I order through Smartpak is because they always take care of their customers. They are NOT always the cheapest, but I loved the fact that I knew any problems would be quickly and fairly resolved. Until now.
Seems things have changed at Smartpak. I hope they can get it together.
I just checked on my orders. Two of them say that they shipped 1/ 15 / 17 on the Smartpak page for my order history.
Clicking on the links to track the shipping, one order was was scanned with the Origin scan on 1/19, and departure scan dated 1/20.
Tracking says delivery is due 1/25 by end of day. Also says “In transit, on time”. This order originated in the MA location.
My other order is split into two shipments, according to the tracking info. Smartpak has a shipping date of 1/15.
Part of the order has an origin scan on 1/19, and departure scan of 1/20, and per UPS tracking, "scheduled delivery updated to 1/25 by end of day.
The second part part of the order shipped from the NV location. Origin scan 1/15, Departure 1/16, delivered 1/18.
So as someone said, if the items you order are in the NV location, they seem to get shipped out fairly promptly. If item is in the MA location, not so much.
It bothers me that they put “Shipped 1/15/18” for both these orders, they didn’t even update the actual shipping date. Nor did they send an email that the shipping dates were delayed. 
I returned a Christmas gift and tracked the package to Smartpak’s door. It was received on Jan 8. When I chatted with a representative last Thursday (Jan 18) she stated that their team was still working on returns from Jan 5. Have I received an email acknowledging the item was returned? Nope.
My return was delivered to SP on 1/4. I inquired last week as I had not heard anything and they said it would be processed in 2 or 3 days. Finally got an e-mail yesterday (so 1/21!) that it was processed and they will be doing a refund. So hopefully yours will be done soon. Crazy it takes them so long to do what should be a simple thing, but I’m glad they finally got to it.
My order from late December/early January that was supposed to arrive 1/8/18 shipped on like 1/10/18 and arrived on 1/12/18. The order was correct but holy moley come on now. In the past, SmartPak is always the first place I check for sales/deals/supplements because their app is so convenient for ordering. I’m sad to say that for my last two orders (a new blanket and a supplement), I went elsewhere. Didn’t even bother checking with SmartPak because I’m not going to make my horse wait weeks for his MSM.
Happy to report my blanket order from Adams shipped out today (ordered on Saturday) with free shipping 
It took them so long to refund my order that my credit card number had changed in the interim.
Hey COTHers,
Let me start by apologizing. That apology is on behalf of myself and SmartPak.
Personally, I’m sorry that I haven’t been more communicative in this thread. I’ve been reading your comments regularly (as hard as they are to hear). Unfortunately, I simply haven’t had anything new to add, and it was difficult to see any benefit in repeating the same information. But radio silence isn’t helpful, and you guys deserve better than that from me. I’m truly sorry I let you down.
From SmartPak’s perspective, several of you have shared different pieces and parts of responses you’ve gotten from our Social and Customer Care teams, and they all capture various parts of the reality here. But before I get into the details of what went wrong, I want to state firmly and clearly – our recent performance is completely unacceptable. We are embarrassed, ashamed, and deeply sorry. As many of you have noted, our commitment to customer service has been core to our mission from day one, and over these past few months, we have failed to live up to that. While I wish there was something I could do to change that, unfortunately all I can do is assure you that our leadership team is actively working to address the current problem (and we made HUGE strides this past week), and we’re committed to making this right and ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again.
Regarding what happened, it’s true that it was a “perfect storm” of events. In an effort to serve a wider variety of horse owners even better, we’re constantly expanding our product offering. This resulted in an influx of new products for our Fall season that was simply unprecedented, and it used up all the available space in our warehouse faster than we’d estimated, so we ended up with nowhere to put all those great new items. We were able to take on significantly more warehouse space in late November, but because we were already behind, it has taken until now to be able to fully effectively use that new space. That problem was made worse by the fact that we weren’t able to staff up our Operations team as quickly as we would’ve liked because there is a lot of competition for talent and labor with new, major warehouses in the area. We then had the usual (wonderful) holiday rush, which was larger than expected as well as interrupted and followed by major weather events and building power outages. On their own, each of these shocks to the system is something we could’ve handled (and have easily handled similar situations in the past). But together, they had a compounding effect that none of us expected and before we knew it we were in over our heads.
Throughout this, on the aggregate, we were still shipping close to 90% of total orders on time, thanks in large part to the fact that back in 2015 we invested in opening a second distribution center to better serve our West Coast customers (which some of you have alluded to on this thread). However, even 90% is nowhere near good enough for us, and I know it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to those of you whose orders were shipped late. I’m not sharing that in an attempt to make an excuse, I’m sharing it to help you understand why this wasn’t treated with more urgency more quickly. On the plus side, what was previously a blind spot for us is now an area of focus, as we’re building out automated reports and alerts that will help us better understand the status of all orders in the building, rather than looking at groupings and averages on the whole.
While we were in the midst of the production delays, we did our best to update our website estimated arrival times to be as accurate as possible. Unfortunately, because we’ve never encountered delays of this magnitude before, we didn’t have any way to update our estimated shipping times, so those were still inaccurate, promising orders would ship same day (as is our normal commitment and capability). Thanks to feedback from riders like you, we recently put a patch in to hide those inaccurate dates, and we’ve currently prioritized a project so that we can dynamically update those dates in the future. This is one example of the ways in which we’re building out systems to provide better service in the future, and I’d like to share a few more.
Another upcoming project that I’m very happy to share with you all will impact our email notifications. As many of you identified, there wasn’t any proactive communication from us when we missed your estimated shipping/arrival date(s). This was a huge failure on our part, and something that we’ve never needed before, so the functionality simply didn’t exist. However, once again, we’ve already started working on a system upgrade that will allow us to have better automated communications when orders are shipped/delivered early (which is our usual practice!) or late (which we sincerely hope to avoid going forward).
On the brighter side, many of you noted that your SmartPaks still shipped and arrived on time. This is perhaps the silver lining in this considerable cloud. Because your horse’s health is our #1 priority, and we take our role in your horse’s care incredibly seriously, SmartPaks always take priority when processing and shipping. However, through this experience, we understood the need to create a priority handling system for our AutoShip bucket and bags, as well, because if you’re committed to taking great care of your horse with supplements on continuity, we’re committed to making sure you never run out. So that will be an enhancement to our systems coming soon.
Last but most certainly not least, we have (in my humble opinion) one of the smartest SmartPakers in the company leading an effort to fully understand the true causes of the problems that got us into this mess, so that we can truly learn from them and be smarter in the future. That team has already come up with new operations methods and fixes that are rapidly increasing our ability to address the current problem, and I’m confident that their work will help us avoid any kind of similar issue in the future.
There are several other items coming out of this experience that we’re actively working on addressing as a management team (including significant investments in automation, warehouse space, and more items that will directly contribute to even better and more consistent service than you’ve ever gotten from us before), but they’re not far along enough that it’d be fair to comment on them in detail here, as we’re still fleshing things out and looping in the right folks on the right teams at SmartPak. That said, if your particular concern wasn’t addressed here, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally (contact info below), as I always want to be sure we’re working on the right things.
I’d like to wrap up this post the same way I started it, by saying that we’re sorry. Since 1999, we’ve been honored to be your partner in the care of your horse, and we’re committed to delivering you the kind of exceptional service experience we’d want, as riders and horse owners ourselves. And this time, we really let you down. We are sincerely sorry, we’re actively working to be smarter in the future, and we really hope that you’ll be willing to give us a chance to prove that we’re still the same SmartPak you’ve always known and loved (if anything, a little wiser).
Very sincerely yours,
SmartPaker Sarah
VP of Brand & Customer Experience
SMann@SmartPak.com
774-773-1410
Thank you, Sarah, for coming on here and addressing this.
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