I placed an order Sunday and it arrived today!
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The mystery deepens!
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Dover warehouse items donāt ship with retail tags. If the item is being shipped direct from the vendor, it wonāt have any Dover branding. Retail tags are also removed from items shipped from stores to fulfill online orders.
The fly sheet I bought shipped from the Dover warehouse in a Dover package. No tag but an official Dover invoice with my name, etc and the retail price. Which was double what I spent. Thatās the weird part.
Can you expand on this? Do you mean the tags with pricing? Because I was referring to manufacture tags, e.g. Dover tags for Dover branded items, Passier tags for Passier items, Ovation tags for Ovation items, Kerrits tags for Kerrits items, etc.
My own experience is that every item I have bought from Dover that was Dover branded has had Dover tags. The only exception was one half pad, very recently, that came prestuffed with all the correction pads, and was stretched out because of being prestuffed. I bought two breastplates-- both had Dover tags (btw the Dover branded breastplates are very nice). The surcingle and vienna reins-- both had Dover tags. Dover branded breeches-- all had Dover tags. Horse blanket-- Dover tags.
Most items that arenāt Dover branded have also had tags. The dirty saddle pad was dirty, and had still tags (albeit smashed and foldedālikely had been used, or very roughly tried). The shipping label showed that it came from Dover returns. A girth I bought had the plastic connectors for tags (not Dover branded), but the tag it came with was connected by ribbon. Also shipped from Returns, but no complaints on this one. All the breeches I purchased from them, both the Dover branded ones and not, had brand tags.
Not unreasonable to expect tags on new items.
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I have not had any issues with Dover or Smartpak.
Now Stateline, that is a whole other issue! They are really lacking in service and shipping orders in a relevant time frame. I wonāt even bother trying to order from them againā¦This is not just during Covid times, but all of the time.
The Dover store in Raleigh, NC is ignoring the fact we are in a pandemic. One of the employees talks a lot and gets close to customers. There are no masks, no physical distancingā¦nothing. I will no longer give them my business.
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Did you ever get refunded? Mine still has not gone through, even though tracking says it got there on the 22nd LAST month. Have been scared to return anything elseā and therefore buy anything at all.
Smartpak and riding warehouse havenāt had this issue.
Dover has been wonderful for rapid deliveries and good communication, and my local store is observing good protocols.
But: Stateline is the pits for timeliness of deliveries! There is a notice on their website that deliveries are 1-2 weeks delayed, which is fine and understandable, except that I ordered something in May and it is only now being delivered. I understand if they are having supplier and stocking issues, but the lack of communication about just how long one should expect to wait is annoying. I had to contact them for an update and after another five days they told me my order was being expedited. This meant that I got half of the delivery a few days later and the rest (maybe?) is coming today.
I suppose the thinking may be that if they say the wait will be longer than 1-2 weeks they will lose customers but Iād rather know that and be prepared than not. There was no option for canceling the order because it was āin process,ā and the things I needed sooner were expensive so I just had to wait instead of going somewhere else. Also, are they backlogged so that only if one complains they ship things, instead of the cause being supplier shortages? Iāve worked in retail quite a bit and I am sympathetic to these issues but this is a big company and one would think they could get their act together.
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As a small tack shop owner I am outraged for you that your refund has taken over a month and is still not done. I donāt understand how Dover can get away with this and people still shop there. If it took me 6 weeks to refund money, I wouldnāt have anyone walking thru my door. There is NO excuse for a refund to be this slow coming to you.
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Yes I started buying from small tack shops instead. Most of them have an online system now.
I find myself returning about 90% less also, because small tack shops tend to be able to give me better advice about purchases to begin with.
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Is there something wrong with the website? Every time I try to order something online, my option is to go to the store or have it shipped to the store. I donāt have the option to ship it to me/ myself/ my home. Itās frustrating!! So I did go into the store to order the items I needed- and guess what- I should expect the items to arrive to them in 7-10 business days. That is not fast, especially since itās shipping to their store directly!!! Very frustrated!!!
I bought 2 helmets from SmartPak on January 22nd, I had them a week later. Neither one fit, so I sent them back right away. I got an immediate refund for one and I didnāt get refunded for the 2nd until March 3rd. At that time they were still backlogged from holiday returns. So at least for SmartPak, slow refunds arenāt unusual.
Not my experience with Smartpak at all.
For the past year or so, returns have taken 3 weeks or more. Only when I called and asked them to what was taking so long (because I was about to pay the credit card bill for the stuff that should have been refundedā¦ and was therefore lending Smartpak money), did refunds get done, licketysplit.
I have had other problems with orders that were a little more custom. These were orders that involved answering questions about the item and/or drop-shipping, or correcting things when the wrong size was sent and they needed to get the manufacturer to drop-shop the right size since by then, due to their slow processing of returns, Smartpak was out of the item. Months later and some phone calls which reportedly produced e-mails to the right person, these orders are unresolved. Some of this, of course, is due to the pandemic. But Smartpakās problems with anything complicated (and for orders that were around $1K or more) and the slow returns have been the case for some time.
Oh, and this is a minor problem, but I wish Smartpak hadnāt gone to the process of having the customer go on-line to create a return and then print out a shipping label. I see why they have done that from there side. But I donāt own a printer, so Iād rather not have a second errand tacked onto my shipping a return.
The slowness and new PITA of the returns was what initially sent me back in the Dover direction. I have a bricks-n-mortar store in my town, so I can do returns and refunds much more quickly and easily.
Weāre in the middle of a pandemicā¦ Iām surprised businesses are accepting returns at all. Almost all the local brick & mortar stores near me are not accepting returns and havenāt been for the last three months.
Iām not sure how accurate this is as I heard it through the grapevine, but I did hear that returned items have to be quarantined for 2 weeks for employee safety. Iām sure that is making things incredibly difficult for the returns team.
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If thatās the case, why not let customers know that? It would lessen their frustration at getting a slow return. The optics otherwise are of Dover holding on to the customerās money, which isnāt very cool.
No idea. I totally get that frustration.
I was able to cancel my Stateline order fortunatelyā¦I called them (I was a 1/2 hr on hold) and said that after 10 days with no update, I was not waiting any longer. They blamed a move to a new warehouse as the issue one time and another time when I called on the virus. I ordered same items from Dover and had it the next day! No more Stateline for me!
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In NY, this is not the case. There was maybe a 4 week time end of March -end of April-ish that returns were not allowed, but that has been long over. We are not required to quarantine returns and/or tried on clothing. NY was one of the first to shut it all down and one of the strictest (? is that a word?) about everything. Masks are a sure thing, but we went from having hte highest COVID to now the lowest while many other states are in trouble.
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I happened to go to my local Dover store yesterday. Masks are required, which is good. The store had a reasonable stock of clothing; other areas were pretty bare. They did not have the supplement I was hoping to pick up (a Hilton Herbs product which is hit or miss there even during normal times.) But it was weird to see how little stock was on display.
