Online Shopping Review - Hancock's of Paducah

I'm an avid online shopper. No one favorite shop--I like to spread my money around. I thought you might like to take advantage of my shopping experience this year to help you choose where you'll spend your mad fabric money.

Let's start with Hancocks of Paducah, as that was my first online shop of 2013.

I know that people RAVE about this shop when they go to the Paducah quilt show. Never been to the shop, but I'm pretty lukewarm on the online company.

To begin, I did have a question when I started out, and that was do they ever offer free shipping codes (after I saw how much their shipping was), and would there be one offered anytime soon. Okay, yes, I did search for internet coupons (nothing worked), and I do know that you can email most every other retailer and they will reduce or waive the shipping charge in order to gain a new customer, so it was worth a try. Waste of time...literally. I sent them an email on January 3rd and it wasn't answered until January 7th, and the answer was just a short 'no, we don't have any free shipping codes or offers at this time'.

 

I'm not a fan of their shipping charges. They're based on the amount you spend. A $30 order will cost $7.95 to ship...that's just about a 26% upcharge. I found myself adding another $19 to my order  to get the most mileage out of that charge (i.e., orders between $30 and $50 ship for that same $7.95), and then the lightbulb went on that told me that what I was doing was probably what H of P expected me to be doing with this shipping methodology--duh!, so I deleted all the extra stuff out of my cart and told myself to just order for what I started out with. Of course, in the end, I did add unnecessary fabric to my order. I just couldn't get away from the notion that I had to be at the top of the range to make the shipping appear more palatable. (I'm a fool, I know)

I placed the order on January 7th. Today is January 14th, and I have yet to receive my order. I did receive an email on January 9th advising me that one of the items was backordered. (Okay, no biggie...it said right on the website where I ordered it that the item was a pre-order, so no big revelation there, though I'm confused with it being called a back-order with a note that if it doesn't come back in it will be cancelled. Was their website listing incorrect?)

 

As I've received no shipping confirmation, I went online to check on my order status. On their website it says the order shipped today, but the link to the tracking number assigned to it shows that it is not in Fed Ex's system yet, so maybe it was packed but it's most definitely not 'shipped'. (or labeled or scanned for FedEx).

I live in Maryland--not that far away, so considering I can get UPS shipments from other farther away shops in 2-3 days ground shipping, one can only hope my order arrives by Friday....2 weeks and 2 days after I began the order process (with my question).

Bottom line...if you don't want to wait days for a response from customer service...if you don't want to wait 2 weeks for your order to arrive....and if you don't want to spend almost 30% of what you spent on fabric to ship it 2 states away, then you probably don't want to order from Hancocks of Paducah.

It's nice they have such a comprehensive catalog that they will send you, but I'm used to dealing with dozens of other online fabric sellers that are responsive, ship the day the order comes in, and ship for free. While Hancock's of Paducah's claim to fame is as a great walk in store if you're at the Paducah AQS show, they've got nothing going for them in the online sales arena,

While I can't say that I won't ever order from them again, I will say that they're no longer on my 'short list'. A free shipping code, a great sale price, and not caring if it takes 3 weeks to receive an order could convince me to give them another try, but for now, there are far too many online fabric sellers out there jockeying for customers to make me want to give Hancocks of Paducah a second chance.

How do I rate Hancocks of Paducah?