HearthSong

Full review
This was first experience ordering from HearthSong. I had received their catalog and loved the interesting and imaginative toys they offered. Christmas was coming and I was looking for some fun items for my children's stockings.

Pros of my experience:
The website of Hearthsong is very easy to navigate, and they had a nice selection of products to choose from. I love to shop for creative, open-ended, and fun toys. Hearthsong had the selection of products I was looking for.

They also had very reasonable prices.

And now the cons:

I triple checked to make sure that I could have my order shipped for Christmas. I ordered on December 16th, and the deadline wasn't for a few days. It was guaranteed for Christmas.

On Friday, Dec 22rd, the package had not been delivered. My online status (which can be checked on their website) said "Processed", which meant that it had not been shipped yet. I called Hearthsong's customer service line, and spoke to a representative.

Call 1:
I explained the situation and he told me that the company was having many problems with their orders and were probably not going to fulfill many orders placed. He said that even though I ordered with plenty of time, it was out of his hands, and they were no longer guaranteeing delivery for Christmas (although the order was placed in the time that there was a guarantee).

Call 2:
Thinking maybe I can find out about my package by talking to someone else (sometimes it's luck of who you talk to), I called later that day. This time I talked to another representative who was more helpful. He looked up my order, and felt that they may have misplaced it. He felt too much time had gone by since the date of my original order. He put a supervisor on the line for me.

The supervisor told me that my package was stuck in the warehouse and that it should have been received by me by December 19th (four days ago). She said that it would be sent to me for Saturday, December 24th.

The package didn't come.

Call 3 on December 29th:

I called again, hoping the Christmas chaos was over. I explained to the representative everything that took place. He looked at the status of my package on his computer. He said it should be there by December 30th. He apologized, and said that there were many, many problems with shipping this year.

I asked him if for next year they were taking any steps to prevent all the delivery issues they had encountered. He assured me that they were going to work on the online issues, with so many orders being placed and not enough people to fill the orders.

Outcome:

The package finally arrived December 30th. Hearthsong did not charge me for the shipping.

However, I'm not sure what to do, now that Santa already came to town. ;)

My bottom line is that while they have wonderful products and a colorful and easy to use website, they were not reliable in getting the packages out in time.


They did give me free shipping, so I appreciate that as a way to make up for the problem.

I can imagine the problems this caused for parents who ordered major items for their children, and needed it for Santa Claus. For me, my kids are only 2 and 3.5, so we were able to be flexible.