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Import Cds - the online retailer - what do you guys think of them?


skeith

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ImportCDs is OK as long as you don't make mistakes when ordering anything. I made a mistake when I ordered a disc last month and immediately asked their customer service to cancel the order - there's no "cancel" button on their site. They didn't respond, not even after five cancellation attempts, and the item that I ordered by mistake shipped within a day... Their customer service is a disaster.

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They are the amazon seller I use most frequently. Service for me has been stellar through numerous orders--items invariably arrive quickly.

That's exactly my experience. They're one of the best on amazon marketplace IMHO. I'm always pleased when I see they have the best price. Never any problems with ordering or delivery.

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I've ordered direct from them maybe five times now but never through amazon. They are ok. The very first delivery took two weeks to arrive. Subsequent orders arrived more quickly. My problem is that they use a flimsy envelope to ship one cd or, in another case, a single cd that was backordered. At least two items (that I recall) had a broken or cracked jewel case. When multiple items were shipped together they were packaged better.

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Problems I have had:

1) Not able to access my customer account after the face page;

2) Not able to track shipments per #1. (they often seem to ship a lot of items singly, rather than combining orders.)

3) customer service is almost non-existent. I did finally get responses to a couple of my inquiries about 7-10 days later. One response said they had no record of my order; two days later the item showed up on my doorstep.

4) a double CD arrived crack/chipped. No replacement, only refund. Told refund takes 3 weeks+

On the plus side:

1) cheap prices (do I need to go on?)

2) as the name implies, they have an interesting stock of import items.

As mentioned already, if the item is stated as in-stock, should be a smooth deal. If it states anything besides that, might be in for a long wait, or no delivery at all. You'll need to wait the 30 days. I found it not possible to get an answer from them on shipping date (that's the one they had no record of).

I would only order from them if they were the only ones who had it.

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Thanks everyone.

I placed an order with them a couple of weeks ago and they sent out part of the order. However, "my account" at their website shows that none of the order has been shipped. I often have to enter information twice to get into my account on their site.

Also, even though the other cds are available as of yesterday anyway, they have not shipped.

Responses to my emails are a bit slow... and yes the packaging is a bit thin.

Prices are good.

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I had a similar problem to skeith. Ordered the Duke Ellington Treasury Shows. They shipped a little over a third of them, I waited, nothing, so I emailed them, and they told me they'd cancelled the order for the rest because they weren't in stock. Yesterday, I ordered the rest of them *again*. We'll see what happens. The prices are good, but I guess you get what you pay for. I'm liking the Treasury Shows that I did get!

gregmo

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They've never out-and-out screwed me, but have been "iffy" almost as much as they have been great.

I've talked to their customer service on phone, a few times. Very friendly, very helpful, but they answer the phone as a different business altogether, and when you ask for "Import CDs", they say, "oh, that's us!". All the data is at hand, and all issues get resolved. I get the impression that, "image" and/or "net presence" to the contrary, it's probably a really small business doing the best they can with what they got, which is why I've never raised hell as a default response.

If you're in America and/or have free long-distance/international calling and/or the money/rage to pay for the call no matter what, I would definitely recommend phone over email.

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When I order from importcds through amazon marketplace the order always comes through yet another firm, CD Listening Bar Inc.

Recently I ordered the new George Cables CD. Here's part of the shipping notice I received on-line.

Today CD Listening Bar Inc., trading on Amazon as importcds__, shipped item(s) in your order, placed on February 01, 2014.

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Never ordered from them myself, but fwiw I've found that similar operations like MovieMars and Grooves Inc have a tendency to list items they certainly don't have in stock. I get the feeling they program their listings from some sort of shared preset database or something.

I just checked a tracking # of a recent order, and the item was "Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility" in Shepherdsville, KY (south of Louisville, it looks to be) @ 5:56 PM yesterday, and then "Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility" in Des Moines @ 7:22 PM that same evening. How you get from south of Louisville to Des Moines in under an hour and a half unless you get it on the plane JUST in time is beyond me. So this might be some sort of virtual processing?

Nothing inherently wrong or troublesome about that, that's just a fact of life in today's marketplace. Minimized & centralized physical inventory is what the current model seems to dictate. But it does explain why/how things can go wrong. Like I said, when everything goes right with them, it goes really right. But it hasn't always gone right for me.

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I'm buying less and less over the years, down to just about zero, but ImportCDs has always been good or better to me. I had a couple of gift orders go wrong last year (manufacturer problem), and they really helpfully resolved everything with the gift recipients directly. Saved me much heartache and hassle.

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I've talked to their customer service on phone, a few times. Very friendly, very helpful, but they answer the phone as a different business altogether, and when you ask for "Import CDs", they say, "oh, that's us!". All the data is at hand, and all issues get resolved. I get the impression that, "image" and/or "net presence" to the contrary, it's probably a really small business doing the best they can with what they got, which is why I've never raised hell as a default response.

Import CDs is one of the retail subsidiaries of Super D, which is the biggest wholesale music & video distributor in the US. Super D also owns Deep Discount.

http://www.sdcd.com/

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I've ordered from them a few times at least. No complaints product or service wise but their stuff would take AGES to get here. Just to put it in to context, i pretty much always choose standard international post as the shipping method from the states unless it's a large/expensive box and it usually takes 1-2 weeks max to get here in New Zealand. Crazily i've had stuff arrive within 4 days on a few occasions. Import CDs stuff always took at least 5-6 weeks to get here. I'm not sure why, and they charged slightly more for standard shipping than Amazon and other sellers so it wasn't like it was a tradeoff for a cheaper shipping option. Although their CDs are cheap i decided i'd rather pay slightly more with other sellers and get my stuff in a more reasonable time... i can be patient but when it's getting up to 6 weeks you start having that "is it lost in the mail?" aggravation...

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They are the amazon seller I use most frequently. Service for me has been stellar through numerous orders--items invariably arrive quickly.

That's exactly my experience. They're one of the best on amazon marketplace IMHO. I'm always pleased when I see they have the best price. Never any problems with ordering or delivery.

Me too.

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I've talked to their customer service on phone, a few times. Very friendly, very helpful, but they answer the phone as a different business altogether, and when you ask for "Import CDs", they say, "oh, that's us!". All the data is at hand, and all issues get resolved. I get the impression that, "image" and/or "net presence" to the contrary, it's probably a really small business doing the best they can with what they got, which is why I've never raised hell as a default response.

Import CDs is one of the retail subsidiaries of Super D, which is the biggest wholesale music & video distributor in the US. Super D also owns Deep Discount.

http://www.sdcd.com/

AFAIK, they are a one-stop, not a distributor. One-stops buy from distributors.

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