Good product, marginal service

Full Review
I placed my order on December 5 for a tea kettle steamer that was reflected online as being in stock. It was a Christmas gift, but I figured it should still arrive in plenty of time for Christmas.

On December 16, I hadn't received any notification yet of it being shipped so I went online and entered my confirmation number to get an order status. However, when I entered my confirmation number, it said it was an invalid number. So I emailed the company asking what was up. I got the generic email response saying, "We will respond to your order status inquiry as quickly as possible."

Realizing it was the busy holiday season, I did expect it to be several days, but after waiting 3-4 days, I did call customer service instead of waiting for a response to my email. They said it was on back-order and didn't know when it would be in stock. Also, I was told that during the holiday season, they aren't able to keep up with keeping the order status updated online. To me, this isn't very good service - if directed to check status online, wouldn't it make sense to keep it updated? I'd expect that to take less time than to handle more calls to the call center.

On December 21, I did finally get an email response to my initial inquiry, confirming it was back ordered.

On Christmas Eve I also first received a postcard saying my item was backordered. Again, wouldn't it have made sense to send this out earlier? Not weeks after my initial order and emails and phone calls to the company.

Finally on January 4, I got an email saying that my item was shipped. It did finally arrive a few days later.

Once I did get my product, I was very happy with it (and so were my parents, the recipient of the gift).

So in the end, I'd probably order from Plow & Hearth again if it was an item I wanted and couldn't find elsewhere. But I'd be sure it wasn't something I needed in a timely fashion.