ordering mail order chicks

Blooie said:

Oh, @azygous I sure do remember your frustration over on the Mama Heating Pad thread when you got so many roos and had so many issues! Sitting in front of the computer reading all of the bumps you went through was hard! Didn't they at one time tell you (or am I thinking of someone else) that you had to wait until they were practically crowing before they'd do anything? If that was you, you have shown once again what a gracious and kind nature you have. I probably wouldn't have been as nice!

All I know is that my experiences have been excellent with MPC and I'm a forever customer. But Alex, if you are reading this, in the same posts where I've been praising MPC to the sky, it just seems so odd to me that most of us have nothing but glowing things to say about customer service and others have said they thought the customer service was deplorable. I've mentioned many times that I didn't understand how that could be, and said that if there was one thing that MPC might need to change it sounded like it might be better consistency in how problems are handled. As much as I hate to say it, some of that negativity could be from folks who are, shall we say, difficult to please no matter what you do. But I don't think that's always the case, either.

Personally I've had no issues whatsoever. My very first chick order was not good because the post office's tracking information said that they had been delivered on a Wednesday but in reality on that day they were sitting on the loading dock in Casper, Wyoming during an unexpected cold snap with sub zero temperatures. I even took a printout of the tracking that said they'd been delivered to our postmistress, who called the sorting facility in Casper. Yep, there they were. When I finally got the call to go pick them on Thursday up it was 19 degrees below zero! But when our postmistress here had called Casper looking for them, she made them put a sign on the box that said, "CARRIER, TRANSPORT IN CAB"! When I got them the sign was still on the box. I wondered how that poor driver felt having 19 live chicks peeping in protest alongside him as he drove the 5 hours from Casper to here in the dark on slick roads! I lost a few of those chicks, but the majority of them were just fine, all pullets just as I'd ordered, the correct breeds and are still laying well for me today! MPC made it good, although it wasn't even their fault. The second time ordered I wanted 8 Buff Brahma pullets. I got 8 strong, healthy Buff Brahma pullets, even though once again the tracking information said they were already delivered on Wednesday and I didn't get them until Thursday. I just ordered hatching eggs for the first time last month.

The one thing I've always wondered about, and I know this is a post office issue, is why we have to pay for express shipping knowing full well we aren't getting express shipping. That's always mystified me. Even on the MPC website there is a disclaimer written that says that the normal rules for Express Shipping don't apply to shipping chicks and the PO won't honor their usual guarantees. So we have to pay for it anyway? As I said, that's a postal service thing, but here we are so far out in the boonies that there isn't even any point in ordering or sending something out Overnight - we just don't have that service here. Every order that was supposed to take no more than 3 days has taken 4, yet they aren't responsible for chick losses - the hatchery is. Makes no sense to me!

As far as sexing bantams, I've also heard that that can be dicey. Speaking for myself, I have to confess that if I'd ordered them and had even a 90% sexing accuracy with them, I'd probably be okay with that. They can be tough.

Click to expand...