Omlet = China

[arosenzweig]

If anyone can recommend a coop that:

1) has wheels
2) is plastic, metal, or aluminum
3) has a run with flared bottom to deter digging predators
4) reasonable price

I'm all ears, please tell us, because I thought the Omlet Eglu "go UP" was that product. Unfortunately it is a British Unicorn that apparently doesn't exist and if it did, it would be made in China.

It is impossible to order the Omlet Eglu "go UP" and if you do, their customer service will continually lie about when it will arrive, will tell you that you entered your credit card information wrong, and then cancel your order removing you from the queue.

I just phoned the two UK numbers directly at 1:00 pm their time today (Tuesday) and nobody picked up. If you call their US number you will never get anyone to pick up and Clare will phone you 1 - 3 days later.

UK numbers:
Phone: 0845 450 2056 or 01295 750 094.

See this email trail below:

=====================

Clare,

I demand to speak with your manager immediately.

You minimally exceptionally sorry excuse for a carbon footprint…

1) You refuse to apologize for what *you* did wrong. You keep telling me I did something wrong. You tell me I must have used a credit card your company doesn’t accept or that I entered digits improperly. Nothing could be further from the truth.

2) I did enter my VISA card correctly, it was pending, it showed up on my credit card company's computer system. Obviously card information “went through” for it to end up in their database. You simply waited too long to actually go through with the transaction and the credit card company won’t let pending transactions sit indefinitely.

3) You consistently lie - you say the shipment will arrive end of July, then August, now you say September but you cannot promise that either… and now you claim you never said it would arrive in August or end of July that it was “always” September. You are an habitual liar.

4) You do nothing to rectify the situation. You don’t offer an upgrade to another coop system when you had them still in stock. You don’t offer a discount on our order as an apology for when you actually do ship something. You don’t do anything at all and you are totally ok with that.

5) You have now cancelled our order thus taking us completely out of the queue.

6) You are now asking me to keep looking for whenever stock might be in. Stock was already in, when I placed my order there was no warning and no stated delay. You took our credit card information and did nothing with it. How dare you suggest that we keep looking for stock and place a “fresh” order. How much “American Time” do you think I have on my hands? The *only* reason I’m still interested in your product is because it is what my wife wants and she thinks is the best. You now say the product is Chinese… we are paying top dollar for Chinese? I thought this was a British product. No place on your site do you say the product comes from China… you are not up front with people!

You are making it impossible for us to even order your product.

We need these two coops so we can let a friend babysit our pets while we go on vacation. You have made our vacation plans impossible. By not processing our order when we placed it, then telling us it would be the end of July, then August… now September? Why don’t you be up front and let us know from the beginning? “Inconsiderate” doesn’t even come close to explaining your behavior.

Your customer service is not OK.

I am not asking you, I’m telling you to put me in touch with your superior officer


=====================


On Aug 9, 2016, at 5:54 AM, Clare Lazzari <[email protected]> wrote:

Hello Aaron

Just returning your phone message.

Aaron, I have cancelled your order so that you can place a fresh one and have the card information captured again correctly when placing it so when it comes to shipping it in September when the stock has arrived from China there are no further issues.

No card information was sent through with the initial order to us when it was placed so there is nothing on file to charge the order to unfortunately when we are ready to ship it out.

If you go ahead and place a fresh order when you are ready I will check that the card details have been captured correctly and let you know.

As I said, we won't have the product back in stock till September, as soon as we do will with then be able to charge the card and have your order sent out to you straight away.

Best regards


Clare Lazzari

Omlet USA
www.omlet.us
646 434 1104

 

[arosenzweig]

After this post went live the following has occurred almost immediately:

1) Omlet sent me an email request for full payment of $1,368.09 on August 9th for a product they now say they don't have.

2) Voicemail was left from Clare at Omlet still telling me that I never gave them credit card information because it is not in their system *now*. But I placed the order on July 4th and according to VISA rules if the seller does not *claim* the transaction within 10 days it gets cleared from their system. Clare insists I did something wrong like typing a wrong credit card number or using a card that their system does not accept. She implies that because we did something wrong that's why we got kicked out of queue and that's why we never received our coop. Nothing could be further from the truth.

3) Voicemail additionally said that if we pay the full price right now, they'll ship just the plastic boxes (coop part) for the chickens but not the important parts like the run, wheels, etc. Those they will ship in September but based on their track record it could be much later as they already had told us end of July, then August... they keep changing their story. Sounds like we'd have to pay shipping twice as well, Clare did not say they would cover both shipping costs nor offer us any discount for our troubles. She is not sorry in the least.

Clare wants to make this as a "we don't have it, what do you want me to do?" issue - as if I was unreasonable. To add salt to the wound, she says we did something wrong and that's why we don't have the coops we fully paid for. The facts are there was no indication when we placed our order that it was not in stock. There was zero communication from them that there was a problem filling the order. We had to be proactive and start asking what was wrong... which is when they kept telling us "next month" type of responses verbally. Now they say "we always claimed it would come in September." They are beyond dishonest. They don't even feel remorse about how they've led us on.

Now, as you can see from the email trail, the product comes from China. What type of quality checks do they do? Does it even go to Britain first for inspection? Or do they blindly ship the product from China straight to our door? Your guess is as good as mine. I would think really hard before forking over your hard earned money to people who obviously don't know the value of an honest dollar. They have zero respect for customer service.

 

[Howard E]

Assuming Omlet doesn't have your money, I would suggest you let that go and get busy building your own. It will be bigger, better, less expensive and better still, built by you. Your future chickens will thank you for it.

 

[aart]

Be glad......omlet coops are pretty much a crap design anyway, and always too small, especially for the price.

 

[arosenzweig]

We ended up getting two HDPE plastic A-Frame coops from an American company in Missouri:

http://wellkeptchicken.com/35-2/

You know, the kind where when you dial the phone number they pick up on the first try? Yes, real people who do multiple things including making these cool coops on their CNC equipment. Got one signed by congressman Jason Smith... the one in this blog post:

http://wellkeptchicken.blogspot.com/2013/08/congressman-jason-smith-builds-chicken.html

I feel like a heel not going for a company like this in the first place - I realize that there are several right here in America.

In the end it was cheaper, bigger, and truly predator proof (mesh floor) than going with Omlet's fake British offerings.

 

[aart]

We ended up getting two HDPE plastic A-Frame coops from an American company in Missouri:

http://wellkeptchicken.com/35-2/

You know, the kind where when you dial the phone number they pick up on the first try? Yes, real people who do multiple things including making these cool coops on their CNC equipment. Got one signed by congressman Jason Smith... the one in this blog post:

http://wellkeptchicken.blogspot.com/2013/08/congressman-jason-smith-builds-chicken.html

I feel like a heel not going for a company like this in the first place - I realize that there are several right here in America.

In the end it was cheaper, bigger, and truly predator proof (mesh floor) than going with Omlet's fake British offerings.

That one is not much better than an Omlet, IMO.
They don't have much detail on their page, populations are exaggerated, no pics of interiors.

 

[Howard E]

Those guys are new to me and must be one of about 10 or 15 builders of such coops in Missouri*. Those are a bit different than most.

Let us know how this works for you.

* Little known tidbit of useless information......about 100 years ago, Missouri was one of the leading poultry producing states in the country. They had a nationally known state experimental research farm in Mountain Grove, which is not far from Mansfield where these coops are made, and for that matter, not too far from Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon. A lot of chicken history in Missouri.

 

[arosenzweig]

Hi Howard. Yes Missouri has a lot of chicken history... so does their neighbor Arkansas... where I was born. In Arkansas they trained chickens to play tic-tac-toe, shoot basketball hoops, play baseball, and even start a jukebox and dance.

We trained our chickens to find the queen of hearts:

aart is right... everyone exaggerates how many chickens can fit in a coop and it does cost a lot of money... at least this one actually arrived I guess it's like shopping for a tent... I tell everyone to divide the advertised number by two. If it says it sleeps four it really sleeps two... probably can apply the same rule to chicken coops. In this case they say it can support 4 chickens... that seems reasonable.

We purchased two for our flock of 6. These will be "vacation homes" for us to take to a friend and let them watch our feathered friends while we are on vacation.

Our main coop is what was called the "Round Top" from Urban Coop company. We added wheels and made a tractor out of it... Someday we'll have to make a video about it but for now here's a photo:


Here's some more photos of our home:
http://liftroosterban.com/pet_chickens.html

I agree, the "Well Kept Chicken" website could be better, with more photos, more explanation... and some videos. That's alright, since I got a human being on the line easily they sent me plenty of photos to make up my mind. Not everyone is a webmaster and some people extort lots of money to make even simple changes to a website. I like that these coops are pure plastic so will be super easy to clean and also they have a floor so no worries with digging predators. Perfect vacation homes... Omlet has those small skirts to serve a similar purpose but this is better. I'll attach the photos for you that I received via email.