Shipping and customer service a turn off
BEWARE SHIPPING COSTS IF YOU LIVE RURAL. A few weeks ago I was surprised (not in a good way) when after placing my first order with Spider Farmer AU I was emailed with a request to pay an additional $107 in shipping due to my location. I was especially surprised because after entering my address at checkout, the cart specifically said free shipping which I trusted. Today (a few weeks after my first order) I placed a second order for a smaller item and have just received an email requesting $17 for shipping. I don't have a problem with paying extra for delivery since I live where I live, but I do have a problem with companies that can't quote accurate pricing at checkout and rely on poorly written unsympathetic template emails sent after placing an order requesting even more money. I also think the additional shipping charges are excessive compared to the price I'm charged from other companies, but that's neither here nor there at this point. The point is I've had the same unwelcome surprise twice and clearly Spider Farmer don't care to do anything to improve the experience and transparency around shipping costs for customers outside of metro areas. The year is 2025, why can't a website calculate accurate shipping costs? Failing that, why is there not at least some logic to identify rural postcodes so at least a disclaimer is shown at checkout? The only disclaimer about potential additional charges is hidden away on their shipping info page linked in the footer, which let's be honest, who reads that for every purchase they make? To make matters worse, their customer service is SLOW, causing a delay to my order that doesn't feel great after paying for the products and a surprise shipping fee. It's unfortunate because the products I've bought are good and well priced, but I won't be ordering again because I can't trust the price I'm given at checkout and I don't want to be hit with unknown shipping costs after placing every order. Edit: Most of my experience with their customer service over email has been copy/paste template responses, so I’m not one bit surprised that they give the same effort when replying to reviews. Normally I’d say being transparent with shipping costs is not a hard thing to do, but when this is the maximum effort they put into customer service I’m not surprised they seem incapable of improving a pain point for customers. If it weren’t for this I’d likely be a loyal customer, but instead I’ll find someone else.