Not happy with my first Blue Zoo Aquatics experience, take it for what it's worth...
Short version of the story: 6 dead fish out of 11 ordered, and it will cost me another $40 in shipping if I want to get replacements for the $85 worth of dead fish.
I recently ordered from Blue Zoo Aquatics for the first time. I ordered $145 worth of fish, which put me over the $140 threshold to get free shipping. I don't know what went wrong with their shipment, but it arrived with 2 fish DOA, and 4 more died soon after during acclimation (so 6 dead out of 11 total).
I followed the website instructions for reporting the losses, and got a response the next day saying they'd issue an $85 credit. After a week and a half I got an email with a code to get the credit (the web site says it should have taken a day or two). Surprisingly to me, the email says that the credit can only be used for livestock, and not for shipping - I've gone back and looked, but as far as I can tell this isn't mentioned anywhere on their web site where I could have known about it ahead of time. I emailed customer service about this, and have never gotten a response (that was three weeks ago).
Armed with the code, I go to the site and load up the cart with replacement fish, but because it's only $85 it's not eligible for free shipping... So at that point I'm figuring to use my credit I'll either have to pay an extra $40 shipping just to replace the dead fish, or buy an extra $55 worth of stuff (that I wasn't planning on) to get the free shipping.
Today I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and order an extra $55 worth of stuff along with the $85 worth of replacement fish. The cart shows the shipping is free because it's just over $140 - so far so good. But when I enter the code for the credit, my $140 worth of stuff gets marked down to $55, so the cart adds $40 for shipping.
So it turns out that if I want free shipping on the replacement fish, I'd actually have to order an extra $140 worth of stuff I wasn't planning on ordering in the first place ($140 other stuff + $85 replacement fish - $85 credit = $140 + free shipping). Given the lack of success on the initial shipment, I'm not super keen on ordering an additional $140 worth of livestock and potentially ending up in the same situation while dealing with any more losses on *that* stuff. At this point I'm thinking about just eating the $85 loss rather than spending any more money with these people.
Short version of the story: 6 dead fish out of 11 ordered, and it will cost me another $40 in shipping if I want to get replacements for the $85 worth of dead fish.
I recently ordered from Blue Zoo Aquatics for the first time. I ordered $145 worth of fish, which put me over the $140 threshold to get free shipping. I don't know what went wrong with their shipment, but it arrived with 2 fish DOA, and 4 more died soon after during acclimation (so 6 dead out of 11 total).
I followed the website instructions for reporting the losses, and got a response the next day saying they'd issue an $85 credit. After a week and a half I got an email with a code to get the credit (the web site says it should have taken a day or two). Surprisingly to me, the email says that the credit can only be used for livestock, and not for shipping - I've gone back and looked, but as far as I can tell this isn't mentioned anywhere on their web site where I could have known about it ahead of time. I emailed customer service about this, and have never gotten a response (that was three weeks ago).
Armed with the code, I go to the site and load up the cart with replacement fish, but because it's only $85 it's not eligible for free shipping... So at that point I'm figuring to use my credit I'll either have to pay an extra $40 shipping just to replace the dead fish, or buy an extra $55 worth of stuff (that I wasn't planning on) to get the free shipping.
Today I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and order an extra $55 worth of stuff along with the $85 worth of replacement fish. The cart shows the shipping is free because it's just over $140 - so far so good. But when I enter the code for the credit, my $140 worth of stuff gets marked down to $55, so the cart adds $40 for shipping.
So it turns out that if I want free shipping on the replacement fish, I'd actually have to order an extra $140 worth of stuff I wasn't planning on ordering in the first place ($140 other stuff + $85 replacement fish - $85 credit = $140 + free shipping). Given the lack of success on the initial shipment, I'm not super keen on ordering an additional $140 worth of livestock and potentially ending up in the same situation while dealing with any more losses on *that* stuff. At this point I'm thinking about just eating the $85 loss rather than spending any more money with these people.

