IST (instocktrades.com) problems

[Ramsay Snow]

I did stop ordering from them. I regularly ordered in excess of $1000 worth of books (my cost) from IST/TOW. No more.
If everybody demanded what I do (to get what you pay for) IST / TOW would stop making such mistakes.
When you allow a company / service to fail and continue to do business with them the lesson they learn is that they can continue to fail their customers.

Perhaps you should follow your own mantra......You get what you pay for. IST is a heavily discounted store. If you order from your brick & mortar LCS with a dinky 10% discount (Or no discount at all), I'm pretty sure they'll bend over backwards to fill every large order you go for. Same with Barnes & Noble.

[chicainery]

Is anyone having trouble getting responses from them? I emailed them 9 days ago and haven't heard back. Bought a Children of the Atom X-men box set from them and they sent me two copies of Silver Age Volume 3 and left out Bronze Age Volume 2 out.

I emailed dcb s e r v i c e . c o m (IST's sister site) on August 16 letting them know that an item was missed from my last order, but it still showed as 'unshipped' on their site. Yvonne got back to me on August 21 to apologize and let me know it'll go out with my next shipment, which is perfectly fine by me.

I've been ordering from them consistently since 2011 and have only had a very few instances where something was not correct. They have always made it right, even if it wasn't technically their fault - like when a sealed book had errors, such as the pages weren't cut right.

[kp404]

Is anyone having trouble getting responses from them? I emailed them 9 days ago and haven't heard back. Bought a Children of the Atom X-men box set from them and they sent me two copies of Silver Age Volume 3 and left out Bronze Age Volume 2 out.

Yep, I've been buying from them for over 4 years now and these past few months have been the worst. I emailed them a few times about a lost package and heard nothing from them for 17 days, so unfortunately I had to open a paypal case on them. The day I did that, the package mysteriously was scanned and sent to me, so I closed the case. But yes, they may be seriously understaffed at the moment, or it may be something else, but they are definitely having trouble.

[Reviresco]

Yep, I've been buying from them for over 4 years now and these past few months have been the worst. I emailed them a few times about a lost package and heard nothing from them for 17 days, so unfortunately I had to open a paypal case on them. The day I did that, the package mysteriously was scanned and sent to me, so I closed the case. But yes, they may be seriously understaffed at the moment, or it may be something else, but they are definitely having trouble.

You mean since they replaced Diamond as one of DC's distributors under the Lunar name?

I'm in the same boat. Haven't had a complaint about them for years, but they are much slower shipping and responding now, and their IST site seems neglected, with less on their weekly sales.

[My Two Cents]

I just wish they would halt using USPS for now.
I still have a package sitting there for almost two weeks waiting to be picked up.
Fed-Ex and UPS are far better currently.
I don’t usually order before I get my last order, but ordered a few books Tuesday because I wanted Byrnes Man of Steel vol.1 at 50% off.

[Ramsay Snow]

I just wish they would halt using USPS for now.
I still have a package sitting there for almost two weeks waiting to be picked up.
Fed-Ex and UPS are far better currently.
I don’t usually order before I get my last order, but ordered a few books Tuesday because I wanted Byrnes Man of Steel vol.1 at 50% off.

Yeah, the situation with USPS is annoying. Until this settles, I might pay the $4 extra from now on just to be sure the package gets here. I'm not in a hurry to receive packages, but when a package is sitting in one spot for 1-3 weeks it gets somewhat worrisome, regardless of IST having an alright replacement policy if it gets lost. I'd rather it not get to that point in the first place.

[SJNeal]

I too have been mildly annoyed with the few extra days it's taken my shipments to arrive, but USPS needs all the help it can get right now.

[Ramsay Snow]

I too have been mildly annoyed with the few extra days it's taken my shipments to arrive, but USPS needs all the help it can get right now.

It's more than a few extra days for me, and it's not just this one time......My current package has been sitting in one spot for 2 weeks now, lol.

I get the USPS is having problems due to The Supreme Orangutan's machinations and such, but they can kiss my ass. Today's order from IST (Paul Dini omnibus!!!!) will be ordered with an extra $4 for UPS ground. I won't be surprised if today's order gets to me before the previous one.

[SJNeal]

It's more than a few extra days for me, and it's not just this one time......My current package has been sitting in one spot for 2 weeks now, lol.

Holy...?! Yeah. UPS it is!

[silentcurve]

It's more than a few extra days for me, and it's not just this one time......My current package has been sitting in one spot for 2 weeks now, lol.

Have you received on update on your shipping progress? I also have a bunch of orders from mid august that hasn't been picked up from the postal service. At this point I have no idea when it's going to be picked up and scanned.

[lodebone]

Have you received on update on your shipping progress? I also have a bunch of orders from mid august that hasn't been picked up from the postal service. At this point I have no idea when it's going to be picked up and scanned.

Not sure on particular orders but I have had a few USPS this summer that showed stuck or unaccepted and then just arrived one day without any tracking update.

[Rimmer]

Not sure on particular orders but I have had a few USPS this summer that showed stuck or unaccepted and then just arrived one day without any tracking update.

with all the craziness at the post office, new postmaster laying down rules, everyone complaining, him backtracking - I have no idea what's going on right now, but I talked to my local postmaster weeks ago, and she said that they were only getting out the door mail for THAT day. Once they hit a cutoff (let's say 1:00PM, I dunno what it is), then they'd stop loading and be done.

Items leftover would be set aside.
You would think they would get loaded first tomorrow, but no, tomorrow is same scenario, and then if they had time, they would load the stuff set aside. Which makes no sense to me.

Plus, anything Priority (or Express) gets, well, priority. if you notice when you ship stuff at post office, Priority gets tossed in one bin, Media Mail (and I would assume UPS Mail innovations packages) get put in another bin. Priority bins get unloaded that day and sent. Media Mail bin kinda falls into the "whenever we get to it" bucket.

Which is why if you drop off a Media Mail package, it will usually sit in 'pre-shipment' status for ~2 days before it gets scanned and sent out to the distribution center. And this is also why packages get "stuck" for days, sometimes WEEKS at a time, because they get put in the "we'll get to it when we have time" pile.

I've found when you open a ticket for 'missing mail' through the website, things tend to reappear quicker. *I do not work for post office, I have just shipped a lot of stuff lately and watched the tracking with knots in my stomach as things sit and sit. BUT, shipping an omnibus priority is a crapshoot. I'm in Midwest, I shipped an omni to someone else in the Midwest, cost like $15. Okay fine, that's about what I charged for shipping on Ebay. I shipped another same size/weight package to CA, cost me $40!! So I lost my butt on that one. And so even though I would like to ship everything priority for my nerves, my wallet wins and I ship everything Media Mail. THings do seem to be getting better, albeit not by a lot.

[Nab432]

To add to the above, I’ll be going on another round of paring my collection shortly and thought about doing priority just for piece of mind but as mentioned the price can often be prohibitive. I haven’t had a package lost outright using media mail that I can recall but certainly cases in which it took weeks or even as much as a month to get delivered. I hate having to follow the tracking that long and be anxiety ridden not to mention worrying over whether the buyer will get pissed ask for refunds leave negative feedback etc. I do my best to set expectations but you never know. It’s playing with fire a bit.

[Ramsay Snow]

Have you received on update on your shipping progress? I also have a bunch of orders from mid august that hasn't been picked up from the postal service. At this point I have no idea when it's going to be picked up and scanned.

No, shipping progress is frozen from when UPS dropped the package off to the USPS.

I had one around a month ago which took an abnormally long time because not only did this situation happen, but then the USPS directed the package to the wrong area, so it was sitting in another city for a few days, then they redirected it to my city's post office.

So, yeah, if I have options like with IST, I'll just upgrade $4 or whatever to UPS as it'll be more reliable until all this blows over.

[silentcurve]

I've heard the $4 upgrade with UPS isn't exactly much faster as of late. I guess we have no option and just remain patient.