1/5

posted May-31-2004

I ordered on March 5. They charged my credit card immediately, but a week later, they were still attempting to verify my shipping address - at least, that's what their emails kept repeating (I have used this card for online orders for a year and they are the only company to have a problem verifying my shipping address).

They did not respond to any of my emails or phone calls. I eventually had my credit card company put a stop payment notice on the account, informed 3G I had done so and wished to cancel my order. They finallly responded to this email and cancelled my order.

This review was modified by pdmetzg on May 31 2004 11:14:00 AM

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5/5

posted May-06-2011

I know usually the first review is a company shill praising themselves, but I honestly was a customer and thought I should comment.

I bought a KB Electronics KBWM-120 from Galco along with the fuse and resistor it needed. Galco's price (in mid-April 2011) was $74 for the unit. This was $15 cheaper than the next company I could find and more like $20-25 from the average. This made me a little suspicious. The fact that there was no review/rating here on Reseller Ratings made me even more cautious, but the price advantage was so great I thought I'd take a chance.

I'm no expert in motors/drive-controllers/electronics but needed a combo for a home project. In fact, I was completely new to all but the basic concepts involved, and I had to learn nearly everything about these from scratch via Google and Wikipedia. Eventually I had a pretty good grasp on how to match the motor I found on Ebay with a control, but by the time I was about ready to buy the KBWM-120 I still had several questions.

I called up Galco's service line. The first guy conferenced in one of their techs, and they both spent about 10 minutes answering all my questions. Several were very basic "Did I get this right?" sorts of questions, several were "If I do xyz, am I going to break things?", and others were "How does this work?" explain-it-to-me-like-I'm-an-idiot types. Most of these had very little to do with the product I was thinking of buying from Galco, but these two guys answered everything I asked even though I was clearly a 1-time 1-product customer.

This was extremely helpful and rather astonishing to me. Too often a regular guy gets a very curt "We really sell only to businesses" answer; read: "You aren't worth the time it takes to answer your stupid novice questions." In fact, I've heard this on several occasions while doing this project, but Galco was great.

I can't speak to Galco's customer service in regards to returns, but they were top-notch in terms of helping me make the right purchase.

The delivery speed blew me away, too. I received the package within 36 hours despite choosing the cheapest delivery option (ground). It was so unexpectedly fast, when I answered the door I actually looked at the box to see who the sender was before signing because I thought there was a mistake. In fairness though, as the UPS guy noted at my surprise, the package only had to cross one state to get to me. Nevertheless, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had processing times for orders that were longer than the 36 hours it took for this to arrive.

The only negative was that the shipping cost was $15 which is a bit high for ground for a 3lb package, but not exorbitantly so.

One more thing. I usually don't go in for gimmicks, and in fact usually think less of a company that uses them. Galco has a gimmick: they included a bar of chocolate with my order. Honestly though - and I know this will sound like I'm shilling - as far as gimmicks go, I really liked this one. If I'm going to be bribed to like a company, chocolate goes a long way. And perhaps it being such a little thing shows an attention to detail and customer satisfaction where other get-a-free-toaster type gimmicks show the opposite.

I've used Reseller Ratings for years but never participated until today (mainly because I don't like keeping cookies). Again, I know that makes me look like a shill, but seeing as this company didn't even have an entry, I thought it would be helpful to give these guys a review, even if a ridiculously glowing one. I hope they live up to it for everyone else.

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4/5

posted May-11-2011

I'm not entirely sure how to rate these guys.

I found an extremely low priced item on Global Equipment's website. It was about half the price of other sites - $8.30 vs $19 - so I really wanted to buy here, but I was suspicious.

The first problem was that the specs for it were all wrong. Well, not exactly wrong, just jumbled up and labeled incorrectly. To Global's credit, they have a feedback option on their pages for people to submit corrections. To their discredit, this seems like they have a lot of incorrect specs and they want the customer to fix things for them.

Personally, I didn't particularly care if they got it right, I just wanted to be sure that if I ordered from them I'd get the right item. So I contacted their customer service via their live chat asking for them to confirm the part specs for me. The lady took a while as she talked to people, but came back with nothing. She did promise to have the guys at the warehouse verify things and then email me. This was a week ago and I still haven't heard back from them. So customer service is apparently suck.

I did some more research and decided that this was the correct part I was looking for. I figured that because they mislabeled the stats, the part probably never sold, and that resulted in the low price (or maybe they were just completely confused and priced it wrong). With pretty bad reviews here at RR, I was worried that they'd fix the page and bump up the price before I got to order. So, without confirmation from the warehouse, I ordered two of these anyway.

I was pleased with the speed of the shipping, although it did take them a couple days to process the order first. On the other hand, their shipping costs were $11 for UPS ground on a $17 order that weighed about a quarter pound.

So if just taking the fact that I got my order correctly and quickly, I'd normally give Global Equip a 5 star rating. I'd normally blow off the fact that their website was incorrect since these things happen. Normally, the high shipping cost wouldn't bother me too much, either. But taken together these things look bad, especially when their customer service never followed up with me. But hey, the price was great.

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5/5

posted May-12-2011

Everything arrived pretty quick and in good shape. Very happy. Five stars. I will add a couple things, though.

Their prices vary a bit compared to other suppliers. Some products are the cheapest I could find, others are overpriced - enough so that it was worth it to order from several sites and pay multiple shipping charges.

The only thing I didn't like was that they did not calculate a shipping cost and provide it prior to my order. This had me worried I was going to get a massive shipping fee. But it turned out that the shipping was actually cheaper than normal. I assume this is because they actually calculate shipping based on weight and package/box costs (as compared to just using an average based on number of products ordered). With the wide spectrum of size and weight of their products, I can sympathize with this method. Based on my experience being charged reasonably, I won't worry about getting ripped off on shipping next time.

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2/5

posted May-31-2004

I ordered from them and a week later had only been notified that the order was "Processing." I sent them an email asking if it had even shipped yet. They politely responded that it was no longer in stock and that they were sorry they hadn't notified me, order would be cancelled, my card would be refunded, etc.

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5/5

posted May-12-2011

Team Delta isn't exactly your typical online store. It's really a group of robot hobbyists who decided to spread the bulk discounts around on parts by selling to other hobbyists. I found them while Googling around for a simple keyed (broached) shaft collar. Team Delta was selling them for less than half the price I was finding on other sites.

They took a few business days to send me my collars, but Dan emailed me to tell me he had shipped them and to apologize for taking so long. The collars were here two days later. I didn't plan for anything to arrive in less than five days anyway so this seemed like great customer service to me, not a slow delivery.

The only thing that upset me was that when I first found their site and added two collars to my shopping cart, the shipping costs originally were a minuscule $2 and change (which is all it cost to ship them). I didn't decide to buy from TD that day. When I came back to buy the next day and refreshed my cart, however, the shipping now calculated to $7 and change. That meant that if I could have found someone willing to sell individual collars in town, it would have been cheaper, and this initiated a couple days more of shopping around. This was highly irritating and I felt a bit like I got bait-n-switched. (They still had the best deal I could find, though.)

I wasn't expecting much from a hobbyist's part-time business, so I was really impressed by getting an email, not to mention the unbeatable low price. I was very happy with Team Delta.

This review was modified by pdmetzg on May 12 2011 06:48:14 PM

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5/5

posted May-11-2011

I ordered some NB Linear System products from VXB. The prices were the best I could find online - and I really looked around.

Without giving them a promo code, they also gave me the option of getting an almost-free Vernier Caliper with my order. It cost an extra $2 in shipping.

They got here very fast even with the UPS ground. The shipping cost ($11) was more than reasonable considering the 5' tube they sent it in probably cost them $8.

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