I want to start addressing some common customer service questions in a public way so that you know what to expect when you are buying art from us. To start, we should talk about the most common frustration people have when it comes to ordering things from Angelarium.net. Sometimes, packages get shipped 2-3 weeks after they were purchased.
First, let me explain why and then I'll move on to what we are doing to improve the situation.
Whenever we offer something new for sale, the artwork has already been complete and we have a vendor lined up to produce that product. However, we often don't have any inventory. That's because I really have no way of predicting much I should be stocking. This leads me to take orders for between 1-7 days before starting production. That initial lag sometimes gets exasperated when a vendor has a delay. Routine maintenance, long queues or shipping delays at a printer can add another week on to the time between when you order and when I can ship. If an item is both new and popular, that can easily lead to a 2 week wait time before we can start shipping.
On top of production delays, there are also shipping delays in my studio. We don't have space to store an infinite number of boxes and packing tubes, so sometimes we have to wait for 2 business days for additional tubes to arrive from our packaging vendor. If my assistant is in house packing a batch of orders and we run out of packing materials, it could be 5 days before both the materials and my assistant are in the same room again. It's the sort of thing that every small business deals with that sounds way easier to solve than it actually is. If both production delays and shipping delays happen at the same time, it can lead to a 3 week wait. If you feel really bad about that, I'm with you. Nothing feels worse than watching yourself let people down in slow motion.
To fix some of these issues, we ordered a large quantity of packaged items and stocked them at a local warehouse for shipping by their staff. Books, postcards, coins and collectible cards ship from there unless there is a return or special order. These items usually ship in around one business day, however, it ends up leading to a lot of confusion when we split orders to be shipped out of two separate locations. You might have your cards shipping out right away, but there is no indication on where your print is. It appears to have vanished from the order entirely when actually it's simply enduring a minor wait as I schedule our next fulfillment day at the studio.
Largely, what I want to do to fix shipping delays is really simple, I'm just going to be more hands on with it. We had a 10 day delay recently when no one noticed that orders for cards weren't being properly assigned to the warehouse. The only way for me to be sure that that isn't happening is to be looking at it personally. At that point, it makes sense for me to start most days by personally filling any orders. This should mean fewer packaging delays, because I'll be interacting with it directly. It should also mean special orders and returns are more likely to receive my attention.
If you have a current issue with an order, the customer service email is MohrbacherArt@gmail.com. My assistant Matt Girouard checks it daily and forwards anything he can't personally resolve to my personal email. I'm not happy unless you are happy, so please reach out to us if you ever have any problems.
-Pete