Specialty Merchandise Corporation
Deceptive, most services not availble in Canada, staff uninformed, outrageous shipping charges, poor quality merchandise

SMC promises of 200-300% returns are false, particularly in Canada. I have been dealing with them for 10 years or more. We must pay exchange at the border which has gone from about 26% to about 56% on the dollar, which is the fault of the weak Canadian dollar, not the company.

The shipping cost is outrageous—20% of the cost of the merchandise (which should have nothing to do with shipping cost as that depends on size & weight). That gets the goods to the border where we pay duty sometimes and not other times. There is no broker as there used to be with UPS and so Canada Customs usually grossly overcharges us & it is a real hassle to get it back. Then we pay Canada Post $5.00/box to deliver it to our home.

The cost listed in the pricelist is now more than double by the time we get it, causing us to put our prices higher or take less profit. We now sell only the copper musicals because most of the other things we can buy at a trade show cheaper. We have also been buying other items at Canadian trade shows and selling them as well. Some items come from Vancouver, which is just as far from us as California, and they only charged about 7% for shipping. We pay as low as 1%.

We used to order on a Monday & we would have the goods on Friday—now it takes 2 or 3 weeks and we can only order once a week.

Because we cannot sell the goods at the U.S. Retail prices, all of the catalogues that are included in our annual renewal fee for which we also pay an extra 56% or more, are totally useless because they all list the U.S. Prices.

The same goes for all the programs that they have—none have Canadian retail prices and sub-wholesaling would be impossible because the merchandise costs too much.

Drop-shipping is a feature that would have greatly improved our sales, but they can't do that in Canada either because the name of the company would have to be written on the boxes since the cross the border.

The musicals have proven to be a good seller for us at craft shows and big events, otherwise we would not sell them because so many of them arrive broken, missing parts, rusty or the musical parts do not work.

SMC says that it is so easy to return damaged merchandise. I have tried to return it several times. Once they only replaced the things that were in stock, another time the lady I talked to told me I had to return it to the shipping company even though the items were obviously packed already damaged or broken. I never saw those items again nor did I get credit for them.

I finally gave up trying to replace them. My husband fixes the ones that he can and we absorb the cost. I was actually about to write this letter to SMC when I came across this web site.

I think SMC has lost most of their Canadian customers because of the high costs for us to get the merchandise. Therefore, they rarely have any news for Canadians in their newsletter nor do they make any attempt to make it cheaper for us. They do give us any additional 5% off the wholesale price which amounts to zip when we pay $1.56 plus Visa charges.

Thanks for listening. I would like to hear from other Canadians that are presently or have been associated with SMC.

Judy
Stratford, Ontario
Canada

Company: Specialty Merchandise Corporation
Country: USA
State: California
City: Chatsworth
Address: 9447 De Soto Avenue
Phone: 8189983300

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