High shipping costs taking the shine off the goods
Written: Jun 03 '05 (Updated May 03 '08)
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| Full Review |
This review was written several years ago; things have changed a bit in terms of Fire Mountain Gems' offerings and its interface. My latest impressions are at the end of the article.
---Original article---
I've recently started beading and it's amazed me how inexpensive jewelry can be if you make it yourself. Always in search of a better mousetrap, I've been looking around for beads I can't get locally, and for cheaper beads in general.
Fire Mountain Gems must have a huge marketing budget, as they were on the back page of the June edition of 2 US beading magazines I bought, and when I searched through Google, there they were, as the first website listed. With no absolute preference for any beading websites, I figured ordering from one is as good as ordering from another, provided the price is right and they have beads I consider 'pretty'. You can also argue that any company with a big marketing budget would likely be more reliable.
The website itself is colourful, really easy to navigate, and had lots of areas where you could look for different categories of jewelry supplies. The pricelist is quantity-based. The more units you buy of an item, the cheaper each unit is.
It's possible to see enlarged pictures of various items though the enlargements weren't very large. Descriptions were adequate but concentrated on the physical description of the product rather than on how it can best be used. Then again I suppose this site is for serious jewelry enthusiasts who already know what to do with the product.
Having said that there were buttons at the bottom of the page on projects and how-tos. I didn't click through to those and it's likely I would have found some information there.
The site overall is really packed with information. Other than the online store, which was listed by the type of bead
material, e.g. glass, crystal, metal, etc, this site also sells jewelry findings and other supplies, finished jewelry as gifts (looks cheaper than most stores!) as well as magazine subscriptions. The main part of the page is taken up by attractive ads highlighting various parts of the site, such as certain types of beads, certain types of projects, contests, and so on.
I was particularly interested in Swarovski crystal beads, as these are some of the most expensive beads available if you don't count gemstone beads. Unfortunately, I can still get them cheaper at a local shop so that was out. I thought prices were quite reasonable for other products, especially since I hadn't seen them where I am; so I ordered over US$30 of glass beads.
Fire Mountain Gems' website is a little sneaky in that there are actually 2 different areas which offer discounted beads. One is the Outlet Store button at the top of the page; the other is the Save on Great Products button next to it. I went in for assortments, and would recommend the glass pearl assortments in particular. You never know what you'll get, but there'll be sure to be something you can use!
The checkout process was a breeze, and Fire Mountain will send international orders by Fedex. This added nearly US$30 to my order but I still think I saved some money overall so that's OK. I did get an emailed confirmation but I don't really read these things unless I haven't received my order after a reasonable time, so I can't really say whether it was as detailed as I would wish. I do recall though that there didn't seem to be a way to check the status of your order online, like there is on Amazon, but then again most online stores aren't the size of Amazon.
I placed my order on a Thursday evening my time, which would be Thursday in the day in the US. I received my order on Saturday morning, and even got a small free gift with it. Everything was in order, though I felt the picture of the fire-polished beads didn't reflect the beads themselves accurately. The problem is that certain beads are shiny or iridescent and these surfaces just don't show up nicely in photos. If I'd known they were iridescent I wouldn't have bought them, but that's a problem with ordering anything online - if you don't know what the product is like beforehand, you could get pretty much anything when you receive it.
If you're into making your own jewelry Fire Mountain Gems is certainly a one-stop shop for it, and I would visit again. It's definitely got a staggering number of items in its inventory, but if you have a local jewelry crafts store it may still be worth visiting it as Fire Mountain may not have the types or colours of items you want, or may require you to buy more of an item than you really want, even though it's cheaper per item. Be warned about the varying bead lustres as well, as some beads may be more matte or more shiny than you expect.
I'm still hunting for more sites that may offer even better pricing or variety, and the bead magazines have given me some ideas..
----comparison with other stores----24 June 2005
Having become more ambitious, I decided to try out a few of the other stores. I searched out stores on Google and also visited some of those listed in Epinions, particularly the ones that had reviews. The first scary thing is that most beadstores online aren't very good. I had assumed they would all be like Fire Mountain, and they weren't - many had terribly layouts, very few (and ugly) beads, big price tags, huge minimum order requirements, or didn't ship internationally. I also ruled out ebay outfits, mainly because I've never ebayed (yes, I know! I'm strange!) and it still feels odd to me to do a direct one-to-one transaction with someone you don't know rather than with a company.
In the end I ordered from 2 in succession, and neither are in the Epinions list. I first went to ebeadstore.com. Lesson number one: different bead stores online have different stuff, which makes this quite exciting.
I had had such a lovely experience on Fire Mountain with assortments that I went straight for those on ebeadstore. Mixes are nice because you get a feel for what the variety of colours, textures, shapes and sizes available are like, and if you really like something you can always just buy that kind of bead in future. Mixes are usually cheaper as well.
I ended up spending US$50 this time, with an additional shipping charge of US$20-odd. Ebeadstore doesn't ship by Fedex and I had to nearly 2 weeks to get my beads. That's still acceptable (compared to Amazon), but a bit of a letdown as I would have expected anything by post to get to me in about a week.
There were some disappointments, again partly because digital photos simply can't capture certain things. I stayed away from anything that could remotely be iridescent, but I forgot that digital pictures can't reflect fluorescent colours adequately. What I had thought were just bright colours turned out to be horribly fluorescent - which was not what I wanted at all. A second disappointment were the Clear Fish Tiny Fish Beads in Regular Finish (what a tongue twister), which were US$4.70 for 50. Those look really nice if you view them from one angle (as on the website!), but not when they rotate and you see the uneven quality of the dots that make up the eyes.
The rest of my order was OK, but two mixes deserve a special mention: Assorted Color Various Shape ZB Mix Beads in Regular Finish, which are milky beads of different shapes and sizes with pastel swirls (100g for US$3.99), VERY pretty, and Range of Red and Blood Red Various Shape Hot Red Mix in Frosted Finish. Very classy. They looked like seeds. The strange part was that neither of the pictures did justice to the beads themselves.
I then got curious about charms and furnace glass beads, and eebeadstore offers both. I'd actually started putting in an order at Auntie's Beads for pewter charms, each of which is under US$1 when on sale.. US$0.55, US$0.60, US$0.94, as opposed to US$1.82 for a silver pewter (I suppose they mean silver-plated) charm, when I decided to just search some more, and I'm glad I did. eebeads.com, Eclectic Beads, sells silver-plated and gold-plated charms for much less--some of them go for US$0.20 each and the detailing is wonderful. I liked their designs as well, and some of them come in a set (Christmas, gardening, etc) which is cheaper. I'm sure the price differential can be explained by the amount of precious metal used, the size of the charm and so on, but I wanted affordable charms in nice designs and that's what eebeads provided.
The layout at Eclectic Beads is quite well-done - it lets you navigate a whole page of pictures at once, and make your order for each item, then press a Submit button at the bottom once so that all the orders for all the items on that page go to your shopping cart at once. Really good for comparing items, and quicker than doing it one item at a time which is the case at Fire Mountain and ebeadstore (and most other types of stores!). There are normally boxes for the quantities you want next to each picture of a charm, one for goldplated and the other for silver plated so you can get some of each, as you wish. There is no minimum number of charms required, as anything can be used to make it up to the minimum order value.
These pages also come with teaser ads on other products, which is how I ended up going to look at chandelier earring findings. I'd always admired these in the magazines and Fire Mountain doesn't have them. eebeads does have a minimum US$45 order, but I had no trouble reaching it.. I ordered over US$100 this time and even forgot to order the furnace glass to boot!
Charms are relatively light compared to glass beads, so my shipping costs were slightly over US$10 - you'll notice that this makes eebeads the cheapest of all for me when it comes to shipping! In addition, the package arrived in the post within the week, and I got a free pen, a 2-bead sample of purple pearls, 2 tootsie rolls, and a coupon for a free pack of beads or findings! I love getting unexpected goodies..
I would order from all three online stores again, that is, when I replenish my funds:). My bottom line is that I like variety, and while Fire Mountain offers a lot it doesn't offer everything. It does pay to visit new stores once in a while, just to see if there's something else you might like to have, or if the prices you're paying are better matched elsewhere.
---Update May 2008---
I've continued to order from Fire Mountain Gems, particularly in 2007 when I lived in Australia and the beads were either too expensive or limited in variety compared to Asia. The experience however has deteriorated a bit, and I'll explain below.
The good news is that Fire Mountain Gems continues to offer a very wide range of items, with something for everyone. In the past, assortable pricing was only offered for selected items; now it extends to everything, so the more you buy, the cheaper the individual item. It also offers some really nice sales from time to time, with things going for just US$1 or US$2. As a case in point, they had a sterling silver frog charm that's going for US$1 when I visited their website today. These are 'genuine' sales in that when the item is not on sale, it actually does sell for a higher price.
The bad news is that I've not been pleased with many of my recent orders from this web store. First, I don't like the shipping costs at all. While the items may be cheap, shipping has gone up (I compared some of my old bills with some of my new ones just to make sure) to the point where even if you buy something for US$1, shipping may double that cost so it wasn't all that cheap to begin with.
The second problem I've had is a niggling suspicion that I've bought items that I don't want. I know I get clearly itemised bills before everything ships, so it's my responsibility to check, but when you order quite a few things it's hard to remember what's what.
Here's what happens: I usually put lots of things in my shopping cart as I visit various pages, and then I'll whittle the purchase down to what I really want during checkout time. In the past few purchases I've felt that I've received one or two items that I was sure I had deleted. It could be a matter of me leaving the checkout page before it's updated or something; and as I said it's probably my fault.
The third problem has been mentioned by other members - substandard goods. When Fire Mountain Gems says the beads are C or D grade, they can actually be quite awful. I've received chipped bead strands as well as beads in horrible colours - my D grade lapis lazuli was not mostly blue as might be expected, but mostly grey, for example.
Members might also want to stay away from the cheap bulk buys - it seems like they're all rejects. I've received packs of Indian glass beads which were mostly chipped, in irregular shapes, and/or in horrible colours. Indian glass is of relatively low quality compared to say Czech glass but the stuff you get in little packs in shops is usually much nicer. The economy bags of Czech glass aren't any better though - Fire Mountain's glass rounds were almost all flattened on one side, and some so-called beads were only half drilled.
When other online stores offer mixes they often warn that the colours or quality may not be as good as expected. You don't get these caveats from Fire Mountain Gems. Recently though it has begun to offer 'promotional quality' beads which it says are mostly usable. I can't imagine that the quality would be any better than the mixes I've received.
You may ask, why keep on ordering from Fire Mountain Gems if you don't like the service? I'm a creature of habit - I'm more likely to attribute my first bad experience to something I did wrong (I should have checked the order, I could have ordered B grade beads, I should know economy mixes are cheap for a reason etc), but when it happens too many times and you start doing the math, Fire Mountain Gems may not be quite the shining star it used to be for me.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Reviews written: 76
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me: I love ads and reviews. They help me shop, and I love to shop.
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