Drs Foster & Smith’s Live Aquaria shipping charges
Posted May 8th, 2007 by Ryan
I did like to order from Live Aquaria. Live aquaria is run by Drs. Foster and Smith. They have good customer service and usually top quality products. However as I was looking down the shipping charges and they are getting ridiculous. Basically Live Aquaria has two locations, one is their main faculty and headquarters which is located in Wisconsin. The other is located in Los Angeles which is where they ship all of their corals and inverts from except if they are from the divers den or aquacultured division.
With that background, if you order lets say a Blue Linkia Starfish and a piece of their aquacultured coral you are going to be charged $34.99 to ship the Blue Linkia Starfish, and an additional $14.99 charge to ship the aquacultured coral. So in effect they are penalizing you for trying to save the wild reefs, charging you an additional $14.99 fee to ship.
Granted I do understand the cost of shipping, including overnight shipping with Fedex. My point is that the $14.99 fee was free, they knew they made a poor logistical decision in building their aquacultured facility in Wisconsin. It would make more sense to build in costly California, right by their Los Angeles Faculty.
I called and complained about this charge to Live Aquaria directly. The manager whom I talked to told me that she would waive the $14.99 charge this once, but it would be charged if I ordered again. That pretty much sums up the fact that I really do doubt Live Aquaria cares about saving the reefs. It would make much more sense to build your aquacultured faculty in Los Angeles then in Wisconsin, charging one fee for shipping.
You should order your aquacultured corals from GARF; you can get 5 for $100, and get
two free!!