You are quite welcome. We are glad order order arrived OK. We knew it would get there.
The CHI Company is one of the only companies (based on customer statements, etc.) that does ship Internationally. We have shipped to every continent except Antartica (we almost had an order for there with the USCG but it went to a U.S. central processing facility instead...RATS!)
We have found that orders from Brazil have increased significantly over the last couple of months. THANK YOU!
RE: Manpower/email response time/"customer service: What many do not realize is that it takes EMPLOYEES to do everything that a modern consumer "expects". Customer service & employees COST MONEY..........LOTS OF MONEY.
Honestly, the economy stinks (do I really need to say that?) 4 hours ago I had to lay off one employee because of it. That means the remaining employees at the CHI Company will just have to work that much harder. I myself wake up at 6am, get to work at 7:30am, work to 7 or 8 pm THEN leave for home....and there is still more to do. (right now it is 6:15pm on a Friday night).
Now what's the fix? Raise prices? to pay for more employess.
Look at places like More Beer. It's like they have "Beverly Hills" prices.
Look at other shops.... $3+++ for dry yeasts! $2.99 /oz of hops! $10 for quick disconnect fittings... Go figure...
Our business model:
We try to make every item the lowest cost item relative to other online shops. We are a parts supplier. To keep prices low we ship from over 30 different manufacturers and warehouse locations in the U.S. This means we do not have to stock $250,000 worth of parts that COST MONEY sitting there. Customers order parts/goods/ingredients that they know they want/need. This sometimes means that a shipment will not leave another location for up to 2 days. For items located here, we pride ourselves in the fact that over 95% of orders are processed and shipped same or next day out the door.
We generally do not give advice on the how, what, when of the customers systems/setups. If a customer has a specific question we help out as much as possible, otherwise it is up to customer to review the parts available, "Map out" their system if needed and order the parts. If we were to try guessing the parts needed and they are incorrect as per the users intention then we are "upside down": Part profit might be 30cents and it costs us $4.95 to ship what the customer now KNOWS that he needs. One example has been posted above; after several phone calls trying to describe what he wanted to do, we told him to "map it out" so WE could visualize what he was trying to do THEN match the correct parts needed..and this is exactly what the customer did. Once we saw what he needed through a spreadsheet of parts, we were able to fulfill 99% of the order. Total time on that order: 1 hour of verifying parts.
Now TO ALL RE shipping with USPS:
Unlike UPS, many Priority Mail shipments using the Small Flat Rate Boxes do NOT have step by step tracking. There is only Shipment initiation notice and delivery confirmation. Sometimes we can not tell a customer WHERE it is exactly; and that is frustrating because the valued customer thinks we have not done our job! On higher cost shipments using MEDIUM or LARGE Flat Rate boxes, there IS step by step tracking.
I hope this helps,
Matt
PS: (sales pitch time) Did I mention that this weekend we are selling ALL 1/2Lb. packages of hops for only 80c/oz.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f41/weekend-hop-sale-all-1-2-hops-80c-oz-183057/
We are transitioning from being -only- a parts supplier to also selling ingredients. Did you know that we now have Hops at good prices, dry yeast at GREAT prices and soon we will have grain at SUPER low prices?
http://www.chicompany.net/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=261&zenid=11d677aa8e710c3f000c9e1a52748aaa
