High Tide Aquatics

Marine depot

ofzakaria

ofzakaria

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latley I have been shopping from marine depot and one thing I noticed is that they are consistently quicker with shipping at no extra cost and they carry more product lines support than BRS.
Finally, i had an incident where my product arrived damaged and package was banged up, their proccess was, immediately shipped me a new product, then opened a ticket with the carrier (ofcourse ita UPS) to pick up my damaged product.

The same thing happened to me with BRS (product seems lost with the carrier) almost the same week, BRS on the other hand wanted me to open ticket with the carrier and wait up to 2 weeks, only if carrier did not resolve by refunding them, they would consider to send me a replacement or not based on the ticket report...which was crazy...

So far am really happy witht marine depot..
 
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I believe marine depot is based in SoCal where BRS is based In Minnesota. I agree whenever I order on MD’s I get it within 3 days with free shipping. Both company provide excellent customer service at least IME.
 
Look like they ship from Nevada btw.
I used to agree with the customer service until I got the damaged good incident. Marine depot overpassed BRS by a large margin...this is data from 2 weeks ago..
 
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UPS ground shipping (pre rona) was sometimes delivered the next day from marine depot. Ground isn't gauranteed next day but much of same state shipments arrive the next day by 8pm. lately it has been two days.
 
I would often order from Aquacave, mostly because they don't collect sales tax, and when you're ordering hundreds upon hundreds worth of stuff it does add up. But lately have been very dissuaded from them. Something wrong with a test kit, they tell me to contact the manufacturer directly instead of sending me a new one, I make an order and not 5 minutes later change my mind on one item and email them, and send a message to customer support... and when it ships 3 days later... said item is still there (still was cheaper than having to pay sales tax :D). And the most recent one is me asking for a price adjustment, it shows a ticket is open, but no response a week later.
 
They have an east coast and west coast DC but seem to have a smart ERP to prioritize consolidated orders from a single DC, or if necessary they’ll dispatch two shipments.

I find the CS from each to be equal in my experience with the two. I Flipflop between supporting BRS for because they create nice resources for reefers and then MD for quick shipping.
 
I was buying salt from MD and UPS lost/damaged 2 out of the 5 buckets. MD sent out replacements that next day. UPS drivers hate the salt buckets
 
tankguy said:
I was buying salt from MD and UPS lost/damaged 2 out of the 5 buckets. MD sent out replacements that next day. UPS drivers hate the salt buckets
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That was my situation with BRS and their proccess was to file a lost claim and wait till its conclusion before they consider next action. They told me to expect 2 weeks... the item was chiller, so I debated that this is critical item I cannot wait 2 weeks. cannot we proccess new one while waiting on the claim? they said they cannot:((
 
ofzakaria said:
That was my situation with BRS and their proccess was to file a lost claim and wait till its conclusion before they consider next action. They told me to expect 2 weeks... the item was chiller, so I debated that this is critical item I cannot wait 2 weeks. cannot we proccess new one while waiting on the claim? they said they cannot:((
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To be fair salt or other dry goods is quite a bit different than a chiller. Especially, knowing you, if that chiller is a higher end model they may not keep it in stock and drop ship straight from the company. Not trying to make excuses for them, but yeah $40 of salt vs $800(?) of chiller
 
bfirecat said:
Interesting, I've always had good customer service from BRS.
I'll give Marine Depot a shot next time.
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Just to be clear, I am not blaming their customer service. They are nice, respectful and cooperative. I am digging their rules and proccess. At the end of the day customer service can only operate within the company rule book,and look like BRS rule book is no longer as friendly as it used to be..thats all.
But yeh for sure am having better actions from MD and more importantly, more product lines. Many items I did not find on BRD but available on MD. Look like they are trying to be as impartial as possible with their line up instead of doubling down on couple names as in BRS case..
For my frah tank. Most of my items I acquired from MD mainly because BRS did not carry it..
 
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sfsuphysics said:
To be fair salt or other dry goods is quite a bit different than a chiller. Especially, knowing you, if that chiller is a higher end model they may not keep it in stock and drop ship straight from the company. Not trying to make excuses for them, but yeah $40 of salt vs $800(?) of chiller
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Not really., that was their process regardless. I asked.
Again am not trying to bash them, I still like them. Am just sharing some data and experiences.
To me the big deal was the bigger line up at MD. Add on top of that the good experience i had with them in term of speed of shipping and attentive customer problem solving is whats making me use them more
 
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I wonder if something has changed with BRS? Over the years I’ve had excellent customer service interactions with them, including shipping replacements right away. I don’t like that their shipping is so slow, but that’s a separate issue.
 
JVU said:
I wonder if something has changed with BRS? Over the years I’ve had excellent customer service interactions with them, including shipping replacements right away. I don’t like that their shipping is so slow, but that’s a separate issue.
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I think there may be something going on, now I'm not sure if it's COVID related, but I asked about Calcium Carbonate for my 2 part and saw they were sold out of everything except the "1 gallon" mix. I asked when they were planning on getting more and they said they're rationing people to only 1 gallon so they don't run out due to people stock piling which to me sounded like an odd excuse I I mean hearing them say "Well importing this during this time is proving difficult" would be much more believable to me, saying they're only allowing 1 gallon mixes for sale tells me they're taking the BULK aspect of their company and chopping it down to more expensive single serving sizes ...which will probably make money. The other thing they told me, in that same conversation, that seemed a bit weird was they said most of their staff is putting together RO/DI units because everyone is buying them up now even outside the hobby which seems odd.

So overall, not sure if they're having manufacturing/work force issues, or what, but yeah something seems off.
 
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