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After a lifetime of cats sometimes you get to the point where you have hauled your last bag of cat litter.
One cat, or multiple cats, they go through a lot. A lot. Unless you are one of the rare people who has managed to train your cat to use the toilet. But do you really want to share it with a cat? seat up…..all the time???? ewww
If your precious bundle is an indoor kitty then you have no choice but to head to the store and get some litter. Whether you buy lots of small bags or just big bags it is a lot of trips.
Enough!
One of the choices on the pet supply scene is Chewy.com (now owned by Petsmart) who have really cute and fun commercials on television and ads in magazines and the internet.
Faced with a need for food and litter, and having been caught by Chewy’s cute blue banner it was a good time to see how great, or not, they were.
This is how it went.
Shopping / Browsing Experience
First Chewy.com is a one stop shop for all things animal. They have a vast range of everything. If they don’t have it – you really don’t need it. Easily organized tabs allow you to choose by Pet, Brand, Pharmacy, or Today’s Deal.
Jumping over to Cat you arrive at this cute page where you can start your shopping.
With a clean layout and well presented categories and filters it is really easy to browse or shop. What they have on offer is huge.
You can view products using side tabs with sub-categories, or you can scroll down to view a visual box of the categories with the sub-categories. This is a really nice touch!. Once at the sub-categories they have useful filters which help you to target exactly what you are looking for. This site is really well designed for the user.
Selecting products is just as simple – you only really have to choose. But be careful…..with so much on offer you can lose days.
With litter and food selected, and in the cart, checkout was next.
Checkout
The checkout process is streamlined. Once you have items in your cart you can either view your cart or pay. One little criticism is there is no ‘continue shopping’ option…..who shops for only 1 item??? But you can click the back button and your item stays in the cart, but there is that heart stopping moment when you think everything has disappeared. Your cart page also shows you suggestions for similar things other buyers have purchased.
Chewy offers free shipping on purchases of $49 or more. A great feature they have is that while viewing your cart they have a tally of how much more you can spend to get free shipping. A nice idea.
Checkout is easy. You do need to set up an account with email and password. Yes, a pain but this is how they will be able to send you information on specials and when it might be time to reorder. A simple process and voila! your order is done.
Shipping
Shipping is free with orders over $49 and it is so easy to hit that price with everything you might need for Fluffy so why not use it?
Autoship
A convenient feature of Chewy is autoship. Full disclosure it hasn’t been tried. When you sign up for it you get 30% off and you can set your own schedule. And many items that are on autoship have additional discounts so it is definitely worth looking into if you have something like regular purchases.
Delivery
The order was shipped quite quickly and arrived within a few days.
A telltale hint should have been the litter that was on the ground when the box was picked up.
With great anticipation the box was opened.
Gasp!
One of the litter bags was slit open and there was litter and dust all over the box.
And the food.
The the floor.
And it was not so pleasant to touch.
Despite everything wonderful so far the packaging of the contents of the box left a lot to be desired. The cans of food weren’t secured enough, were able to roll around a lot and in the process had slit the bag.
Not a good outcome.
So this very unhappy customer took photos of what happened and sent quite a terse email immediately to Chewy to show and tell that their shipping department was not doing a good job and the purchased item arrived damaged.
2 hours later (2 hours!!) Chewy replied. They apologized, stressed this wasn’t the norm and had already issued! a replacement bag that was on its way with 2 day shipping.
Stellar customer service! Having spent over 48 hours recently trying to contact Pottery Barn ( a retailer of significant mall and online importance – with no reply) this really impressed me.
Another nice note was their email suggested that if the litter wasn’t going to be used it might be appreciated at a local shelter or rescue
as a gift from your furry friend to those pets in need
Seriously impressive. Not so commercial that they forget what they are about!
2 days later the replacement litter arrived and was packaged securely and was intact.
Happy.
A couple of weeks later this arrived….
Wow! Just wow!
Customer service beyond what you expect.
In A Nutshell
Chewy.com provides a great shopping experience. They have a vast range of products, they have clear and easy navigation, with filters that assist your selection. The cart and checkout process is streamlined. Shipping and fulfillment do seem to have some issues. Googling for other customer experiences show that their shipping does have problems. However, the company was acquired by Petsmart in 2017 and there have been changes. These complaints may have been prior to that. Clearly based on this order their shipping still has some issues, but customer service is second to none.
Despite the initial disappointing condition of the items after delivery, which Chewy dealt with immediately in a professional and courteous way, at lightening fast speed, with follow up communication by both snail mail and email, they take their internet business seriously. The postcard was definitely above and beyond, and sealed it.
And they have real people.
Real people who care about animals.
So, a second order will be made – let’s see how that goes!