Arrow: Cheapest Prices/Best Places to Buy/Pre-Orders/Deals

[ryannichols7]

this morning I got a "we're sorry for the delay" email for my order

now apparently dispatched with tracked shipping but no email nor a tracking number provided. is this normal? I know sometimes it takes time to get a tracking number but it's been a few days

really off to a swimming start with this company. judging by the other posts in this thread, I missed the boat on arrow being a good label to order from directly

[fdm]

These may not actually be getting shipped with tracking. (From my readings at blu-ray.com, some of the customer service responses posted there have indicated this likelihood.) The new normal remains to be seen. Same with if/when my relatively simple order will ever get shipped.

[Adam X]

In my experience, when you get tracked shipping with Arrow, it’s only valid in England (/UK?), via Royal Mail. ie. It stops when it leaves the airport for overseas. Given their increased prices, worsening customer service & insistance on warehousing with Technicolour, who seem to take their packaging tips from Zavvi and Amazon, I’m not sure it’s worth ordering direct anymore regardless of whether they’re having a sale.

The world-wide postal system is currently pretty clogged, so things like tracking & timely movement of parcels are pretty inconsistent. Not sure what that means once we hit December, and the usual slowdown that accompanies Xmas shipping.

[TMDaines]

Anyone got a contact inside Arrow who can help? Now their customer service team are just sending me the tracking info for the parcel that sent that contained all the incorrect items. Arrow's customer service has always been exemplary until now. Now I cannot get anybody to respond to the basic concept of having been sent a box with somebody else's order in.

[Drucker]

Sorry Daines but I'm in the same boat. The automated customer service functionality is a disaster and the contact box is hard to use. I never got the answers on my last few questions on their website and it was so unhelpful I just gave up.

[TMDaines]

They’ve now said they will send me a replacement order. I wait.

They have separately sent me a return form for the wrong items that arrived, but haven’t told me where to send them, what the Return Authorisation Number is, or what the Return Shipment Number is. I don’t own a printer. Despite asking multiple times, there’s no details on how I then send this item at no cost to myself. Oh, and the e-mail says, “All instructions on how to proceed can be found within the attached document.”

Amazon didn’t conquer the world doing shit like this.

[swo17]

Amazon conquered the world by offering good customer service and then becoming terrible. Perhaps Arrow is simply following suit? Or maybe they've just been really busy lately?

[fdm]

No email, so I don't know when it happened, but my order shipped ("tracked shipping") with no tracking number to be found anywhere (due to arrive here supposedly around mid-November (uh-huh). Decided anyway to bug them for a tracking number and who it was shipped by, maybe next time they will have this stuff figured out and provide it on their own.

[ryannichols7]

These may not actually be getting shipped with tracking. (From my readings at blu-ray.com, some of the customer service responses posted there have indicated this likelihood.) The new normal remains to be seen. Same with if/when my relatively simple order will ever get shipped.

so they tell me that my order has no tracking, despite me paying for tracked delivery (which I mean okay, you can resolve that), but instead they try and tell me that I paid for standard shipping.

thankfully the "upload a file" field is there and I was able to ask them if I'm reading the words "tracked delivery" wrong??? because it's there for every single item.

[fdm]

When I ordered, same thing. It said tracked delivery (only option), and when I looked at my orders to see if it had shipped, they also said shipped with tracked delivery.

That said, I just saw in my readings over there that someone actually did get a tracking number inside of a shipment email. (But that's the only time I've seen that.)

But I did get a response this morning:

My apologies for any confusion caused by this matter and I will look into this further with our marketing team who manage our outbound emails regarding why you have not received the despatch update for this.

In the meantime I can see that this order was placed with standard delivery linked to this order not tracked delivery and this would be shipped with FedEx.

I am sorry to say that as your order was processed and sent via our standard delivery service, unfortunately no active tracking details are available for this order.

So there you go.

(Edit: Oh, now re-reading (with more comprehension on my part), yes it seems they are claiming that I too did not actually order with tracked delivery, which of course I did… So I sent them another couple messages for their reading pleasure.)

[TMDaines]

All but one of my items have been sent in a replacement order, let's see if everything turns up. Still no clarity on returning the unexpected items.

[fdm]

More feedback from Arrow (they sent it Fedex without tracking ??, we shall see):

I can only apologise for any confusion caused by this and you were not charged extra for tracking, the order was placed with standard delivery which is not guaranteed to be tracked and we are unable to refund the difference as there is no difference in the shipping cost.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused by this tracking issue and as advised this order was shipped via FedEx.

Apparently they stopped refunding shipping costs after doing so for some of the first few complaints...

[Adam X]

I’ve not ordered anything since they reformatted the website, but prior to that I’ve never had Arrow ship a “tracked” order via FedEx, just Royal Mail as mentioned above. Either that’s a new development or just another sign of confused communication.

[fdm]

They did (to the states), I had things shipped from them several times essentially overnight, tracked fedex (cost not too much more than untracked delivery and arrived much faster). Even delivered on Saturday sometimes (unlike Inidicator's free fedex shipping which last time (and possibly again this time) was weekday only delivery. This was before Arrow changed warehouses a few years ago.

[Finch]

My two Arrow orders arrived simultaneously today, no tracking, but all discs and cases in good shape. The first Zavvi order on the other hand was placed before the first Arrow order and is still in transit.

[dwk]

Amazon has Silent Running for $19.99 and an extra $4 off coupon

[Finch]

Arrow's newsletter is teasing a Black Friday sale.

[Drucker]

Evidently Arrow's website currently has a boxset sale that I didn't see any email or posts about. Going through Feb 2.

[Finch]

Thanks for the tip; I got the US Vengeance Trails set which even with sales tax and shipping worked out cheaper than the recent discounted price for the UK set which is now back at 60 quid. The US selection is also better than the UK's site.

[swo17]

Seems like a lot of new and upcoming releases are 45% off or thereabouts on Amazon US:

Lies and Deceit (but not the other Chabrol set)
Rogue Cops and Racketeers
To Sleep So as to Dream
8 Diagram Pole Fighter
Come Drink with Me
12 Monkeys
American Werewolf in London
RoboCop

possibly others

[domino harvey]

Vol 2 of Chabrol now also on sale!

[swo17]

Sweet, nice catch

[ryannichols7]

Easter sale casually begins with no fanfare or social media post. ends 02 May, includes Fassbinder boxes!

[hearthesilence]

I placed an order, but I noticed they added 10% to each item - and they didn't bother to indicate it unless you either looked at the final total or went to the order history AFTER it's been placed (where it suddenly readjusts the cost of each item and lists them higher than what originally appeared).

What gives? It's not quite local sales tax because it's actually even higher.

[therewillbeblus]

Is that 10% addition to the UK or US site or both? And any indication whether it's cheaper to order the releases that are available on both sites on one vs the other (for US buyers)? It seems like the conversion rate would work in favor of Arrow UK, but I feel like their own conversion rate is often pricier than the standard rate that companies like Eureka are firmer around abiding by