My Review of Oriental Trading Co.

I ordered from oriental trading company in early august but i’m not writing the review until now. When I decided to write my experiences with online shops I thought it would be easy, but sitting down to write about OTC I started to feel bad because it wasn’t going to be necessarily as glowing as the first review I did for scrapbuck.com that I had a great experience shopping with.  However, I know how much I like to read reviews of others before buying online from a place i’ve never shopped so felt I just needed to throw my 2 cents out there…so here it goes.

1. My order:  I had a free shipping coupon which is ALWAYS my motivation to find ‘something’ to buy so I ordered an assortment of nice stamp sets, blank card set, alterable address book, jewels, ATCs, acrylic sheets, metallic brads, tin boxes, alterable white cardboard cigar boxes and some plastic alterable checkbook covers.

2. Packaging / Order Fullfillment:  Everything was received that I ordered. Although not padded, the packaging was just fine as well. Nothing was too fragile that slipping around wouldn’t hurt it.

3. Quality and Expectations: The quality of the majority of items I ordered was as expected. Everything however had this oriental trading plastic over all of it and it just felt very dusty. It obviously or must have sat on shelves in a warehouse somewhere.  Not sure how particular you would be about these sort of things, but for me it just felt for lack of a better word ‘icky’.  I proceeded to remove all of this plastic though, and on most of the items the quality and condition was perfect.

Address book: I have altered this already, and will post my results soon. I do recommend this alterable. I’ve never seen these before and think it’s a great practical project 🙂

ATCs pre cut:  These are great. I thought getting precut ones will assist me in eliminating the ‘cutting’ step and making more of these when I’m having creative block.

Buttons:  I give OTC an A+ for the story behind these buttons.  When I initially placed my order with my free shipping code, I thought that these were added to my cart, but after my order confirmation came through I realized they were not in my cart and I had already used my free ship code. So I promptly contacted them over live chat (i love when sites have this. It’s instant customer service.) They said as a courtesy they would ship these out to me and honor the free ship code.  This was great customer service in my opinion.

I ADORE these buttons. Great colorful assortment. The product details said approx. 800 buttons (2lbs). I read some reviews on their site, and people were saying alot of theirs arrived broken. I only had 1 chipped button in the whole lot. Yes I did count them and they came out to approx. 793 buttons which is close enough in my book. 

Yes another picture for you to see the colors. they managed to grab just a great mixed assortment of sizes and colors. I don’t think 5 bucks was too bad for these…what do you think?

Jewels:  These had mixed reviews on their site. I had an idea to cover a lid with jewels in a pattern so thought i’d just get them. I wasn’t dissappointed like some people. the 1000 mini jewels are as expected…mini. Here is a pencil for size reference. The flowers, I definetly got on a whim. Also though that I could glue a jewel mini in the middle of these flower jewels which woould fit perfectly and add a little color to the tops of them.

Stamp Sets: These two stamp sets were pretty huge compared to large sets in stores. This monogram acrylic stamp set was $5 but I thought would be great to personalize gifts or cards.

I think one can never have too many different fonts of ‘birthday’ which is of course the type of cards that one would make the most. This is a cute set where you can build cupcakes, or cakes, with toppers, and text.  Thought this would be great to stamp, color, cut out, and build onto a card front with dimensional adhesives. Can’t wait to try these. Will post my results when I complete one.

Alterable White Cigar Boxes: Okay, here is a definetly word of advice, on some of the items that got not good reviews, I bought anyway and liked what I received like the jewels and the buttons. However, these boxes I ‘wish’ I would have paid attention and weighed the amount of ‘good’ reviews vs. ‘bad’ reviews. I think this one definetly had more ‘bad’ reviews than good, but they were so cheap and on sale ($1.50 for set of 3 sizes) that I’d give them a try.  Well, they looked exactly the way people described. Spines broken, messy glue inside. Yes they are alterable and most of this would be covered, but I didn’t even like the way the lids fit on the top. They were skewed and some of the white paper was so tight, they didn’t go all the way down. Just not a good purchase. I did manage to find a use for them though…you know the photo I setup and took of my japanese bookbinding technique? These boxes I used to prop up the two on the sides underneath the fabric. Oh well.

Overall: I am only giving them 3 out of 5.  I loved customer service, and the majority of the items I received were in great condition and what I expected. However, the downside was the ‘dusty’ warehouse feeling all of the items had, and offering a subpar product like the cigar boxes, most retailers wouldn’t even stock something like that.  I would probably only order from them again if I needed more of those buttons, or some other theme party supply and had another free shipping code.

This is just my opinion on my experience with OTC. Your experience might not be the same. I think it’s important to look for other reviews and make up your mind based on more than just my review. I am in no way affiliated with any of the shops I review. I am just doing this to share with others my own experiences.

Hope this review helps. I definetly recommend looking into other reviews before you make your decision since this was just my one experience with them.

Thanks for visiting!