Friendly, good selection of attractive lighting fixtures (mostly high-end stuff), surprisingly competitive prices, but a bit lacking in customer service...
Wanting to patronize a local business, and thinking it would be an advantage to deal with a local brick-and-mortar place (rather than an Internet retailer) should anything go wrong, we purchased a pretty expensive lamp sold by Stanford Electric... Lamp was not carried in stock -- not surprising, since the manufacturer (Hubbardton Forge) boasts of all "hand-crafted" products. So we put down our 50% deposit and placed the order at the end of September. (Plenty of time before Thanksgiving and the holidays -- so we thought...)
By mid-October I hadn't heard anything from Stanford Electric so I called; they contacted Hubbardton Forge and then called me back to say that HF was experiencing "quality control problems" and expected our lamp to take a couple more weeks, then another week to ship from Vermont to Palo Alto. (I began to worry about hosting Thanksgiving dinner in the dark...)
A week before Thanksgiving and still no word... Called to Stanford Electric requesting a status update -- they said they'd call the manufacturer. Stanford Electric calls me back to say that the lamp "should be here by Thanksgiving"... ("Are you sure?", I asked, "because I would sure hate to ask my Thanksgiving guests to eat in the dark... Is there any way to push the manufacturer a bit?" SE's reply: "Should be here in time..."
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day, still no word from either SE or manufacturer... I call SE in the morning and they say that they haven't heard anything, but will call the manufacture and then call me back. By 1pm Pacific Time, haven't heard back from SE, so I call Hubbardton Forge directly -- "Any update on my lamp?" After some runaround trying to determine the order number (I never got that info from Stanford Electric...), was finally told that my lamp had shipped a week earlier, and that FedEx tracking says it's on the truck for delivery that afternoon -- yay! ("By the way," I ask, "did you get a call earlier today from Stanford Electric?" Reply: "Didn't talk to me -- but we log all our customer service calls, so perhaps they talked to someone else... Uh no -- nothing in our call log from Stanford Electric today.. (!!!)"
Long story short, I was able to pick up the lamp Wed afternoon and spent the night before Thanksgiving installing it. (Unfortunately, though I got the lamp hung, the wiring was more complicated than I expected -- and I was too tired and under too much pressure [it was after midnight by that point!] to figure it out... So the lamp looked nice -- but we still had to bring in other lights to light our Thanksgiving meal!)
The day after Thanksgiving (with the pressure now off!) I was able to figure out the wiring and get the lamp working. In the process of adjusting things however, I found that the mount for the lower diffuser glass had very poorly cut threads -- so the diffuser glass was not held very securely! Back to Stanford Electric...
Stanford Electric quickly understood the problem and said that they'd contact Hubbardton Forge and get replacement parts shipped out quickly. That was the Monday following Thanksgiving.
Another long story short, I just picked up the replacement parts today, the Thursday before Xmas (Sunday)...
While I'm sure that the manufacturer deserves its share of the blame for the problems and delays, I am quite disappointed in Stanford Electric. Even if all the problems stemmed from the manufacturer, I never felt like Stanford Electric was working very hard on my behalf. They seem like nice enough people -- I wasn't treated rudely or anything like that -- but "indifferent" is how I'd describe their customer service. I'd like to recommend them, but I simply can't after this disappointing experience... read more