Best Websites For Equipment

[Forsaken77]

+1
I gave SaltwaterAquarium.com a shot one time. Never again!!!!!!!!!!!
Thankfully I went through paypal and pulled back my payment.
If a company doesn't have their address on "contact info" and you call and it's a "call service" that handles their calls, There's Your Sign!!!!!!!!!!!

I've used them before and they were great. I got 2 of the new AI Gooseneck mounts for the Prime lights when they first came out because saltwateraquarium.com was the only one to have the 18" in stock. No other place got them in yet.

Long story short, both mounts were defective and they sent out 2 new replacements and wanted me to send back the defective ones when the new ones arrived. That's quality customer service.

The second set were also defective and I had to contact AI directly because they sent out a bunch of bad units and also did a revision of the product less than a month after release. So AI sent me 3 new units that were the updated, revised product to make up for the 4 bad units I received.

 

[Coastie Reefer]

Kudos to LA!! Sticking up for their local businesses and your local economy. :):):)

I support local whenever I can, but things I cannot get locally or items that are marked up 15-20% of online prices with an additional 11% in tax is a bit ridiculous. It's so bad that people in my area will drive to Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi to get a better price.

 

[GoVols]

Kudos to LA!! Sticking up for their local businesses and your local economy. :):):)

mcarroll, Need your input :)

How about this. We kill Fed income tax as we know it.

We go to National Fed sales tax.

If you buy a Yugo, You pay that Fed Sales tax.
If you buy a Ferrai, You pay that Fed Sales tax.

 

[Coastie Reefer]

I'll give fragtastic another bump too. You get a scratch off with every order good for neat prizes or discounts on your next order.

 

[GoVols]

I support local whenever I can, but things I cannot get locally or items that are marked up 15-20% of online prices with an additional 11% in tax is a bit ridiculous. It's so bad that people in my area will drive to Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi to get a better price.

To your Point:
People in Tn, Drive to KY, AL and Ga right now.

 

[Forsaken77]

Tennessee it right behind ya @ 9.9% sales tax... But we have no state income tax :D
Some online places I have to pay sales tax and some not.
BRS/Marine Depot/Pet Solutions = (No sales tax for me)
Amazon/Premium Aquatics/DF&S = (Sales tax for me)

Dr Foster & Smith work with Petco directly. So if there is a Petco in your state, which is very likely, you'll get taxed from them.

Amazon taxes everybody if it's SOLD BY AMAZON. Try to find items that are FULFILLED BY AMAZON (and Prime items if you're a member), that way you get the fast Amazon shipping and don't pay tax unless the seller is in your state.

 

[Coastie Reefer]

Dr Foster & Smith work with Petco directly. So if there is a Petco in your state, which is very likely, you'll get taxed from them.

Amazon taxes everybody if it's SOLD BY AMAZON. Try to find items that are FULFILLED BY AMAZON (and Prime items if you're a member), that way you get the fast Amazon shipping and don't pay tax unless the seller is in your state.

Or unless you live in Louisiana...Or Colorado, our law makers basically took a Colorado law and replaced "Colorado" with "Louisiana" LOL

If I'm not mistaken the Supreme Court ruled that all states can collect sales from online transactions even if the seller does not have a physical location in that state...

 

[GoVols]

I've used them before and they were great. I got 2 of the new AI Gooseneck mounts for the Prime lights when they first came out because saltwateraquarium.com was the only one to have the 18" in stock. No other place got them in yet.

Long story short, both mounts were defective and they sent out 2 new replacements and wanted me to send back the defective ones when the new ones arrived. That's quality customer service.

The second set were also defective and I had to contact AI directly because they sent out a bunch of bad units and also did a revision of the product less than a month after release. So AI sent me 3 new units that were the updated, revised product to make up for the 4 bad units I received.

My experience with them falls into the 1* category relating to these reviews and they don't deserve to be in business.
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Saltwateraquarium_com

 

[Forsaken77]

Or unless you live in Louisiana...Or Colorado, our law makers basically took a Colorado law and replaced "Colorado" with "Louisiana" LOL

If I'm not mistaken the Supreme Court ruled that all states can collect sales from online transactions even if the seller does not have a physical location in that state...

Yea, that's terrible. It defeats the purpose of shopping online. But I was actually referring to states where it isn't like that. I should've been more clear with what I meant.

I live just outside NYC, on Long Island, and the city adds its own additional taxes on top of taxes that already exist for certain items. But NY state hasn't hit us with the online tax YET. They already found so many other things to tax us for. Soon there will be a tax for how much air you breathe at this rate.

 

[loz]

Support your LFS if you never mind couple bucks different..

 

[Forsaken77]

My experience with them falls into the 1* category relating to these reviews and they don't deserve to be in business.
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Saltwateraquarium_com

I had a very bad experience with saltwaterfish.com. I ordered a 3" Magnificent Foxface and what arrived was a 7" full grown adult. They refunded my money, because I filed a Paypal dispute, and left me stuck with a giant fish I couldn't house yet.

No local places take fish from people because they would be over run with either huge fish or very sick fish. So they really screwed me. How someone could confuse a 3" baby with a 7" adult is beyond me. The funny thing is that it said "3-inch Foxface" written on a 12" wide bag that the fish came in.

Then, when I wrote a bad review on their site, they deleted it. So don't believe reviews on that site people. Unless it's a small breed fish, you may not get the size you ordered.

 

[GoVols]

Fragtastic's and Salty Supply are good vendors.

+1
Salty Supply has great customer service.

I bought two BTA's from Matt @ Coral Collection. Matt was awesome. Sent WYSIWYG pictures and called on both orders to see how they where doing.

Look and Drool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://coralcollection.bigcartel.com/category/anemones

 

[GoVols]

I had a very bad experience with saltwaterfish.com. I ordered a 3" Magnificent Foxface and what arrived was a 7" full grown adult. They refunded my money, because I filed a Paypal dispute, and left me stuck with a giant fish I couldn't house yet.

No local places take fish from people because they would be over run with either huge fish or very sick fish. So they really screwed me. How someone could confuse a 3" baby with a 7" adult is beyond me. The funny thing is that it said "3-inch Foxface" written on a 12" wide bag that the fish came in.

Then, when I wrote a bad review on their site, they deleted it. So don't believe reviews on that site people. Unless it's a small breed fish, you may not get the size you ordered.

They will never get another penny to me.

"Fool me once, shame on you / Fool me twice, shame on me"

 

[mcarroll]

To your Point:
People in Tn, Drive to KY, AL and Ga right now.

It's called a Price war, and the problem with them is that in the long run nobody who matters really wins.

A few folks like you and me maybe get cheap goods while the battle goes on, but there's always a silent price for those kinds of cheap goods. Namely in this case, your LFS ends up out of business...also US manufacturers do the same thing.

A quote from the link:

In the medium to long term, price wars can be good for the dominant firms in the industry. Typically, the smaller, more marginal firms cannot compete and must close. The remaining firms absorb the market share of those that have closed. The real losers, then, are the marginal firms and their investors. In the long term, the consumer may lose too. With fewer firms in the industry, prices tend to increase, sometimes higher than before the price war started.

I'm glad for anyone who's still got a local fish store.

I live in a major metro area where there used to be some 80 local fish stores served by one of the local wholesalers.

Last time I was plugged in enough to know, that 80 had gone down to less than 5 in the present day. No remaining LFS's are close to me, so if I want to partake I'm effectively driving to Alabama or whatever just to see a local store at all.:rolleyes:

I think this is the story that's pretty typical to a lot of folks on here....only most don't live in a major metro area. So they only ever had maybe 5 stores or only one store – but they would have suffered the same attrition rates as all their customers started shopping online. So it didn't take those towns long to go from five (or one) to zero, whereas our last LFS just closed a year ago or so... :(:mad:

If I'm not mistaken the Supreme Court ruled that all states can collect sales from online transactions even if the seller does not have a physical location in that state...

That is because, as a citizen of your state, you have agreed to (or otherwise been obligated...IANAlawyer) pay taxes for things you buy.

The tax break you (and the rest of us) were exploiting was a loophole – as long as you didn't report the sale, the state had no way to know of the sale.

Notably, it was also a loophole that online has, in many cases, been leveraging against your local businesses for quite a while now.

And BTW, the state still has to figure out you spent the money in order to know there was supposed to be a tax....but that gap is surely getting smaller and smaller too.

The fact is that the state governments are, and have been, broke...and taxes are required to make The System go. Citizens generally have to pay sales taxes

You might find some interesting things on here:
Sales taxes in the United States

Yea, that's terrible. It defeats the purpose of shopping online.

Well said. Online has very little real advantage if they're on a level playing field with the LFS's. Which shouldn't be a total surprise if you think about it: A) They aren't magicians and B) the people actually making the products still expect to maintain pricing levels AND to make money.

 

[tigé21v]

I've used every one of the vendors mentioned so far, with the exception of SaltwaterAquarium. I've never had a bad experience with any of them.
My go-to is Premium Aquatics. Although I'm two states away, if I order sometime before 1:00pm, my order is sitting by my front door by 10:30am the following day. (Talk about an enabler...:))
I have over the years gone through my LFS for dry goods, admittedly more so in the past than now. I would much rather see the profits of my money (or at least part of it) stay in the community. A LFS only has so much shelf space. They can only offer a very, very small fraction of the overwhelming dry goods available to us. If it was something not immediately needed, I had no problem letting them "special order" the item. But there always seemed to be a "delay", and an excuse that went with it. It was very frustrating waiting two weeks or more for an item I could have had delivered to me in half that time, even if coming from either coast. I find myself just plopping down in front of the computer and hitting the "Submit Order" any more.

 

[mcarroll]

It was very frustrating waiting two weeks or more for an item I could have had delivered to me in half that time, even if coming from either coast. I find myself just plopping down in front of the computer and hitting the "Submit Order" any more.

I know what you mean. Our collective laziness is more effective than any advertisement or sale the online guys could run. ;)

 

[mcarroll]

Going completely off topic with this one and then we'll have to leave this alone or take it to PM. :)

mcarroll, Need your input :)

How about this. We kill Fed income tax as we know it.

We go to National Fed sales tax.

If you buy a Yugo, You pay that Fed Sales tax.
If you buy a Ferrai, You pay that Fed Sales tax.

There is no magic bullet for taxes....

Sales taxes, for example, are inherently regressive unless modified with loopholes and exceptions, much like the current income tax system.

Nobody likes to pay taxes and everyone with enough time to worry about it thinks they pay too much taxes no matter how much they make in income.

But at the same time in the same breath, everyone wants to send their kids to school and drive on good roads that are protected by good municipal services. The poor simply can't pay and the middle class can't afford the lawyers to game the system like the big dogs do.

I have no faith that a switch to another system would end with a dramatically different result since the players and their interests would be the same.

(It might be noteworthy that prior to WWII the income tax was apparently only paid by the very wealthy. That's a rollback I could get behind as it would be a game-changer, but unfortunately, on the 1 to 10 scale of realism this scores a 1.)

 

[jeffrey holloway]

BRS is my go to. Love there support and points on each purchase. Got a lot of stuff from points that I built up. But I shop all over the Web. Always looking for the best price, makes the Old Lady happy when I save a dollar. lol!

 

[helldiver]

Oh wow... I've had nothing but great experiences with BRS. Do you mind if I ask what you ordered?

Wow reply brs is great to me
Marine Depot is garbage to me had bad experinces from Marine Deppr will never buy from the again on 2 seperate occasions sent me defective items and would not warranty them

 

[helldiver]

BRS is my go to. Love there support and points on each purchase. Got a lot of stuff from points that I built up. But I shop all over the Web. Always looking for the best price, makes the Old Lady happy when I save a dollar. lol!

They also to only sell good products that they have tested