Placed a pre-order with this site recently. Thought I had snagged a pretty good price and even got free USPS Supersaver shipping included. All went well until my order came into stock and was shipped. Rather then shipping with the advertised USPS Supersaver shipping it was sent out with FedEx Smartpost. I understand Entertainment Earth wanting to save a few more dollars and assuming the two services are the same. They are not. I was annoyed, but it is what it is. My package was shipped on the 26th of July with a scheduled delivery of August 3rd. It did not arrive on the 3rd and instead was marked with an alert by FedEx. Upon reaching out to FedEx directly I was asked to contact my shipper (Entertainment Earth) to address the alert being that it is a Smartpost shipment and the local post office is the listed receiver for the package. I reached out to Entertainemt Earth and spoke with Erickson in their CS department. I was informed the package is still within it's 10 business day delivery window. If there is still an alert on August 9th I can reach out again and they will then look into it. What can be said for a company that unilattiraly decides to change the advertised shipping method, refuses to act on issues that are brought to their attention due to that shipping method, and then asks their customer to continue monitoring the issue and to keep them updated on it. I am not sure what this has to be stated for an e-commerce company but when it comes to anything related to the shipping process even if it is out of your hands, you're still going to be responsible for the product. The seller will always be responsible for the package containing their product until it gets to the purchaser. This means that as an e-commerce seller, you are responsible for the package until it is officially delivered– even though the package is no longer in your possession. You were informed of an issue, it is now your responsibility to address it within the stated delivery timeframe. It is my responsibility to contact my bank and file an item not recived dispute if you are unable to deliver the item or address in a timely fashion an issue in the shipping of the item once it is presented.

I was about to click to place my order. After reading your reviews, I deleted the order. I won't be doing business with you, until you tighten things up, put a firm moral clamp down on your fairness with customers philosophy as pertains WHAT PEOPLE PAID FOR SHIPPING, HOW SHIPPED, only to have you go in APART FROM THE CONSENT OF HUMAN CUSTOMERS PAYING YOUR PAYCHECK, and you recharge their credit card with outrageous shipping fees, yet, as I can tell, you do not get merchandise shipped in a timely manner! Therefore, I am AFRAID, as a potential customer, to choose you as my outlet. You have such great potential. Learn from Amazon a few things about the moral principles that really keep a business going by building a fantastic reputation of trust, promptness, etc. You guys are smarter than this. Either change, or the ground below you will begin to quake, and your business may not go down right away, but your reputation will one day catch up with you and end up shrinking you--possibly to nothing? Change is painful. Yet, if you really want to be a lucrative long term business with an excellent reputation, doing it by literally "tricking" ordinary hard working citizens out of money through your current schemata of believing you'll make the best profit if you play about with the shipping--to include the very rude, horrifying punch to the solar plexus of shipping, say, 100 small purchased items individually, even though they are all going to the same human being and their business address. That is a shrewd way to make a huge profit, yet is that real business? No. That is as near to "scamming" as there gets. Being "known" as a company who scams people out of money through non consensual shipping methods, horrifyingly rude shipping methods, and packing methods that have a large percentage of reviews furious over everything ordered from you arriving broken, then having to go through planets aligning to do a return PLUS, turning around and charging your loyal paycheck contributers 15% return fee FOR YOUR SLIP-SHOD PACKING ERRORS? Hint: when you hear the same few complaints again and again, FIX THEM! PLEASE. I would like to one day be able to shop here. Till then, happy trails, Entertainment Earth! I hope you come to your moral senses, because you have a really good thing going. So good, it is literally pons asinorum for you to "cheat," period! These errors of yours aren't Einstein Science. They are easy to fix, yet--painful, because being principled and learning to live by moral values is about as hard as nails as it gets. Yet, it is precisely how you BECOME who you are and how your business reputation is built.

Absolute nightmare is exactly how I would describe dealing with this company. I really don't know where to start.

They're extremely unreliable. No matter what you order or when you order, it's a crap shoot whether you'll receive it or not. They love to bait and switch. Items will show as in stock, until hours after you order, when they suddenly are delayed for a few more months. Now you're on the hook unless you want to pay their cancellation fee. Oh, they try to play this off as "it's just how the industry works" but that's just an excuse to handwave away their own carelessness.

After you've ordered, you never hear from them. They will not pick up the telephone or respond to e-mails. When items finally come in stock, they like to take small orders and divide them into multiple shipments to rake in additional fees. I've had orders as small as eight units shipped in two shipments, days or even hours apart. They will not answer questions about why this has happened.

Sometimes, when an item presells out and becomes "hot" before delivery, they'll secretly try to charge you a higher price than what was agreed to. You really have to watch them. When they offered a $100 discount for their 20th anniversary, they made every effort to cheat me out of it. They also will not tell you what size a real case is, which exacerbates the partial shipment problem. They also will not estimate shipping charges on large items, referring you to FedEx, making those a very risky gamble. This is especially true of Titan Class TransFormers (bases), which go on sale for 40% off with free shipping before winding up 70% off at Ollies.

They have this great system where one declined charge silently dumps all outstanding orders onto a single card on file. The same system also garbles your information if, God forbid, you sign up with a similar name and address to buy toys they're undercutting you on from their retail operations.

When they drag their feet such that six months of preorders "somehow" show up the very same day (always always always a weekend when you're out of town for a show), they make one huge charge to save the 29c fixed portion on the individual orders. At that point, half a dozen of those same unreachable representatives descend upon you with "urgent" spam that within hours turns threatening. They got me for $400 in fees on one such incident while I was in Ohio at a funeral for my uncle because they wouldn't make two separate charges on two separate cards as the original order was placed.

The last order I made was Force Friday one year. Three different agents called or e-mailed me with four or five different stories of what was to be offered, absolutely none of them right. I had to go to a toy forum to find out what was really coming. Shortly after that, they shorted me on several preorders, even though I miraculously managed pay out nearly $2000 over a weekend for surprise appearances. I had finally had enough, so I revoked my cards, closed my account, and informed my bank to block any future charges.

Or so I thought. For five months afterward, they kept making charges for products they never delivered. Some of those products, they pulled the same tricks on, trying to ship half a case one day and half a case the next. They knew they were unauthorized but kept slipping different amounts past the bank in order to evade the blocks. They would not respond to the bank's attempts to contact either. Then, one day, they locked out my account (or accounts, I never did figure out if my retail account was really a separate account)... but kept sending me catalog e-mails and sale advertisements for months afterward.

I do not recommend ordering from their retail side either. For starters, if they can throw somebody ordering thousands of dollars under the bus like this, I don't see how a customer ordering a little here and there could hope to expect reasonable treatment. Another issue is that their "mint condition guarantee" is anything but. It's full of weasel words to explain away why it's alright for them to send you a dinged box. Finally, they frequently oversell and their lack of communication means that you will be left high and dry when they get around to notifying you.

I've been doing business with them for awhile now and will continue to do so. They have areas that make them superior to some companies but; also could stand some improvement, in my opinion from a business ownership point.

Complaints that shouldn't be on this page:
Pre-Order complaints. At least not on the wholesale side. This is "JUST THE TOY INDUSTRY". If you want to make money as a retailer you either need geography (superlative location) or you need unique selection (meaning you need to pre-order). That's not an EE issue its an industry where tastes and fads change quickly. It's your responsibility as a retailer to gauge the broader market as well as your own market. Real simple, most of the time anything "in stock" in the toy business the margins are very weak 5-10% is about the best you can hope for after shipping and that's on a good day. Pre-Orders well sky's the limit but reasonably you can turn 30% (or more) on well selected products even accounting for transportation, returns etc.

Strengths:
Selection and Industry knowledge- Just about anything you could possibly want toy wise they have. They also have very deep industry knowledge. Whatever you want to specialize in they have enough to make it worth your while.

Pricing Tiers- I've heard from multiple competitors (EE has pissed me off numerous times causing me to look), on pricing and tier based discounts. The order quantity for top tier pricing (common in toy business) is slightly lower than their competitors which makes a huge difference. You don't want to be stuck with products that outlive their demand curve. Selling 24-32 units of a toy is one thing, trying to sell 72 units (where most of their competitors set top tier) is much harder. Sure some of those products will sell through but more variety breeds more sales.

Major Accounts Staff - They've got 2 people that handle major accounts Bianca and Chris. These guys are worth their weight in gold to EE, I have no idea if they are properly appreciated by senior management. Everytime I've been pissed off so badly by other aspects (below) that I've considered taking my purchases elsewhere the thought of losing their buinsess related intelligence gives me serious pause. They have deep industry knowledge that pays off. One of our top sellers in Christmas time (Toy business best time of year) was something Bianca practically broke my arm to order. It was the ugliest doll I thought I had ever seen and I didn't know the brand. It was on my shelf for exactly 3 days before we totally sold out. I could probably do an entire review of the quality and value I get from having a dedicated rep but you might not want to read all of it.

Cons:
Shipping: Oh boy! This is transparent as mud and as predictable as an earthquake. This area, structurally, needs a major improvement. I don't believe its an employee problem or a division manager level problem - it's structural - which indicates an ownership problem. It is nearly impossible to tell when an order will be prepared and then shipped. Arranging shipping times is a complete exercise in managed chaos on exactly the point of their business that shouldn't be chaos. The lack of predictability on when an order will be consolidated and shipped causes huge negative business impacts. Sometimes an order will be prepared in 2 days before being shipped - sometimes it's 14 days. That's after the order is consolidated and "released" for shipping.

From my point of view (transparent as mud again) the issue is logistically managing both inbound and outbound orders from the same area. IF they get in a large shipment while your order is pending packing, your order goes to the side and ships later. However, there is no actual way to know that from the client side because you don't see inbound from Habsro or Mattell. That's a problem they do not seem to have access to (or inclination for) surge labor support. That's pretty baffling to me as it's best practice on warehouse management, Home Depot's distro centers do it, Walmart, etc. I know because I've visited those warehouses they have some capacity to surge support relatively cheaply in order to ensure product flows on time.

Quick Irony on shipping: For a totally different business I needed to move 4 rail mount. 50 caliber fully automatic machine guns from San Diego to Virginia. At the same time I had a $6,000 toy shipment. Even including all the ATF paperwork, disclosures, handling instructions... 4 machine guns where less expensive to ship, arrived faster, and were much easier to coordinate.

Claims: Seriously foam padding. They cost. 20 -. 25 cents a piece, invest in 4 per shipment. There is always some level of damage from ratchet straps when they LTL wholesale ship. It's at the 4 points of contact for the tightest ratchet strap in shipping. Claims department is like any claims department they deny almost automatically regardless of damage and its not well tracked. You have to stay on top of them and its an ugly process. Considering I end up filling claims on less than 1/2 of 1% of each shipment its not huge money but it's money I shouldn't have to cover and the time invested in following up is the real value suck but I'm not just leaving that money on the table.

Great selection, good prices and fast service!