NationalAllergy

Another favorite website of mine: I love websites that are straight-forward, they do what they say they will do, without me having to "think" too much! Kudos to National Allergy for being one of those "good, simiple, and straightforward" websites!

If you don't have any issues with your order (i.e. Need to change your order after placing, need to return something etc.) I'm sure they're great. My original order was processed, shipped and received pretty quickly.

I'm surprised by all the great reviews about customer support however, since I've found that many order processes require mandatory interaction with them, and this has been routinely frustrating. They have been very responsive (i.e. They will respond to an email or answer the phone), but I was disappointed by what seems to be a general inability to assist with logistics that interact with their own systems. Consider the following examples.

Within an hour or two of placing my original order I realized I needed to alter it and tried contacting customer service. I was told that because of their order process, there is no way for customer support to alter the order, and that they could only cancel it. I asked about cancelling the order then. They told me they were unsure if they could cancel the order entirely because requests for the items had already been sent to the warehouse (which seems to operate independently of support). At this point I was a little uncertain as to what "support" actually meant in this context, since they seem to be unable to do anything regarding their own systems.

Well, what about returning the items?
The best I could hope for after placing the order was to return what I didn't want, the representative (actually the manager of CS it seems in retrospect) told me, and I would have to pay for return shipping. So, because they can't interact with their own order systems, I'm stuck returning and paying for shipping on the order items.

Fast forward a couple months, and now I am trying to return the items. This again feels like a process from the 1990s, but maybe I've just been spoiled by Amazon's instant return process. To return an item you have to call customer support so that a representative can fill out a return request authorization and give you a return order number. Once you do that you have to print the forwarded return authorizations and include them in the package to be returned.

My initial return went through without too much difficulty in terms of reaching customer support, but shortly thereafter another item wasn't what I had hoped for, so I'm now going through the process again. I called customer support and the agent tells me they cannot process the return, as the request must be elevated to another support agent, who must call me back to put in the return. *Update* I never heard back from them and had to initiate more email conversations.

At this point I regret placing my initial order and having to go through the store's order and return process. I have rated 3 stars for the initial transaction and fast receipt of items, but everything else I've found very frustrating.

With regard to customer support, my review is mostly concerned with the online store's operating processes and what support may or may not help with (which isn't very transparent, though it seems likely the support team is very restricted by antiquated order systems and logistics management). This has turned me off to shopping with them again, since hassle-free orders and returns are such a critical component of the online shopping experience (as any great online retailer is well aware of).