be careful when ordering yeast culturing eq. from cynmar

You will be charged extra shipping if you order agar plates, and their site has no inventory control to show if an item is in or out of stock.

I placed an order from cynmar.com recently for agar plates and a few other things. It took them an extra week to ship, because they were out of an item that never showed as out-of-stock on the site. I finally got tired of waiting and had them cancel the one out-of-stock item and just ship the rest immediately.

The plates came the very next day, marked "refrigerate on delivery". I was surprised, because I didn't ask for overnight delivery. It also would have been nice to know that they would need to be refrigerated so I could plan to be home to receive them. The rest of the order was shipped separately, and isn't due till a few days from now.

Today I got the invoices in the mail from them, with an extra $20.56 charge for shipping on the $10.25 agar plates! I didn't remember any indication of extra charges for any items in the confirmation when I placed the order.

On further investigation, there is this notice in the "shipping and returns" page of their site:

Chemicals, preserved specimens, and some media and furniture orders are shipped direct from the factory and are shipped separately from any other items ordered from Cynmar®. Additional shipping charges may apply, and will NOT appear on your order confirmation! (Note: As of January 2005, we no longer sell chemicals to individuals.) Chemicals with the "H" notation are considered hazardous and a $13.00 fee may be added to shipping by the carrier. Businesses ordering hazardous chemicals must provide FEIN Number.

Internet orders placed between November and June will be shipped within three business days, as long as the items you ordered are in stock. During our busy season, July through October, orders placed on the internet may have an in-stock wait time of seven to ten business days. You will be notified if items are not in stock and when the order has shipped.

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I ordered all my culturing stuff from Morebeer. They have everything you could possibly need. Thats to bad....

Seems like a disclaimer that they might want to make more visible.

Sorry to hear of your misfortune.

This line...
"Additional shipping charges may apply, and will NOT appear on your order confirmation!"
scares me enough to stay away from them.

Memorex88 said:

Sorry to hear of your misfortune.

This line...
"Additional shipping charges may apply, and will NOT appear on your order confirmation!"
scares me enough to stay away from them.

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They probably don't put it on there because they don't know what the shipping cost will be until the manufacturer ships it. They should definitely at least TELL you before you confirm your order that you are going to be hit with extra shipping charges for something you are buying.

Companies that deal mainly with industrial and commercial customers usually don't worry too much about stuff like that because commercial customers don't care how much it costs to ship it, they just want it to arrive in good shape and fast.

Memorex88 said:

Sorry to hear of your misfortune.

This line...
"Additional shipping charges may apply, and will NOT appear on your order confirmation!"
scares me enough to stay away from them.

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Kind of a bummer, but a learning experience. It would be nice if they made it clearer in the process of ordering, but ultimately it was my fault for not reading the terms of the site.

Next time I'll read the shipping info more carefully (or at all), and hopefully everyone who reads this will benefit from my carelessness.

schlenkerla said:

I ordered all my culturing stuff from Morebeer. They have everything you could possibly need.

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Yep, except for when they don't. They have an awful inventory system that works like this:
- If you have 1 of the item, put item online
- Sell 2
- Remove item when the system indicates someone ordered one too many
- Tell 2nd customer "oops, we don't have what you ordered"

This is a well-known problem, even by morebeer's own admission in their reply to a complaint email I sent.

Also, even with the unexpected shipping charge, the plates are cheaper at Cynmar
$10.25/10 at cynmar versus $3.50/ea at morebeer (currently out of stock).
$10.25 + 20.56 = $30.81 / 10 = 3.08 ea at Cynmar

I guess I have been lucky. Come to think of it I only ordered once from them, but I ordered everything I needed all in one shot. I got one package and one shipping charge.

Unless its specially requested I think back orders should hold up an entire order so it can ship complete. At a bare minimum one should be asked about this if the back order will take awhile. Meaning are you willing to wait or ok with two shipping charges.

I ordered several books from Amazon and they asked me about my preference.

Regarding the plates, it's more cost effective to make your own. Agar agar is easily found at a health food store for considerably less than the commercial media, or you can use gelatin without worry.

hexmonkey said:

You will be charged extra shipping if you order agar plates, and their site has no inventory control to show if an item is in or out of stock.

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Sounds like a good excuse to pour your own plates.