I figured I might as well share my story about Kelly as well.
I just started my first hive.
I ordered a complete hive, tools and bees from Kelly back in at the beginning of February. The hive and tools were supposed to ship within a few days of my order, however, the end of March came and nothing had been shipped yet.
I called Kelly and after waiting on hold for over 45 minutes, I was told that they were behind in shipments because the winter was so bad and that my hive and tools will ship in a few days. A few days pass and I still have no package. I call Kelly again and after waiting another 45 minutes they tell me that the smoker I wanted is out of stock and I need to pick another one. I choose another smoker and I am told that the order is going to ship the next day.
A week goes by and still nothing. I call Kelly yet again and this time I am told that the smoker, gloves, hive tool and four or five other items I ordered are all out of stock. After spending a half hour picking replacement items, Kelly tells me that the order will ship later that day or at the latest, the next day. The next day comes and I get a call from Kelly regarding my order. Evidently the woman I spoke to the day before never saved my selection of replacement items and I had to go over everything again. I hang up the phone and get a call three hours later from someone else at Kelly. Again they forgot to save my selection of replacement items and I had to go over things a third time!
It is now two weeks from the when the bees are supposed to be shipped and I finally get my hive and tools shipped to me. I open the package and the screened bottom board and several other parts are snapped and broken. Additionally they sent me the wrong size frames and I am missing several items. I call for replacements and they tell me that I need to send them photos before they will send me replacements. I send them photos and express my frustration and disappointment with their customer service. They agree to ship me replacements but never apologize or even acknowledge my frustration.
The replacements come in and the frames are still the wrong size! Additionally they send me the wrong replacement hive tool. I call them again and they ship me a second replacement. This set of frames is finally the right size so I am able to finish putting the hive together.
The bees are supposed to be here the first week of May. The day comes and goes and no I have no bees. I call them up and they tell me there is a delay with the shipment. A few days and several calls later, I get my shipment. The queen should have been marked blue but the apiary they were using messed up and marked all the queens white.
My queen ended up dying so I ordered a replacement queen within the day I noticed she was gone. I paid to have it expressed to me so I should have had it that week but the day came and went. I call them up and I am told that the queen didn't ship because they were out of stock (it would have been nice to have told me that before I ordered a new queen). I am told it will take a few more days. I wait again and when it does not arrive I call them and the representative at Kelly claims that the queen was shipped but was returned to them for some reason. She went on to tell me that she was "surprised that the queen was even alive when she got it" and that she expected it to have died on the way to me. One of Kelly?s managers said she would personally drive to the post office that day to express a new queen to me but I later get a call that she couldn't because by the time she went to mail it, the post office was closed. I finally got my new queen over two weeks after I ordered it.
This is the first and last time I do business with Kelly.
