Better Than Free Shipping

What's better than free shipping you may ask? How about better prices - even with shipping, excellent service, free gift wrap if you need it, and the best selection of high quality chess products in the world. This alone adds up to a lot better than free shipping but the list doesn't stop here. We don't drop ship from distributors like many of our competitors do. We know our products inside and out and because it's in our warehouse and not someone else's, we can promise that your order will ship next day or even same day if you place your order by 8am Pacific time. If you have a special situation and need an order shipped today, just give us a call and we'll do everything humanly possible make that happen. And we can almost always make it happen.

We've spend thousands of dollars to make your online shopping experience enjoyable and efficient. We do almost all of our own photography. Whether you're looking for a certain type of chess set, just pieces or just a board, a particular size or you have a budget to stay in, we make it easy to narrow down your search and find what you're looking for. If you can't find what you're looking for or have a question, call us toll free and we'll help you out.

We're not perfect but we try to be. From time to time we'll miss something or perhaps even ship the wrong chess set. It happens. But when it happens, we'll make it right as quickly as possible and no one feels worse than us when we make a mistake. When we make a mistake, we pay for it, our customers don't.

Sorry to say, but there's no such thing as free shipping - that we know of anyway. Whether it's FedEx, DHL, or UPS, they all charge for shipping. The free shipping you see advertised is nothing more than a marketing ploy to catch your eye. All that free shipping really means is that you don't have a separate line item cost for shipping on your sales receipt. These stores are simply adding the shipping cost to the price of their products. Most people have this figured out, but not everyone.

Here is a real life example we took from one of our competitors web site today. They offer free shipping on everything. Their price on the Ivan II chess computer from Excalibur Electronics in $119.99. The Chess Store price is $79.95 - and this is our regular, everyday price. Shipping on this chess computer will run around $10.00 plus or minus a couple of bucks depending on the zip code. So with shipping our price is about $89.95 or $30.00 less than our competitor that's offering free shipping. Not such a great deal after all, is it? And we can find free shipping scams like this by the hundreds. But to be fair, from time to time you will find a legitimate good deal with free shipping.

Many retailers and many of our competitors on the internet have never even seen the product they're selling. In fact, they couldn't tell you a thing about it other than what their web site says. That's because they don't own it and they don't have it. All they have is a picture and it's probably not even theirs. There are big advantages to retailers that do this, but there's absolutely no advantage to the consumer. If you're a retailer that drop ships, you don't carry inventory and don't need warehouse space. And no one to package your order either. All you need is a computer.

That's not the way we do business and never will. Every product we sell is on our shelf. We've seen it, touched it, and know it inside and out. Because our products are in our warehouse we can answer any question for you and can guarantee your order will ship either same day or next business day. The advantages don't stop here. Take our wood chess sets for example. We inspect every chess piece of every chess set before it ships out our door. It must pass our inspection and meet our standards. We doubt that happens when your order ships from some third party. And we have very precise packaging standards to make sure your order arrives safely. We don't just throw it in a box and cross our fingers. It's our reputation on the line so we care - a lot!

We know for a fact this makes a big difference in a customer's shopping experience. That's why we won't drop ship. We've heard the horror stories. If you're not sure if an online store you're considering drop ships or not, pick up the phone and ask them. If you see messages on a product description that says something like; "normally ships within 3 business days", they either drop ship or they're real slow.

To be fair, there's probably some retailers and distributors that do a decent job working together for the customer. But it's a dicey proposition. We've evaluated retailers that drop ship and the results aren't good.