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I've had generally good service from OPT, especially with ordering products which were in stock at the time, and while I will continue to deal with them for personal purchases, they do have one stumbling block which keeps me from blindly recommending them to others, and that is their ordering system. What follows is not a bash, but a critique to help others work around the issues that I have encountered.
OPT does not have good transparency in their ordering system. It can be a challenge to find out from them when they anticipate a back-ordered product to be in stock. I've got one order that is over 2 months along now, with no updates issued since it was a week or so on, when they said it would be in stock in about 2 weeks. I can understand issues with them getting bad dates from their supplier, but updates to the order status definitely wouldn't be unwelcome. I've had a similar experience with order status from lots of astro shops selling online, so OPT are definitely are not alone here.
Additionally, changes made to an order by their sales team will not be reflected in the online order status pages, so you can not confirm that they have actually made the change to the order without confirming it with their sales staff. I suspect that this is an integration issue between their online and offline ordering systems.
A related problem I had was with an order that was delayed in shipping due to a part being on back-order. I cancelled a set of tube rings from the order, and they acknowledged the cancellation. When the order shipped two months later, the rings were included and I had indeed been billed for them. I'm sure this comes from what I said above, where their system does not handle order changes well. Whoever filled the order probably didn't see whatever note was attached by the sales person, and filled the original request instead. Anyone need some Vixen R200SS rings?
Regards,
Eric
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