Who to buy from? Company reviews

[criswell]

After a recent not so great experience with Scarletts Parrot Essentials I though it would be useful to have a thread where we can share our experiences of online shopping for our budgies. There are some companies we all know and love but there are some that might be best avoided, and others that people might not have heard of. It will also be useful for new forum members too.

Please also share any favourite brands that you have and where you buy them from.

My absolute favourite shop is The Natural Bird Product Company. Karen and Darran are wonderful and their products are the best around. Everything is really well packed and arrives in perfect condtion, with nothing missing. Postage is charged based on weight of the parcel and has always been very reasonable.

www.naturalbirdco.co.uk/ourshop/

Haith's has been a popular site for budgie seed and I've had good experiences buying from them and the seed is good quality with less bits of debris than I've had from other companies. I had one problem when they sent out one of their paper packs of seed with out any additional packaging and the bag was very grubby when it arrived so they sent me a replacement. However, they've stoped giving details of the seeds in their mixes, which isn't ideal. Postage is £3.95 and free on orders of £35 and above, and they dispatch quickly.

haiths.com/

I've placed many orders with Northern Parrots, including Harrison's pellets, nutriberries and toy making parts. They have a good selection of budgie items and I've had no problems with my orders, everything has been well packaged and the correct items were sent. Some products are a bit more expensive than elsewhere but postage is reasonable (£3.99) and is free for orders of £39 and over.

www.northernparrots.com/

Viovet doesn't have the biggest range of bird products but they are reasonably priced. I've bought Harrison's pellets, Johnston and Jeff budgie seed, iodine blocks, and the y shaped branch perches and ladders. They are sometimes a little slow to dispatch but delivery is £3.49 for up to 2kg and £5.49 above 2kg, and free for orders of £29 and over. All my orders have been well packaged and complete. On one occasion they couldn't supply an item but they let me know by email and didn't charge me for the item.

www.viovet.co.uk/

Garden Feathers is another company I've used from time to time. They sell CeDe eggfood at a good price and I've bought plain canary seed and y shaped branch perches from them. They sell Bird Care co products like guardian angel and calcivet. They are slightly more expensive than buying direct from The Bird care company but I had an overal saving when I bought some guardian angel from them as part of a bigger order as I didn't have to pay postage to Bird Care co too. They also sell 'best bird food ever spouting blends'. Their customer service is good and they let me know when some perches were actually out of stock and they gave me the option of waiting for stock to come in or refunding the price of the perches. All orders have been complete and well packaged. I did have one problem, when I brought a sprouting kit from them, and the grape seed extract was out of date. I didn't actually use the extract and I only realised they'd supplied an out of date product when  I was having a clear out a couple of years later. I'm positive they would have replaced it if I had told them it was out of date. Postage varies with weight but it's been £3.99 for my orders.

www.gardenfeathers.co.uk/

I'll leave my negative experience with Scarletts parrot essentials until later and I'm sure I have a couple more companies to include too.

Please share your experience with these companies and any others that you use. And I'll add some more of mine later on.

[Loz]

I've used Parrot Essentials. They were fine, service-wise but the amount of spam emails I received from them was off-putting. So I've migrated fully to Northern Parrots.

Natural Bird Product, Northern Parrots and Haiths are all great, I use them regularly.

For cages, I have no complaints about Little Pet Warehouse. Great service from them.

[criswell]

Good to know about cages from Little Pet Warehouse loz. I used to buy cages from Zooplus but they had very few bird cages the last time I looked. I was unsure who to buy from when I thought I might need a separate cage for Aster.

[Azalea]

I use ABirdToy.com for toy parts. They are located here in the USA, but ship internationally. I make most of our birds' toys now, except for a few all-time favorites.

[Marianne Marlow]

I agree with all of your suggestions criswell, they are all the same experiences I have had. I have also used zooplus for cages and other small things in the past, but they just do not seem to have the range hey used to.