Terry's Village

Full review
The prior owners of our home were really, really into shop-at-home catalogs. Now that we live here, many of them go straight into the recycle bin, however one of the few catalogs that I actually enjoy browsing through is the Terry's Village catalog. They offer a variety of home decorating knick-knacks that look cute at very affordable prices. I received a "Christmas in July" type catalog that was full of adorable items, and decided to go ahead and order some super-early Christmas gifts for family members (and a few choice items for my own home too).

What is TerrysVillage.com?

www.terrysvillage.com has been a catalog-sales company since 1994, and is an offshoot of Oriental Trading Company, which has been in business since 1932! They feature decorative items for the home, although what I like best are their holiday-themed items.

The Webpage:

Terry's Village offers a fairly typical shopping-cart web site. I found the layout to be quite intuitive and attractive.

The front page has tabs across the top that break the items down by "Theme", "For the Home", "Holidays", and "Sale" items. Each major category has further sub-categories that are also displayed along the top just under the tabs. For example, under "Themes" the sub-categories are: Americana, Autumn & Winter, Country Farm, Faith & Inspiration, Family & Friends, Lodge, Spring & Summer, and More Themes. Top Sellers for each category are also listed, along with some example images and groupings from the category.

When you select a sub-category or search on keywords, you are presented with summary screens that display 9 items with thumbnail images and prices, along with links to additional pages. Clicking on a thumbnail takes you to a detail page for that item. The detail pages include a larger picture, a more detailed description (usually including measurements), and the price.

You can search by keywords or by the item numbers from the catalog. There is an additional "Catalog Quick Order" feature where you can list the catalog numbers and quantities desired all on one page (for super-quick online ordering).

Ordering/Shipping:

As I mentioned above, the site is a fairly typical shopping cart site (although they call it a "Shopping Bag"). I was initially thrown by the "Shopping Bag" link because it listed items I had NOT ordered at the top of the resulting page - however that was just further advertising and your "real" shopping cart items are just a short scroll down.

You can choose whether or not to create an account with Terry's Village as your check out (more on that below). After entering the typical information (name, address, etc) you must enter your payment information. Online they accept credit cards only (MasterCard, Visa, American Express, or Discover/Novus), however additional payment options are available for orders placed by mail, fax, or phone.

You have 3 shipping options - Standard (7-10 business days), Express (3-5 business days), and (faster) Express (2-3 business days). The shipping fees are based on your merchandise total, with the jumps occurring at $25 intervals (for example, standard shipping for an order under $25 is $6.95). A full list of the shipping fees are available on the Help/FAQ link on the site.

They also offer a couple of nice features - calculators to show you estimated delivery date (if ordered today) and best ship method (for if you need your items by a specific date).

You will receive an order confirmation e-mail shortly after placing your order. You will also receive a shipping confirmation e-mail when your order is shipped.

Additional Information:

Coupon codes are frequently available, as are special deals from the catalogs themselves.

You can checkout without creating an account. Membership benefits include online order tracking, faster checkout (because your personal information is stored), an optional calendar and personal reminder service, and e-mail notification of special promotions and news.

I was not charged sales tax, however unlike many online stores I did not find wording that lists in which states sales tax is charged. Oriental Trading Company is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, so I'm guessing that orders shipped to Nebraska would be charged tax.

One thing I'm not wild about (but a lot of sites do it), is that when you get an account they'll start sending you e-mails of sales and specials and whatnot. I don't like my inbox being full of advertisements all the time, and these days many sites let you choose your e-mail preferences when you sign up. Not Terry's Village -- you have to go to their customer support and click the "opt-out" link to stop getting their propaganda e-mails. That being said, their advertisements are somewhat infrequent (unlike some other sites) and aren't as big of a bother as I had feared.

I had no trouble with my order, so I never needed to contact Customer Service. The web site states that if you are not satisfied with your items you can initiate an exchange or credit by e-mail, online form, or by contacting their customer service department via telephone.

Our Experiences:

I've got enough clutter in my house so I usually am not interested in further knick-knacks, but some of the Christmas stuff from the latest Terry's Village catalog was just too cute to resist. My mother and mother-in-law are also both suckers for cute Christmas stuff, so I purchased a few items for them as well.

Although I was satisfied with the site overall, I did find some glaring inaccuracies. Every item I ordered (and I ordered 6 different things) had an incorrect price listed on the "search results" screen (after I entered the item numbers or searched on keywords from the catalog). In fact, on each search results page the price listed was cheaper than the price listed when I went to the detail page for each item (most items were off by $1, although a couple of them were off by $2). Seeing a price that is cheaper than what you actually are getting the item for doesn't tend to make one feel very good about the purchase. I should mention that the prices listed on the detail pages matched the prices listed in the catalog - but it did make me wonder if the prices had gone up recently and they were just behind in updating the site. I checked back today and found that now the prices on the search pages match the prices on the detail pages, so apparently the problem has been fixed.

I am not a big Internet Explorer fan, so I tend to use Netscape or Mozilla when web surfing. The Terry's Village site worked okay, however the text (particularly on the page that confirms that you've added an item to your cart) did not line up properly on my preferred browsers. I did check it in Explorer and it looked fine. The problem didn't keep me from placing my order in Netscape, it just looked unattractive. Also in the "programming sloppiness" category, the same page with the misaligned text would also change the window/tab name from "Terry's Village" to "Oriental Trading Company".

Now that my minor gripes are out of the way, I must admit that I'm very pleased with the items themselves and the speed of shipping. I placed my order on a Wednesday, and received free standard shipping due to a catalog special offer. I received my order a mere 3 days later on Saturday morning via Fed Ex. I was very surprised and impressed. The items were very well packaged too. I could not be more pleased with everything I received. Oriental Trading Company offers great deals but I always worry about the cheapness factor -- the items I ordered from Terry's Village put that worry from my mind. Even though none of the items were expensive (the most I paid for one item was $14.95 - the rest ranged from $5.95 to $7.95) everything was adorable and well-made. I really couldn't be happier!

Final Thoughts:

If you're in need of some home accents or decorative items, I highly recommend Terry's Village as a place that offers cute stuff at very inexpensive prices. I was all ready to give them 3 stars due to some sloppiness and mismatched pricing on the web site, but I was so impressed with the super fast (free) shipping and the quality of the items that I really had to give them an additional star to make up for it.