Uncommon goods.com

Full review
I received $100 in gift certificates to Uncommon Goods for participating at gather.com. Living in Sweden, I was a bit leery about ordering from this US-based company but they had a ton of way-cool things so I decided to give it a go. I am so very glad that I did.

Uncommon Goods is just what the name implies. They offer a ton of unusual items at affordable prices. The website is not gaudy or hard on my eyes at all, and it is extremely easy to navigate and find just what you want. What I wanted was something for my husband as a just because kind of gift. I found the perfect item.

I would have loved to have gotten some really fun items for the kitchen or the garden, but I settled on a pen and a business card case for him. He is the US supervisor for the company that takes care of the cruise ship gangways in the US, so he deals with blueprints a lot. These items both had a blue print pattern so they were just the perfect gift. The total for both came to $77. Reasonable for good quality items.

Adding these to the shopping cart was easy. The problem came up in that there form is not really yet set up for International ordering, although they will ship anywhere. The form requires things in the address that do not occur in other countries. For example, I do not have a state in Sweden, and the phone number does not comply with the usual number of digits that occur in the US.

So, I could see they offered rates fro shipping to Sweden. I knew this could be done. I shot an email query off to Uncommon Goods and received a prompt reply. I went back into the form and tried the suggestions. Still no dice.

To make a long story short, I ended up snail-mailing the gift certificates to them along with a hand-written order. Through all the emails back and forth the Customer Service people were just top-notch. This was more hassle for me than I will usually endure, but those CS people were so incredibly nice and helpful I pursued the order.

The shipping to me turned out to be a pretty outrageous $22 for very light items, but what can I say... I really wanted those for him. Shipping within the US is way more reasonably priced.

They emailed me when they received my gift certs, and the items arrived within 2 weeks. I was very pleased with the quality of the items themselves and with the packaging. I was not pleased with the tax that Swedish Customs tacked on for me to pick up the package, but that is not the fault of Uncommon Goods in any way.

Will I order from them again? Not from home I won't, but not because of Uncommon Goods at all. I will for future gifts that are going to US residents, though. I love that website, the items they offer, their pricing, and their employees. I am giving them 5 full stars and highly recommending them to everyone who lives within the US. Seriously... go check them out. They rawk hard.