Oriental Trading Company

Full review
I get the Oriental Trading Catalog, but for the first time I decided to order online at www.orientaltrading.com. They had a Halloween costume that my oldest liked, and I got it, and I went ahead and ordered Christmas presents for both of my children’s classrooms.

Oriental Trading has a wide variety of trinkets for any holiday imaginable, Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentines, Easter, Hanukkah, and others. They have pencils, pens, yo-yos, cups, straws, candy, and any other trinket imaginable. Last year I ordered by mail, and I got the classrooms little cups shaped like Christmas characters- snowmen, Santa, reindeer, and penguins. This year I got little rubber ducks that were snowmen, reindeer, and so forth. I paid $5.99 per dozen for the ducks, and I bought 3 dozen, and it was $17 something, along with the $29 Halloween costume. Just on a related note, Oriental Trading does participate in the Ebates program, so you can get a percentage of your purchase price back.

Not only do they carry trinkets, but they also carry party supplies, such as tablecloths, streamers, and lots of themed items like luaus, sports, discos, and others. I haven’t tried their party supplies, so I can’t tell you much about them.

The site is easy to navigate, and is broken down really well. I just used the search function and typed in rubber ducks, to which I got all the rubber ducks they had available. I just browsed through the Halloween costume section to find what I was looking for.

It was easy to checkout as well, they accept all major credit cards, and things are shipped out via FedEx. I paid $8.95 for shipping my order, which is a little pricey, compared to others out there. But, the order came really fast, after I placed my order, I got a confirmation email, then 2 days later I got an email it had shipped, and then two days after that the order was at my doorstep.

But, I did have a problem with my order- the Halloween costume was entirely too big to fit my child. In order to make a return, you had to call their 1-800 number to set it up. At first, the lady said that Halloween costumes were not returnable, and then she asked me why I needed to return it. I told her that when I took the costume out of the package, I could tell it was going to be way too big for my kid. She said she would let me go ahead and return it, but I had to pay the shipping charges to send it back. I mailed it back via USPS, and it cost me $6 that I would not be getting back once it was returned, but I would get back the purchase price of the costume.

Well, I thought that was a little bit of a rip off, I mean I had already paid $8 something to get it to me, I thought that they would be like most companies and sent a postage paid return label with the bill so if you needed to send something back. But, lesson learned, I won’t be buying Halloween costumes with them again.

But, then there was my order of the rubber ducks, they are really cute. You can really find some interesting presents to give kids using this catalog. I always try to buy something useful for kids for Christmas, like a cup, or in this case at least they will have something to play with in the tub. These are not full sized rubber ducks; they are probably about 2 inches long. You can really get some good deals if you need to buy in large quantities.

Overall, I would recommend this online store for the most part, though I am a little irritated about the whole Halloween costume thing, but at least they did let me send it back. But, I would be sure to do all of your ordering from here at one time to save on shipping charges. If you need to buy in large amounts, this is a great place, because usually you can order by the dozen, or sometimes by the gross.