5stardeal Experience

[Silencer]

Now that I have my complete order I can give a complete description of what has happened. This might be kinda long but I don't want to leave anything out. A little before xmas I ordered a 1000 chip texas holdem set from 5stardeal (links below). A few days later (the monday before xmas) UPS dropped off the two boxes. The edge of one box was pretty badly damaged but it didn't seem to be much worse than some of the other boxes UPS has dropped off so I didn't worry.

Picture: http://www.5stardeal.com/deals/10pictur ... 10-1090-1k
Set: http://www.5stardeal.com/deals/10Expand ... 10-1090-1k

I opened the first box which contained the 10 chip trays and 2 decks of cards. The chip trays they have are EXCELLENT and I was very impressed. I had 2 other kinds of chip trays (both of which were more expensive) and I thought they were nice but once I got the ones from 5stardeal I was blown away. The new ones are so much nicer and the acrylic/plastic is a lot thicker and more clear. They also have slightly rounded edges so it's smooth and with little cross supports on the under side they are really strong. The cards were also great. They were both from Harrahs Reno and were purple with nice faces designs and the best part is the purple cards matched my chip colors and soon-to-be-made-table. So far so good.

So now I open the smaller box with the chips, the box that had the damaged edge. When I opened the box a lot of the chips spilled out and weren't in rolls anymore. Some of the first chips that I picked up were severely damaged, as in peices of the plastic were completely cracked off and the metal insert was exposed. I did a quick inventory and realized that a few hundred were damaged and a few hundred more were missing altogether. I looked at the box again at the crushed and taped up edge and realised a lot of the plastic roll wrappers were actually taped into the side of the box. The box had been spilled open and then the chips gathered up and put back in and taped up really nice. We believe the problem was with UPS. The damage was significant enough that the box wasn't simply dropped, it got stuck in the conveyors or backed into by a truck (seriously).

So we called 5stardeal and the guy offered to send us the missing chips, thinking it was only a few. He seemed very suprised when we corrected him and said that it was about half the chips were missing or damaged. They seemed very nice and said they had to call UPS and that UPS would call us in order to file a damage claim. He said that normally it takes a few days but because of the holidays it would probably take a week or so. This seemed reasonably to us.

I am a patient person and with both xmas and new years holidays I waited 2 weeks. Having not received a call from UPS on Monday I called 5stardeal again and got some lady. I forgot to get her name. It was their closing time and I knew this so the lady said that the person we had originally talked to would call me by the end of the next day (Tuesday). I was happy with this and waited, but nobody called Tuesday which kinda upset me. So Wednesday I called back and talked to the guy we first contacted. I explained that we still hadn't heard anything from UPS and we talked a little. I explained to him that so far I believed it was UPS's fault (I did and still do) but that I was worried about doing the same thing again and waiting for UPS to call me. Basically I was worried that two weeks would turn into 4 and then 6 and so on. He understood and seemed pretty willing to help.

He told me that he would call UPS and see what was going on and then call me back. I asked how long it would take, kinda asking in a vague sort of way how many days it would take. He said he would call me back that day. We ended the conversation and sure enough, 20 minutes later he called me back. He talked to UPS and was having them fax the claim form directly to him. He would fill it out and send it back to UPS right away. Once UPS did their stuff and paid for the damage (which would take a few days) he would send out the replacements. The total amount of replacements needed was the dealer button (which was missing) plus 518 chips (out of 1000 I should have got). To avoid future problems I asked him to throw in 5-10 extra of each color that I ordered and also to throw in 1-2 of every color they had so that if I order more in the future I have a better idea on the colors (it's hard to tell online sometimes). He agreed and had no trouble with my requests and said that I should get the replacements at the end of the following week.

Thursday comes and nothing arrives, then Friday. Now I'm worried but I knew that the order probably didn't even get sent until Monday or Tuesday (because he said it would probably take UPS a few days to deal with the claim). Monday came and still nothing, so now I'm upset. It was too late to call them back as they were already closed so I had no choice to wait until Tuesday. So Tuesday (the 20th) I'm waiting to see if UPS will come or if I have to call them up and sure enough, UPS drops off a box.

It's a big box, heaver than expected for the replacements and definitely larger than the replacements would need. Open it up and they simply sent me a whole new set. It had 1000 chips in the colors I ordered, 10 trays, 2 decks of cards, and a dealer button. They didn't include the 1-2 of each color that I requested but considering that they sent a whole new set I don't mind too much. And that's what happened.

So what do I think about it?

Well I'm kinda disappointed that it took a whole month to resolve the situation but the first 2 weeks were holidays and I have to keep that in mind. As far as their service goes it seems about average. They agreed to everything I asked them to do, they just didn't offer as much up front as they could have. As far as the set itself goes it's great, at least now that I actually have a complete set (and then some). In total I have about 1400 good chips, 20 trays, 4 decks of cards and a dealer button. For me this actually worked out great because I had been planning to order 10 more trays from them and now I don't have to. So in the end this is what I think.

I still think 5stardeal is the best deal around. The only place you can get as good of a price is on ebay, but even that is deceiving. Most of the ebay auctions are from 5stardeal and even though it's a little cheaper it really isn't. When I checked most of the auctions were ending at a price about $15 lower than the website has but if you check closely the shipping for ebay auctions is about $15 more than on the site (to cover auction costs). If you wait and are good you can get it cheaper on ebay, but the website has lots of promotion codes such as free shipping or 10% off, so in the end you're likely better getting it straight from the site unless you get really lucky on ebay.

Would I order from them again?

Yes. I'd order again and probably recommend them if my friends asked where to get poker stuff. They could have been a little faster with my replacements but it was the holidays, it wasn't their fault to begin with, they sent me a full set as replacement and overall the whole situation seems to be an unlucky fluke. Of course if other people have had trouble with them please reply and let us know.

Other stuff
As people have mentioned in other posts the 11.5g chips are not really clay composite. They are just injection molded plastic around a heavy metal insert. You can pick them up with a magnet and since I have damaged ones with the metal insert exposed there isn't really a question about this. They are nice chips though and unless you want to spend 3-6 times more on real chips these are the best ones you'll find I think. I do think the different colors have different qualities though, and I wanted to mention this.

The black and purple ones are beautiful. They go REALLY well together and I'd definitely recommend going with black and purple as your base colors. The red ones aren't quite as nice in my opinion. The red plastic seems to be ever-so-slightly translucent and in certain light you can see the white plastic underneath which gives the face an inconsistent shade of red. It's only in certain light and most people probably won't notice (the reason I noticed was because I was carefully inspecting the chips for damage and I'm a perfectionist) but I wanted to mention it. I'd still get them if I really liked red but compared to black and purple they aren't as nice. (I plan on taking pictures to show you and I may order a few of each color to see how the other colors look).

[Stain_Rat]

Great read! I receive a lot of packages, and I don't think I've ever gotten one from UPS that didn't look like it was dropped off a cliff.

[jwrussell]

I think you got a great deal. It sounds like they slipped on a couple of minor things, but dealing with UPS on a day in day out basis in my job I can tell you that 5Star probably ate the cost of that first shipment. In fact, a great majority of dealers probably would have told you that it was your issue to deal with (I'll avoid technical terms, but with alot of places, once it hits UPS's truck it's your property). UPS is usually not going to honor a claim when they can't see the original packaging which they would not get going through 5 star. Had you called UPS yourself you probably would have waited just as long (almost definately longer) and maybe in the end gotten a refund out of UPS (that's if you didn't throw out the original packaging. If you did you wouldn't have gotten anything out of UPS). In this case you probably got the better end of the deal. My guess is that if you called 5 star and told them that they forgot the 1 or 2 chips of each color that they would be more than happy to send them to you.
Sounds like you have a nice set. Now just make sure that they all come to your seat at the table!
P.S. Not to hijack the thread, but how about some info on your soon to come table? Making it yourself?

[saper88aa]

WOW.You got a supre greta deal.Purchasing that seprate would put you up over 700 dollars.I was thinking about buying a 500 set with 5 racks and it cost about 150.I didnt realize that had great deals like that

[Silencer]

Yeah it really is a great deal. A lot of people don't seem to know about it though because it's in the 'ONLINE SPECIALS' section of the site rather than the 'CASINO SUPPLIES'. For $200 you get 1000 chips, 10 trays, 2 decks of cards and a dealer button. It ends up being like 18 cents per chip which is dirt cheap compared to everywhere else I've seen. Only drawback is alot of the promotion codes don't apply to items in the online specials category so, for example, you can't use that 10% off code on it (wouldn't that be awsome).

As far as UPS/cost stuff goes I kinda agree. That's the main reason I was able to be so patient. It made sense that they wanted to get the money from UPS before they sent out more stuff to me. I did keep all the packaging though (one of the first things they told us was to keep everything in order to show UPS). We ended up not having to show anybody but we still have it, just in case. Seriously though, we think it got stuck in the conveyors or somehow got backed into by a truck. A lot of the chips had bad scuff marks on them that looked as if they had been dragged across dirty and oily concrete floors or stuck in machinery.

As far as my table goes it's a weird design. It's only a 4' round table but it will fold in half which makes things a little complicated. Making it more complicated is that the table is 2 layers with a hollow space in between the top and bottom. Inside this space are going to be support bars spaced all around the outside edge of the table. I'm going to make nice wooden trays that act as cup holders and holders for the chip trays and these will be slotted to fit into the support bars all around the table. That way you can move the wooden trays around the table and the table adjusts depending on the amount and needs of the players. Making it fold is difficult though and I gotta do a weird 3-way folding system with some weird cuts so that it doesn't stretch the playing surface or anything.

[saper88aa]

Yes, i didn't even know that they had specials like that.I looked around for your set and was like WTF.Upon further 'exploration' i found the set.They truley have some "5stardeals".

[nicthestick]

got my 1000 chip set from 5star last week. 89 + shipping off ebay. Excellent

[BeerWench13]

That certainly was a good deal. I see that there is alot of UPS bashing here. I deal with UPS on a daily basis for work and I order all of my holiday, birthday and other gifts online. They are all shipped via UPS and, as of yet, I've not gotten a damaged package. I'm sure I'm partial to UPS since my father worked for them and, in a sense, UPS put me through private school and college, bought me a car, etc. I just wanted to speak up for them as a satisfied customer. Thanks for the insight on 5star. I will definitely have to check them out when it comes time to replace my chips.

[racquet000]

haha I know somebody who recived a package from ups then the next day they recevied another package, But they wern't expecting it, Wel the package was a UPS roller. A lable had fell of onto the roller and it ws shippd to him.....lol

[alphakenny1]

i have experience with 5stardeal and ups at the same time. well i did order my set off of 5stardeal and they gave me a tracking number. well one day i checked my tracking number and the the "status" said "delivered." so i was like hmm maybe its in front of my door. so i check and its not there. also if ups does come to house and ur not there they usually leave a note saying they came and what time they will be back. so i call damn ups and said that they had delivered it to the wrong house. what idiots. so i go to the house and pickup my package. im like what foos to have mix this up. the address on the package says 2221 which is my address but the idiot deliver person delivered to 1111?!?! anyways the product itself was great. i got 30 extra chips and im loving these chips.

[jwrussell]

I see that there is alot of UPS bashing here. ... as of yet, I've not gotten a damaged package. ... I just wanted to speak up for them as a satisfied customer.

Just a note to qualify my previous post. I ship 90% of the stuff I ship through UPS and probably about 98% of the time I don't have a single problem. My issue is when I have a problem they have not been good at resolving those problems.

[mindgame]

Okay I should probably butt out but I can't control myself in chip discussions...I got a bad chip jones and I'll admit it.

BUT note that some of the chips concerned here were broken and had the exposed metal center. This is one of the problems with the metal insert chips. This kind of beakage is much more common with the 11.5's, and it can happen if a chip just falls off a table onto a tile floor if it hits it's edge just so. No big deal, I suppose. But it's damned annoying when you've got a set of 997 chips and you started with 1000. Call me anal.

So you end up spending more and they break more easily. To me that's a bad combo.

[Leo]

too bad they don't ship to sweden
that is really cheap compared to what you have to pay for chips around here.
i payed 450kr (40US$) for 100 diamond chips and case. and they're pretty light too, like 5-8 grams

[Silencer]

alphakenny1 be glad you don't live at my house. Our address is 1145 West, but it's on a curve so our neighbor to the left is like 758 south or something crazy like that. If you go down the street following the numbers you'll never find our house, but you'll find the people across the street who are 1154

About UPS though I agree with jwrussell. Normally UPS is great and there are no problems but when there are they don't seem all that enthusiastic to fix it

I am curious where mindgame got his though. I can't imagine how dropping one of these or even throwing on the ground will crack it regardless of the angle it hits at. This isn't a brittle type of plastic it's like those thick heavy duty tupperware things. You can dent it kinda easy if you have something harder than the plastic but crack it? I'll take some pictures this weekend and maybe screw around with dropping weights on some of the ones I got that have minor damage. I'm kinda curious what I have to do to crack off a part of the chip to expose the metal insert like a few of my first ones have.

[mindgame]

First to Leo...

You're a SWEDE???? How could your English be so damn good? Anyway don't complain about the cost of those chips....You guys can all have Volvos and Saabs and beautiful blonde women for half what they cost over here. I think you've got the better end of the stick.

As for those Chinese chips? Who knows where they get them. They're probably rolling them out of some oven in Nanking 24/7, penny a piece. They make 'em and bake 'em and if ya' shake 'em ya break 'em. The ones I saw were brittle as hell. Don't suppose they give much of a rat's ass about quality control, ya think? By the look of the ebay site they're making boatloads of them every day.

Okay Missa Pokah Playah, too done...too done. Velly Solly.

There, if there's anyone I haven't offended yet, keep your feet under the keyboard...I'll get around to it.