Di_in_AZ

Your pillar is beautiful! I haven't tried pillars, bought all the stuff and haven't had the courage or time!

That got me laughing, it would have been one heck of a tongue twister, but I bet people would remember! I do like Leolily's--has a nice ring to it.

You should post the name so no one else here can get scammed.

I've never had a problem in the past either, but haven't ordered recently. Hope this isn't an ongoing thing

I am a Lush junkie myself and I have to say, if they didn't have good products, they would not be where they are today. They started off in England and are now worldwide. They can only set prices that high if people are willing to pay--and my they do! They have a lot of lovely scents and some which remind me of stuff we don't back in the states, so I think that is partly why I am such an easy sell on their items.

Well here is how it ended for me....I will just post the verbage. They offered to refund the excess, but quoting priority and shipping flat rate is the way they do it--although I highly disagree and let them know it. Seeing as they offered the refund, I will not post names, but if anyone wants to pm me, you are welcome. My email: I just received my order from you and I am a little surprised. You quoted me the shipping as $18.70--priority with delivery confirmation. What you shipped was flat rate with no confirmation. That is quite a bit of extra shipping? I see you add a $1.50 shipping fee, but this is $10.00, very excessive and it looks as if you quote one way, ship the other and then you have just made $10 off of me. Can you please explain this? I hope there is some error as this is a very nasty way to get more money off your customers. Their first response: Thank you for contacting us. The way it works is that a website can not calculate with flat rate boxes since it can not know what product will fit into a flatrate box. We used to add a flatrate shipping to a product directly and then specify free shipping (or better wight =0 since the weight is the shipping cost) but then in your case, it would have been 2 x 9.60 (8.10+1.50) + the rest would have been a firstclass envelope. So what we did is we set the prices on the high weight items way lower so that at the end, products and shipping together are at a good price. The only other way we would have is to not use flatrate boxes and add the difference back to the products, but this wouldn’t make sense since at the end, our customers basically would pay more for shipping and this would make the product pricing higher. So yes, we do use flatrate boxes in order to provide best possible prices on the total purchase. Hope this helps to understand how to use a website technology together with postage calculation. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to write me. My response: I am a candlemaker who has supplies shipped frequently for over five years now. It is deceptive to do anything other than to quote actual costs for shipping. Your costs of business should be factored in the product, shipping is entirely different. If you are unsure if items can go in a flat rate box, then it would be appropriate to have your shopping cart calculate the priority shipping, then if it can go flat rate--return the excess shipping to your customer. What you are basically telling me is that you keep the excess shipping (in my case) so that you can sell the products cheaper, which is no way to conduct a business. So you break even if the items do not fit in a flat-rate box, and make out if they do. Shipping is NOT a money maker and should never be mixed in with the cost of products. The customer pays that and it is separate period. I had hoped you would have made good on this. I am disappointed and will not be ordering from you again and will make others know this is how you conduct business. If you check many other suppliers of scents, candle supplies and B&B, you will see they charge the customer the actual shipping and if they can get a cheaper rate of shipping, it is for the customer as the customer is the one responsible for the shipping, they should be getting the benefits of cheaper shipping, not the supplier. Their final response: >>then if it can go flat rate--return the excess shipping to your customer. Every refund would cost us the transaction fee + we would have to manually enter the customer address and credit card information in a virtual terminal. We did try this before and the cost of doing this is just not covering the margin. On top of there are just too many shipments we have to even being able to handle this way. >> items do not fit in a flat-rate box, and make out if they do We only changed the prices of the high weight products because we know that it will even out with the shipping cost. This way we can make our customers being able to pay less for shipping because we take a flat rate box. >> Shipping is NOT a money maker and should never be mixed in with the cost of products. I agree - partly. If you can tell me any other way to be able to trick the system without having to refund every order for shipping, I will gladly do it. Our Goal is to give our customers the possibility to buy the products for a great price overall, including shipping. This is not eBay where they charge 1 cent for an item and $ 20.00 for shipping. This is a technical workaround for making Flatrate Boxes work for our customers. >> they should be getting the benefits of cheaper shipping, not the supplier Once again, we really feel bad that you do not agree to split up the pricing of heavy weight products that we know can fit in a flatrate box with the shipping that can not be calculated correct due to the nature of the products. We are more then happy to change this if you have a way that works without having to refund thousands of order. I see your point, and so far we did not get any complaints due to at the end, all that counts is what you pay for the whole purchase. If you still feel that we owe you the difference of shipping, I will refund you for the difference and we leave it at this. We do not have and do not want any unhappy customers (edited out their name here).

Call them on it. I emailed yesterday for mine and if I don't hear by tomorrow noon, I will personally call them. If they don't resolve it, then I will take further action. I would rather give them the opportunity to do the right thing. And don't accept any nonsense about the extra being handling if it isn't listed separately. These are the types of things that should be calculated into the retail price of your items. They are the cost of doing business and that is supposed to be added in. I think they do add it in and then add extra. It has become a huge rip-off in this country, but only but the unreputable businesses in my opinion that conduct business like this.

I wish you much success on this, it sounds like a great opportunity

Just emailed them asking if it was an error--I will give them the benefit of the doubt, I think it is terrible. Every ten customers, cha-ching--another $100 in the pocket. Sheesh! I know this happens on Ebay, never had it happen with a supplier.

I am a bit miffed and I would like some of your thoughts on shipping. I ordered from a company who told me shipping would be $18.70 priority shipping with confirmation. I got the package today and it was shipped flat rate shipping with no confirmation--a difference of $10.00. I just don't get it, is this supposed to be normal and acceptable? As far as I am concerned this is a rip-off. What do you think?

Got mine at www.soapersupplies.com. No stuff in mine, absolutely love it. Can you use this in bath bombs or would it be too heavy?

It's actually Sunday, June 3rd--don't know why I put the 4th, sorry!

AZ Gathering is June 4th in Phoenix; although it does cater to the soap crowd more than candles.

Burt's Bees does one that is lavender scented. I use it sometimes on a hot, AZ day to pick me up. Very nice and light. Ingredients are listed as: Purified Water, lavender oil, bergamot oil, cedar leaf oil.

Very nice--thanks for the link. Murphy's Law though, they don't have 7.7% which is my tax rate LOL. There are usually links on each state's revenue page with tax tables. In AZ they even have the factor rates, which is a real convenience.

Does anyone know what ever happened to that other "magazine" that was claiming to be starting? They posted here and asked for addresses and then as far as I have seen never surfaced again. I believe they had the intentions but didn't seem to get off the ground. Did anyone hear back from them?

Ahh, saw this post and was thinking about how I didn't get the next one. I also thought it did nothing for chandlers. Several articles I have read I had already seen the exact same articles on company websites and at a soap/candle convention I attended last year. These companies are offering this information for free and they are reprinting (I am sure with permission, don't get me wrong) and putting it in the magazine. There were too many things I had already seen. You can just go to some of the suppliers, read their tutorials and get the same info in my opinion. Ever the optimist, I do look forward to the next publication in hopes there is new material, or that they have clued into their subscribers wants. I mean it hasn't been in publication for a year yet I believe--so they may just need some growing room?

Vanmala would probably know, shoot her a pm. She makes potpourri and is very knowledgeable in that area.

I use the SBDC and would go through them. They usually run through local community colleges and you can find them just by doing a google on SBDC. I have used them frequently and they just charge for the materials. They covered everything for me from licensing, taxes (sales--local and state) plus federal and even marketing strategies. I will give a word to the wise, some of these small business seminars are nothing but a ruse to get you to sign up for their business. I know there is one being done by Fran Tarkenton (sp?) and it is for prepaid legal. They told me it was a business networking meeting and I went and it was basically a sales pitch about prepaid legal. Beware of these because initially they don't mention anything about who it is sponsoring or what it is about and it will be a waste of your time and money if they are charging you as well. The only one I attended was free so I don't feel cheated. I again, recommend the SBDC--they fall under the SBA and teach you alot.

Furnaces do emit soot. I know they do, but I do not know which types of fuel or furnace are the worst. Any combustion produces soot, period. If you are not burning candles, odds are that your furnace is the culprit. We just gutted out and renovated our house last year. Our house is 12 years old and has the original paint. The contractor said he was amazed that there wasn't any soot buildup on the walls over that time period because he said you usually do see some buildup. I have borders in some rooms and when we removed those, no buildup either. He said we have a very good furnace, I was happy I have very good candles LOL.

Weird, I have WAHM and mine is up. Maybe yours came back up as well?

Just shipped my swap soap flat rate--taped the ends to make sure it was sealed. No extra charges here

If you don't have anything now, they can get FUTURE monies. They can force you to have a sheriff's auction, they can garnish wages in the future until all is paid. Unless you can live under society's radar and earn wages under the table, hide all your future assets, I wouldn't do it. You may not have much now, but you are gambling all your future assets and income on being someone else's. I would hate working just to give my stuff to someone else.

Thanks for the replies, I did remelt the soap very slowly at a low temperature in a double boiler and they seemed fine, smelled the same. I am part of the same swap as you both (everything MP) but don't worry it was a visual issue--the soap stuck badly in my first mold and came out mis-shapen. The only bad thing was I wanted lavender flowers ON the soap and instead they are now IN the soap. I will probably win the ugly award hands down LOL. Maybe I should stick to candles

Hoping someone can help me here. I messed up a batch of soap in the mold. I want to remelt it and do it in a different mold that will be easier. I have remelted soap once (and had an accident LOL) Do you need to add more EO--does it lose any scent once you remelt it?