AstroArt Store experience

I had a similar experience a few months ago. They said they had staffing issues due to sickness. I received a nice email which laid out the challenge and a well-meant "sorry for the delay". Item arrived a few days later so all was fine.

Yes i have. My items have been delayed at least 3 times, i was supposed to have them in august. Another guy from my area ordered a camera that was supposed to be in stock according to the website but it turned out not to be the case.

I might just add that they only released their website in my country during this spring, it might seem like they're registered in the country but if you do some basic research they're not. In order to get the proper domain the applicant needs to be registered in what we call the central coordinating register for legal entities, which they are clearly not. So how they managed to set it up is a bit of a mystery to me.

When the site launched they had just copy pasted the entire website from a foreign language while completely forgetting to adjust the terms or information to abide by my country's laws about internet sales. The website itself, from product viewing to checkout and even the delivery terms, had very poor information regarding VAT. At no point did it come up during the process that this wasn't included, at first you would rightly assume it was, based on the vague terms hidden on a separate page. So people actually ordered stuff from them thinking this was with import taxes handled from the vendor, when in fact it was not. They didn't realize until some of us reached out and explained to them what had happened. They fixed it, but it seems like a strange way to handle things.

The prices were also sufficiently high enough to make people think VAT was included, it's one of those sites where it seems you are paying the foreign VAT, as well as VAT on import. This is a really crappy way to boost your revenue, but plenty of vendors do this (I experienced this with Astroshop.eu as well).

I'm sure some have had great customer experiences with astroart as well, with what I've seen I'm not getting into that again though. I assume they are the same company operating through different domains. All in all it just makes me all the more satisfied with vendors like FLO, I have no kind of affiliation, but they're doing things right.


Edit:

I just did a more thorough check on the domain thing, it seems it's registered to an adult employee, who has an address in my country, as a private domain. This is how they loopholed the laws. They are registered in VOEC though.

Have the same experience. 
I ordered in August. 

Keep saying they will return with new delivery dates.

I have asked them to cancel my order and return my money. 

I don’t have high hopes for that and would not recommend anyone to buy from them. 

Too bad!

D. Jung:
Maybe we can have a store review section on astrobin @Salvatore Iovene?

Hi @D. Jung,

this is currently not planned. I think that there's already more useful places for store reviews, such TrustPilot, Google Businesses, etc.

After another promised day of shipping has passed without any shipping, I've asked for cancellation of the order. Let's see what happens.

My best guess is that they actually don't have any real stock, just order stuff from China in bulk when they have a bunch of orders together.

Same problem here, made an order at the end of August, ordered a camera.
After a few weeks I contacted them and they told me "next week"
Then again after 6 weeks I contacted them again, same answer "shipping by the end of next week"
Now I am still waiting on my order, contacted them a few times but they don't respond at all
And if you contact them via Messenger then you get an answer from a robot I guess

So 10 weeks waiting on my order, paid at ordering, so I guess my money is gone …

grts
Sieg

I canceled my order for a while ago and got my money back within 1 week.

Its a Finnish shop, was not aware that they had a .com version of the storefront too (just knew about .fi). Had a few good experiences and a few not so good experiences, and in the end i would say that this is a place to avoid.

They are under some financial pressure at the moment, and have been for the entirety of 2023 with unpaid bills in collections totaling tens of thousands of Euros - which is likely the source of the delays for orders since suppliers will be unlikely to send new stock before old orders have been paid. There are publicly available services here in Finland that allow you to check any businesses unpaid bills, so no shady business in getting that knowledge in case someone was wandering.

Sorry to hear that. If they don't reimburse you, I don't think you have a realistic chance of getting back your money, especially if they end up filing for bankruptcy 😬

Hello everyone,

Coincidence or not …
Today I received my refund, so the complete amount with an instance bank transfer (here in Europe instance bank transfer is exactly what is says, if someone does an instance payment the money is immediately on the bank account of the other person)
So the refund must have been done today, after I posted my last comment here.
Well lets call it coincidence, but I am happy that I got my complete money back.

Will I be ordering in that shop again, I gues not but some brands they have are very interesting and in Europe hard to find

Just wanted to let this know here

Kind regards
Sieg

Astroart-store is reliable finnish store i have bought there couple times and got my delivery in one day because i live at finland. I wouldn't really buy something thats in backorder though it took me many months to get one item, still haven't got it. 


i feel like they are lying at the emails like if you ask "when its going to arrive" they say in one week but then it doesn't for months