I used to promote At Your Office, an online office supplies retailer, on my Best of the Web page:

A deep-discount online office supply company. It’s so deep discount, in fact, that I have never had to pay for anything I’ve ordered from them, they simply email me every couple of weeks with a free offer.

A year and a half ago, I added a note to the entry:

As of 25 May, 1999, this ceased to be true; I ordered 4 permanent Marks-A-Lot markers from them along with my free order, for $0.54 apiece and no extra shipping costs.

Then a few months later I felt compelled to add another note:

As of 8 October, 1999, the preceding remains humorous but sadly no longer true. I have ordered several times from At Your Office, but never without something getting damaged en route. They pack things very, very poorly. So, for now, my recommendation is to look somewhere else.

I am still on their email list, however.

In early December 2000 I decided to buy a guillotine-style paper trimmer.  I drove to the local Staples and selected one that looked promising.  When I got it home I found three problems with it.  First, the unit was too light so it risked sliding on the table when in use.  Second, imagine you are looking at the trimmer from the top: on the left there is a flat grid area for laying out your paper, then a perhaps 1 cm metal strip to its right, then the blade.  The grid and the metal strip were not at the same height, which meant that paper would never lie flat on the trimmer.  Finally, the ruler along the top that tells how much you are cutting was mis-calibrated.

I decided to return it and buy a new one, so I started poking around online.  I checked out the online stores of Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Staples.  Each of these companies offers a service where orders of most items are delivered the next day by a truck dispatched from one of their stores (Rockwell Science Center, where I work, has such an arrangement with Office Depot.)  I did not find a trimmer that I liked, however, so I reluctantly decided to check At Your Office, which had just sent me an email advertising “free shipping and one-use Kodak camera with any order over $50.”

It turns out that two things have changed at At Your Office since I penned the less-than-favorable reviews above.  First, they were acquired by Office.com.  Granted, Office.com is a company with a rather vague business model (“Office.com^� [...] — a website that focuses and harnesses the potential of the Internet for the workworld. Office.com combines best of breed content, commerce, community and communications to create the place we work when we work online.”) but at least it’s new management.  Second, At Your Office is now offering free next-day delivery via UPS (I assume to compete with the bricks-and-mortar stores.)  So I decided to go for it: on a Thursday, I ordered the paper trimmer, a box of hot cocoa mix for Jenn, a Pilot disposable fountain pen, and the free camera.

That evening I checked their site to get UPS tracking numbers for the packages.  It showed that the order had been split into three shipments.  One, the heaviest, was scheduled for delivery on Friday as promised.  The second was scheduled for delivery the following Monday.  The third tracking number brought up a package delivered in June of 1999 to Washington state.  This was unexpected.

The next morning I called AYO customer service to see if I could get the real tracking number.  The woman on the phone was courteous, was just as surprised as I about the tracking number incident, and told me that she had no additional information about it.  “If it doesn’t show up on Monday, call us back,” she said.

That day (Friday) package #1 arrived, containing the paper trimmer, one corner of interior box dented.  Its arrival was appreciated as it was the reason for the order in the first place.  On Monday packages #2 and #3 arrived.  #2 contained the hot cocoa mix, interior box dented.  #3 contained the one-use camera … and a $0.65 medium point black Pilot ballpoint pen instead of my fountain pen.  I called customer service back and explained the error: again, the associate (a different one) was very courteous and promised the problem to be fixed immediately.  Sure enough, the next day, a big AYO box arrived by UPS, holding one pen and perhaps 8 liters of packing material (wrinkled stiff paper.)

So, the verdict?  From my small sample size, I submit that AYO has really not improved since my previous evaluation.  Packages arrive late and damaged, poorly packed but using more packaging than necessary.  If you are looking for office supplies, perhaps Staples or Office Depot could help you out.

Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:42:36 +0000
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