Blick Art Materials

I've bought a lot of stuff here for the past 25 years but even with changes in the postal service over the years it still annoys me that it takes almost 2 weeks to get my order.

So I purchased a printing press for my school. I have always received damaged merchandise from this company and received a return but this time it was a printing press the Carton was damaged and on the label stated.do not sign for this if carton is damaged. I called and was told to send email and pictures and would likely be taken care of by a return or a reduction in price. None of this happened in fact they said since I had not experimented with the press I would need to present the damage. They said I could send it back but would have to pay return shipping, Well sending it back was a large sum in which the school could not afford or my activity account. So I decided to use it and never buy anything again from this company. I have only tested it once seems ok but the fact is they have me over a barrel having to pay return shipping in order to replace this item. So beware of this and don't make the same mistake I did.
Thanks Brittany from Blick or dick Blick art materials

Sandy warr

When they get my order right, it's great. More often than not, there is some type of issue. Their policy of holding the ENTIRE order for one back ordered item is ridiculous. Any other online retailer I've ordered from will send you what is in stock and the rest will come later. I also don't really like how they don't actually charge your card until they go to ship. On a few occasions there has been an issue with the card I have through my credit union, and instead of finding out immediately I find out later. So annoying. A few weeks ago I ordered a copper plate, was sent the wrong size, it took forever to get the new one, and then when I got the right one it was bent! Instead of trying to get them to fix it, I just went to the effort of flattening it out myself. On my most recent order I paid for overnight shipping, and I was on the phone with reps making sure my payment had gone through and was told everything was fine. It wasn't. I have the charge on two different cards now and no order. When I argued my point on the phone, the rep didn't even entertain the idea that it was their fault and I was entitled to a reimbursement of some shipping. When you pay 40+ dollars for shipping and it doesn't actually get there overnight, that is incredibly frustrating. If it's not here tomorrow, I guess I'm going to have to be one of those nasty customers on the phone, which I try not to be. This will probably be the last time I order from DB. I will drive two hours to the nearest decent art store and save myself the headache.

A huge selection of drafting and drawing materials at fantastic prices.
Great communication and fast shipping.

I must report here that I've never had worse customer service than that which I am receiving now from dickblick.com.

At a point in the past, I created a wish list that I never intended anyone to see. I did not publish it.

Before Christmas I created a 2014 Christmas Wish List and sent it out to friends and family.

Not a single copy of my wish list arrived, not even the copy I sent to myself. Consequently, I received things I didn't want for Christmas from well intended family members. One family member searched the website for my name and only came up with the wish list that no one was ever intended to see. He purchased an item, an expensive easel.

Now I am trying to return the easel and I am also being charged the full freight to return plus a heavy restocking charge.

Repeated calls have failed to get any satisfaction at all. They accept no responsibility at all for their failure to have a manageable wish list or to stand by their service promises.

I am actually shocked at the poor customer service I have received.

I have been using Blick for several years now. I teach high school art and their prices and products have always been wonderful. I spend around $1000 each order.
My last order was back in August 2018. Due to my order being large, my shipment was delivered by an outside delivery truck. I was going to be charged a large amount extra to have the items carried off the truck and into our school office.
I do not have extra money in my account for such a fee and honestly feel I shouldn't be asked to pay an extra fee. Some of my students had to go outside and unload the items from the truck. I was extremely disappointed in this new system and so was our front office. Amazon or any other place that I have purchased items from deliver it to my door no questions or extra fees included.
I might could understand a bit more if my boxes were oversize and such but they were just normal size boxes. I just had several.
As sad as it makes me, I will have to find a new supplier if this is the new delivery system. My students should not have to do the work of the delivery truck driver and I should not have to pay so much more for him to bring them inside the building.
Very disappointing!
Susan L

I ordered a vice to assemble picture frames and I was hesitant to order from this website because it looks a little sketchy. Against my better judgement I went ahead and placed my order after really analyzing the whole listing for this tool. I saw that there were two things had almost identical names. One was out of stock and one was in stock. The one in stock happened to be cheaper. I was a little skeptical about this, but All of the pictures showed the whole tool, the descriptions were identical, everything matched. I was sure that I was getting the right thing. When it arrived, I was very disappointed to see that only a small part of the tool was shipped. I went back to their website to double check, and sure enough, it shows the whole tool and describes the whole tool. I called customer service and was told that even though it shows that picture and describes it that way, it's not what you get. If I wanted the whole tool, I'd have to buy the other out of stock part for $100. Don't trust the pictures or descriptions on this website.

UPDATE (4/24/17): They still haven't updated the listing to reflect the actual pictures or description of the product as they said they would.

I'll use Blick again but not because I'm happy.

If I could Blick to do some things differently, it would be to package things better, stop using Fedex since they are the ones who seem to literally throw stuff on their box corners out of the trucks, check the quality of the goods before they are packaged.

Credentials: I'm a professional artist who paints full time for a living and sells around 70K worth of art a year. (I'm a former tenured professor of art and art history.) I by all my supplies through Blick but, I still am annoyed by them.

I feel about Blick the way the I feel about Amazon, they don't care about how you feel: provide poor customer service but they have the monopoly.

I order almost all my supplies from Blick, canvas panels, stretched canvas, Winsor Newton paints, brushes, the whole shebang. I have ordered the same products and amounts from other sites and the prices are comparable but often the quality, delivery time, and customer service are worse. So Blick is able to beat grade "C" companies with a "B-" although at times I've had an "A" level experience too.

I always expect things to arrive damaged or poorly packed. How things are shipped sucks, and often things are damaged. Paint tubes are poorly packed and busted open or cut by the other items in the boxes and corners of canvas panels are sometimes damaged, and stretched canvas is often loose due to poor warehouse conditions or poor packing, but Blick always replaces them if you get in touch.

For example, I just got a shipment of 18x18x1.5 inch stretched canvases and the boxes were really messed up (the canvases were okay to use just loose or dented) easily fixed, I have had to spray canvas retentioner on every canvas to tighten them back up. I've actually got in touch with the owners by figuring out their emails and they have offered me coupons and discounts.

Initially I had a great experience with ordering the products I needed. However I received a damaged bottle that wasn't packaged properly, open paint leaked everywhere all over the package and dried. It was a mess when I received the package. When I contacted the company they made it sound like it would be a free replacement and then I would be refunded. Well fast forward (I had a couple backordered items as well) I get an email this week that says my PayPal is denying payment, well they were attempting to charge me additional charge for the bottle that they replaced so it's more than the original hold that they had so of course PayPal‘s going to deny it. The man I dealt with was extremely rude & would not attempt to work with me or even understand that it's not the customers fault that someone in your company didn't package and ship an item correctly, the customer shouldn't have to pay for it twice. I was charged, refunded, charged (for their mistake). It should just be refunded & a new replacement sent (that is how other companies work). Therefore I told him to cancel the remainder of my order and I would ship the current package that's been sent to me back when I received it since apparently I didn't pay for it because they tried to bill me incorrectly & for more. This will be the first and last time I ever order from this company and I will be sure to inform anyone else who needs art supplies not to order from them. As you can see in the attached picture if this is how you ship paint products then the company should eat the cost of replacements, not the customer.

I like the prices on DickBlick. The customer service is good. However the shipping is so slow, I feel I need to order 3 weeks ahead of time to get supplies I need

Thank you for your quick and good service! Answered all my questions and solved all my problems very quickly!

I am VERY upset and disappointed in this company! Currently, I am teaching K-8 art in a public school. I have 20 years of University teaching experience, a BFA and an MFA in Ceramics, a professional exhibition record in ceramic sculpture, and have taught ceramics to all ages from K-Graduate level in several states. I have mixed my own clay and ordered clay. I have used clay from this company for 30 + years and I have NEVER seem such a mess! I say this because when I received an order of 14 boxes of #25 at my school and opened it to find unusable soupy sticky clay and when I called Dick Blick, sent pictures and asked for usable clay, I was told that the clay looked fine to them. I was told to call back in 5 days to talk to a supervisor. I am right in the middle of clay units RIGHT NOW! The staff who was working today decided not to believe me, my expertise or my pictures. Yet the ONLY way to prove that this clay is unusable is for them to touch it themselves and try to use it with elementary kids themselves. I invited them to drive down here to see for themselves since they do not believe me. Of course that would be out of the question! So, how do I prove that this slop is unusable? How do I make them touch it thorough time and space? How do I get them to care about their customers? I will continue to research clay forums of social media about the down fall of this once great art company. PS the clay in the bin in the photo is not in boxes because the boxes were totally blown out from the soupy clay.

I placed an order for 300 pounds of clay on 8/15/2021, and am yet to receive it 9/13/2021. I paid $125 in shipping and handling. It sat in the warehouse for 10 days with each day a notification that it was going to be delivered the next day. Then, I called Blick customer service and was told I needed to call the shipping company to appointment to schedule a delivery, which I subsequently did. The appointment was for 9/8/2021, and the order did not arrive despite my husband waiting at our home for the 4 hour window. Next, I called the shipping company again on 9/9/2021, and was told by their representative that the freight was lost. Feeling that was unacceptable, I called back to Dick Blick and was told that the freight was not lost, the shipping company did not have a driver available, and that it would be delivered at the latest 9/13/2021 (today). Of course, it did not arrive. After calling customer service a third time today, they "checked" with the shipping company and were told that the delivery hadn't happened because the delivery company did not have my correct address! I am bewildered that the Blick representative considers that an appropriate response from a shipping company 28 DAYS AFTER THE ORDER WAS PLACED. I will never order from them again. I post this as a warning to future customers. I never complain about backorders or delayed shipping, but this has blown my mind.

Ordered a few things from them for a college art course, I'm a college student so I don't have much money in the first place. I couldn't go to the physical location because it was a 45 minute drive from my apartment and I didn't have a car. A part of my order I mistakenly ordered the wrong size palette which was about 20+ dollars. I wanted to return it and get the smaller one and I was told I had to pay return shipping to send it back to them. The return shipping was 30+ dollars. The only thing they did to try and fix this was send me a voucher for some in store credit. Well I don't need that in store credit because I'm not shopping there again! Also I first ordered beginning of January and waited... and waited... it wasn't there after a full 2 weeks so I looked to see what was up and they had canceled my order for no reason. By then a few of the things I had ordered were out of stock so I couldn't order them again and this included a smaller palette! So I had to place another order and it took almost three times as long as they said to get here! Whenever I called customer service there response was what "I don't know why that happened, it should be there soon " it made me want to scream! I also payed money for faster shipping because I needed it for a class and that didn't help at all!

I usually don't have trouble with Blick. Choice of supplies is very good and while they lack in some areas, they are still better than most art supply chains. However, their customer service leaves something to be desired. Recently I purchased a VanDyke Brown from Utrecht. These are supposed to be artist-grade oil paints. Generally, I'm pretty happy with Utrecht, but this paint was sub-par. VanDyke Brown should be almost black and this was low on pigment. When I complained, I was told I would need to return the item at my own expense since it was "not defective." I've spent literally thousands of dollars at Blick over the years and responses like this make me feel like I am not valued as a customer. I would have appreciated having the value of the paint applied toward a better brand. I was also working towards a tight deadline, which I mentioned in my email and which CS ignored completely. Makes me wish Amazon carried more art supplies as they generally treat me with much more respect as a customer, even though I spend far less money there. I've started searching for alternate venues to purchase my art supplies. Happily I found that Masterpiece carries a much more extensive range of canvases on their own site than Blick does on theirs. Not with the discounts that Blick offers at times, but it might be worth it to get away from the headaches of dealing with Blick customer service.

This is not the first time I've had an issue like this. I purchased a varnish that damaged a painting. I felt as if CS treated me as if I was stupid and knew nothing about varnishing paintings. They then charged the wrong debit card and created and overdraft issue with my bank. (They didn't bother to ask me before charging or tell me they were going to charge me for a replacement varnish.)