Dealing with this company was absolutely hair-pull frustrating. Moss, (CEO?) was supposedly on holiday (Hmmm!) hence the delay in a response to my questions about problems I had seen with my order. Before it was ever shipped or even finished at Avant Garde’s end. Only one reply, and not to any satisfaction. Big differences in billing price from advertised. Not shipped as stated. Over billed. Weeks wait for product. No invoice with order. I now have to try and get my over billed payment amount back through the payment and credit companies. I will not do business with this company again.

Bottom line with this company was the timing. It took a very, very long time to get my order. It took well over 3 weeks. The prices seemed to be good but what I received was not exactly what I ordered. For the most part it was and I went back for another order which took just as long as the first order. I eventually found someone closer to match prices and have been dealing with them for a good deal of time since. It seems they (Avant Garde) is a guy that imports the items as people order and pay for it. Not a bad idea but it just took so long to get the order that unless they have a great sale I probably will not be returning to their site to order more. They (he) also mentioned that I could open a mirror site and reap a percentage of the sales, he never explained how this worked or how I could do it after asking him several times.

Browsing through the site, my jaw dropped at some of the pieces, and prices, Avant Garde has. Emailing Moss was a less than pleasant experience, but he answered any questions I had. When it came time to place my order, I noticed that the total price on my order page was different than the total price listed on the orders summary page...that got me suspicious, so I added up all the items individually myself and came up with yet a third number. We're talking a discrepancy of about 475 dollars between the cheaper price and the more expensive price. All on the same order. I got the response that their server or whatever gets messed up when lots of orders are logged, we agreed upon the cheaper price listed and I sent my deposit. Then the final payment. I received my items about two weeks later. My receipt said I owed them $400 according to their records still, and there were SO many problems with my order I can't even list them all. I didn't receive any of some items ordered, I received wrong colors/sizes of others, and they took the liberty of substituting when they didn't have one color in (for example, I ordered 12 glass knubby talons, 4 each of three colors. They sent me 3 each of four colors. What the hell am I gonna do with odd talons?) I emailed them, got the response that they just got back from a trade show and were quite wiped out in terms of inventory. This was when they still had that ridiculous stocking fee or whatever they called it...I paid 200 dollars for the 'hidden costs' incurred when they might have to make on demand some of the jewelry I ordered. Since that obviously wasn't the case with my order, they just threw whatever they wanted in, I demanded that fee back. Actually got it, I was surprised. Never saw the rest of the jewelry I paid for but never got, tho...I'm giving them one more chance. They screw up again and I'm done, I've got better places to spend two thousand dollars.

Avant Garde is the worst supplier I've ever dealt with. I didn't get all of one of my orders and when I requested a refund, they ignored my numerous e-mails. Finally after threatening to turn them in to the Attorney General, they sent me a few items to make up the difference but refused to sell to me again when the mistake was clearly their's. Kind of like an insurance company when you file a claim and they cancel your policy. They have the worst customer service I've ever dealt with.