English Tea Store - Online Edit

English Tea Store offers a variety of different brands of teas, including some Harney & Sons, Twinings, Davidson’s, Golden Moon Tea, and many others … as well as their “own” teas (which I believe are Metropolitan Teas that have been repackaged).

I shopped with them because I have a neighbor who doesn’t really like tea, but, was interested in some fruit tisanes. She told me some basics of what she’d like in a tisane, and I located something that I thought she’d like based upon my memory of Metropolitan Teas from back when I used to sell tea – Metropolitan Tea has one of the most extensive catalogs of any tea company that I’ve seen, and I’m willing to bet that most of the US tea companies out there purchase from Metropolitan Tea and rebrand the tea as their own. Finding a company that actually flavors their own teas is a rare thing.

I ultimately chose to shop with English Tea Store because they also had some other products I was interested in (Honey Sticks for yet another friend that I was swapping with), and they have some pretty interesting honey sticks (specifically, they have peach flavored and cinnamon flavored honey sticks and these were the two that I thought my swap partner would enjoy).

I rate this company as average. The prices are decent and the quality is there. The tisane I purchased tasted fresh, and my friend quite enjoyed it. However, they don’t really seem to go the extra mile for their customers. No free sample in the box and no thank you note.

In addition, I found that their shipping seemed a bit slow when compared to other tea companies that I’ve shopped with recently. While other companies may have a 24 – 48 hour turnaround time, or even 72 – 96 hour turnaround time, it took me more than 2 weeks to receive my order, and there was no communication from the company to inform me of delays.

As I’ve said before, I understand that things happen and 2 weeks really isn’t all that long in the main scheme of things, however, I tend to expect that kind of wait time when I’m ordering something from out of the country, but not when it’s within the continental US.

So it is a combination of the long ship time and the lack of communication and other non-essential niceties that have earned the “just average” rating from me. I got what I paid for, but nothing more than that. I probably won’t shop with them again unless there is something that they have that I can’t find elsewhere.