AlidaStore

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 10 Apr 2004, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Kittaine	10 Apr 2004
Has anyone tried ordering from AlidaStore? How long does it usually take for the item to be received, and did you guys get an email? Thanks.

Kittaine	10 Apr 2004
*gulp* This is the first time I've ever ordered online with a credit card, and...what if...?

firemaiden	10 Apr 2004
Alida is totally fine. I've ordered many times from them. It comes fast, all wrapped up beautifully. The people there are friendly, and responsive to emails - you will correspond by email with Argeo. He is lovely. Don't worry. :) Edited to say: I order from them because it is within Europe, however I do not know what kind of shipping time it will be to the Philippines.

VGimlet	10 Apr 2004
I just ordered from them recently, for the first time, and shipping was very quick, the order was perfect, the service fabulous. :D

Astraea	10 Apr 2004
Alida is a dream to do business with. Their site is secure. And the service and shipping are friendly and fast, as everyone here has said -- it's never taken longer than a week for orders to arrive in the western US, and I doubt if it would be much different for the Philippines.

jema	10 Apr 2004
I never ordered from them but might do so in the future. I do love to just go there and add stuff to my "dream" shopping basket. I often end up with things for well over 200 euro

tabbycat	10 Apr 2004
I've used Alida too and they were great. I was really anxious about it as I'd ordered two expensive decks (the Dali and a Folchi) but everything was fine and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again. They ship by air-mail, so it shouldn't take all that long for your decks to get to you. Jilly

northsea	10 Apr 2004
Hi Kittaine, Alida is great! :) Their shipping is very reasonable (even overseas to the USA), quality stuff, and they deliver fast (within a week, or two).

dolphinprincess	10 Apr 2004
I've done business with them a few times - and they are wonderful!!

Strange2	10 Apr 2004
I've ordered decks from Alida several times, and they are excellent. Delivery time to US was about 2 weeks. They send you an email with a copy of your order in advance. Their packaging is very sturdy and secure, and kind of quaint (wrapped in brown shipping paper and tied with string). Argeo even through in a free gift with my last order (Lo Zodiaco Degli Gnomi, an astrological deck by Antonio Lupatelli)! World class service and world class selection. They get my highest recommendation.

Gerbear	10 Apr 2004
Alida is an excellent store to order from, with friendly service that takes less than two weeks to California. I love the fact that their prices are lower than stateside retail stores on many items. The shipping is steep, but if you order several decks at once, it makes it all worthwhile.

Osher	10 Apr 2004
Alida is great, and an interesting website too, with some rare cards. For some reason everytime I order from them I get a computer problem. I'm sorry to say I ended up ordering from Amazon, but at least Aeclectic made something. However, the one time I did order from them, the decks were well packaged, and arrived very swiftly. Excellent service!

bangbang	10 Apr 2004
Alida is by far the best choice for most decks.

crystal cove	10 Apr 2004
I just ordered two decks from them about 10 days ago. I'm still waiting for the decks to arrive. I'm sure it will be shortly. I've been very pleased so far with their service. They hadn't gotten both parts of my order (do to my error) and I had an email from them notifying me of it within 2 hours. I fixed it and again had an email from them telling me that the decks were on their way within a few hours.

Star Spirit	11 Apr 2004
Thanks for the info guys, I was wondering the same thing. P.S. Kittaine, which deck did you order?? :D

Kissa	11 Apr 2004
Alida is great. They offer rare and oop decks at a very reasonable price. The service is excellent, friendly, rapid, e-mails are always answered. As written before, parcels are well-packed, decks do not arrive damaged (like they sometimes do with amazon or tarotworld!). Alida is the "european Tarot Garden" to me: dedicated, passionated and friendly ppl, brilliant service. Don't worry about ordering online, i've done it a thousand times and never had problems. I wish you will enjoy your decks! :-) Kissa

Kittaine	11 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Dead Star Thanks for the info guys, I was wondering the same thing. P.S. Kittaine, which deck did you order?? :D The Gothic Tarot of Vampires. It was one of those lust-at-first-sight things. LOL. I had to make it mine!

Star Spirit	11 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Kittaine The Gothic Tarot of Vampires. It was one of those lust-at-first-sight things. LOL. I had to make it mine! This deck is on my very long wishlist :D

ncefafn	11 Apr 2004
From now on, any deck I can't find on eBay, I'll order thru Alidastore. Kim

Rusty Neon	11 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by ncefafn From now on, any deck I can't find on eBay, I'll order thru Alidastore. Kim Actually, it wouldn't hurt to search the alidastore website before bidding on ebay. Sometimes the decks touted on ebay as hard-to-find (HTF) or out-of-print (OOP) are easy-to-find (ETF) on the alidastore website.

ncefafn	11 Apr 2004
Aha! Thank you, Rusty! Kim

Osher	12 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Kittaine The Gothic Tarot of Vampires. It was one of those lust-at-first-sight things. LOL. I had to make it mine! Yes, it is lovely! I just received mine.

Aerin	13 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Happiness I'm sorry to say I ended up ordering from Amazon, but at least Aeclectic made something. Aeclectic can make something if you order from Alida too - you just have to say that you are from the site. That was true the last time I looked at Solandia's information. Aerin

Emily	16 Apr 2004
I use Alida too, their orders seem to come through fast, only 24 hours the last deck I ordered. :)

Jewel-ry	17 Apr 2004
Alida are great, The last package I got had a free gift inside it - Tarocchi Egizi, which looks to be a Majors only by Silvana Alasia and appears to be based on one of her Egyptian Tarots. I don't know why this was but it was a nice gesture anyway. J :)

Gerbear	17 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by Rusty Neon Actually, it wouldn't hurt to search the alidastore website before bidding on ebay. Sometimes the decks touted on ebay as hard-to-find (HTF) or out-of-print (OOP) are easy-to-find (ETF) on the alidastore website. This is so true!! Every time the black and white Mantegna appears on ebay, it is described as OOP and HTF. Well, the deck is less than 30 Euros at Alidastore. When converted to dollars, the price is about $5 more than the original selling price of over twenty five years ago. Many other decks follow the same pattern.

full deck	18 Apr 2004
I had a defective card from a Dotti deck I ordered and Argeo at Alida sent me a replacement within a week.

Astraea	18 Apr 2004
Full Deck, that's really good to know. I imagine that Alida's good customer care would apply to people on more distant shores, as well. I'm always a bit worried about flawed decks when ordering from far away.

full deck	18 Apr 2004
The customer care is important. As much as I like and appreciate the il Meneghello decks, I have found more sloppy, printer-related flaws in their decks than any other source, thus it is good to order their decks from someone like Alida. I think it's a good idea to get Argeo to open a deck first, to check if there is such a obvious flaw but he might hate doing that for *every* order. :)

Astraea	19 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by full deck I think it's a good idea to get Argeo to open a deck first, to check if there is such a obvious flaw but he might hate doing that for *every* order. :) You know, that is an excellent idea -- you're right, though, it would probably get on his nerves if all of us started asking him to do that. If only companies would be more careful in the first place!

Aure	19 Apr 2004
I'd love to order from AlidaStore since they have such a nice collection of rare decks but... It's a bii difficult to find out what the payment methods are, since the pages are so full of stuff. Do they accept only credit card payments?

ncefafn	20 Apr 2004
I 've been a very, very bad girl. I just got back (virtually) from AlidaStore, where I ordered the Pagan Tarot, Fey Tarot, and Tarot of the Gnomes. Bad, bad Kimmie! Kim

Lady Eclipse	22 Apr 2004
Hi, I've ordered from there several times and it only took about a week and a half to get here. I've never had any problems with their service and will order from them in the future. :-) Joy to you, Maralee

firemaiden	22 Apr 2004
..but, but, but... don't forget about TAROT GARDEN!!!

Aerin	22 Apr 2004
Quote: Originally posted by firemaiden ..but, but, but... don't forget about TAROT GARDEN!!! I wouldn't, if the postage didn't work out too expensive for me in the UK. Each time I have almost been on the verge of ordering a deck, the postage has put me off. Aerin x

Astraea	22 Apr 2004
My policy is to order all decks from Tarot Garden if they are available in the US, and if they are in stock (or on the way). If not, I go to Amazon. If Amazon doesn't have them, and if the decks are hard to find in the US, Alida usually has them. Just when I despaired of ever finding the Royal Fez Moroccan, there it was at Alida for $15 US! And it was here in 10 days.

zagone	23 May 2004
I’m wondering if anyone else has had credit card security problems with Alidastore? Unlike many people here, I **AM** worried about their online security. Last week they provided incredibly friendly and quick turn-around on an order placed on a Sunday no less. Hard to fault them there. However, I received a bounced email back from one of their email addresses stating that the email address was out of storage space. The problem was that: 1) I never sent that information in email form. I entered into their encrypted secure order form on the website, and 2) The bounced email contained my complete credit number!! Near as I can figure, when customers fill out the Alidastore order form, an email containing the data is sent to an email address and constructed to appear it came from the customer's email account. Therefore, when their email storage was out of room, the message bounced back to my email account as undeliverable. Alidastore wrote back quickly to say a temporary problem on their secure server was corrected. Okay, maybe that’s the end of the story. However, this leaves me wondering if a security problem was truly fixed or if they just emptied the email address storage space that they had forgotten to monitor over the weekend. Is it their store's normal practice to send unencrypted credit card numbers across Internet between their website and that company email address?? Emailing credit card data is a sloppy practice – its better put into a secured database. But if they are emailing order data around: a) Do they encrypt the email traffic between their web order server and their email server? b) Or is the data only traveling between the webserver and the email server within the confines of their server farm and not across Internet? If so, when they log into their email account, do they retrieve email messages across a secured link? c) Have they fixed it so that if that email address runs out of storage space again, the email server won’t email credit card numbers in the clear back to the customer? A bit worrisome. Especially as I look back through this thread and see that Happiness on 4-11-04 posted concerning computer problems too. This is exactly the kind of store I appreciate and want to support. I hope these potential issues have been addressed. -- Zagone

full deck	24 May 2004
Thanks for mentioning that Zagone. I will try to look into it but it won't be until several days from now.

Bagatto RSM	29 May 2004
I apologize for the inconvenience happened to Zagone and I can assure to our many Costumers that this situation was solved IMMEDIATELY and that Alidastore will continue to provide a SECURE and a quality service like it has always been done for over seven years to Tarot Lovers all over the World. Order Data (Payment data) are saved encrypted directly on the server and NOT with EMAIL. On the email goes only the Order List (the list of ordered items) because it arrives better listed. During an upgrade of the server there was a mistake in the tranfer of a script (formmail.pl instead of saveinfo.asp) and it was corrected promptly by our tech staff wich also double checked the whole system ensuring once again the security of Alida Store. What happened was unfortunate but I would consider unfair to compromise a work that's been done every day with commitment passion and HONESTY. Sincerely Argeo

Aerin	29 May 2004
Argeo, thank you very much for your post. I, for one, have always been very pleased with Alida's service and I have NEVER had my credit card details in an e-mail from them. So this looks like an unfortunate one-off that does in no way impact on my opinion of the company, which is very high indeed. Aerin ps I looked at Happiness's post that is referenced above, and it mentions absolutely nothing about security so this would appear on the face of it to be a red herring. I've had problems with almost everyone's internet purchase arrangements at some stage or another and this is just one of those things that stops me completing a purchase. I have problems with Aeclectic on occassion too. Browsers, servers, whatever sometimes just disagree.

Astraea	29 May 2004
Argeo, it's so nice to see you here. Thank you very much for all that you and everyone at Alida do to make the tarot world a wider and friendlier place.

Marion	29 May 2004
Argeo, thanks for your post and explaining what happened and that Alida has taken steps.

The AlidaStore thread was originally posted on 10 Apr 2004 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.