Thumbs Up For The Stanley Gibbons Webshop!

Last Sunday I ordered a Windsor Sovereign pair of binders with slipcase and already today it was delivered to my home address in the Netherlands!

The contents were packed well protected (box in box).

So the binders were received only 3 days after ordering, shipped from the UK to the Netherlands.

Therefore, thumbs up for SG!

I ordered the binders to replace the standard Windsor popular album Great Britain which comes in a spring binder.
The sovereign binders have the 22 rings system which works much better IMO, the pages lay perfectly flat now.

I've purchased items through Gibbons' website before and have never had any problem.

I bought a couple of books from another UK dealer that took just 5 business days to arrive (arrived yesterday). Since it takes 3-4 days to get a letter from Sydney I thought it was pretty quick!

So bravo to Royal Mail too

I'm a big fan of the European 22-ring style of stamp albums. It's a format not used in the U.S., unfortunately. Even more unfortunately, Americans use the 3-ring format which I think is the worst of all the ring binder formats. The fewer rings, the more strain on the holes in the paper, and the more wear and tear with pages getting snagged on the rings sometimes. With 22 rings, the pages turn easily and there is less wear on the holes. Also 22 rings just looks better. The larger number of rings seems to make them disappear compared to the three rings used in the U.S. where the rings are very noticeable. In other words, good choice! Shipping to the U.S. takes at least a week from the UK.

I have only used it once. My experience was mixed. A case of "one thumb up and one thumb down".
I ordered two albums. After a month they sent the wrong albums. I contacted them. Profuse apologies but the albums I ordered would take some weeks. They gave me a freepost address to send the wrong albums back.
And about two weeks later the wrong albums came back as the freepost address was wrong (not my fault).
Long story ..short. Eventually I got my albums and they offered me a discount to keep the wrong albums. I accepted.
If this sounds like a thumbs down story, in mitigation the staff were really very good (thumbs up!)...as frustrated as I was by the experience.