uTOYpia.com

Full review
I've just begun purchasing Playmobil sets for my son, and after a little searching around, I discovered that uTOYpia had the best prices once shipping fees were taken into account. Many stores right now (during the Christmas shopping season) are offering free shipping over a certain dollar amount. Unfortunately since I live in Alaska I almost never qualify for these deals, so I spend a lot of time examining the shipping prices at various online stores before deciding where to shop.

Selection
uTOYpia carries mostly higher-end toys from brand names you won't find in the toy department of your local department store, but they also carry some of your more standard toys as well.

All Brand Names Carried by uTOYpia
~Avalon Hill
~Brio
~Buffy the Vampire Slayer
~Erector Sets
~Euro Games
~Groovy Girls
~Hasbro
~Lamaze
~Leap Frog
~Lego
~Lights, Camera, Interaction!
~Mayfair Games
~Neurosmith
~Out-Of-The-Box
~Pacific Play Tents
~Plan Toys
~Playmobil
~Rio Grande Games
~SpongeBob SquarePants
~Thomas the Tank Engine
~Toysmith
~USAopoly
~Yu-Gi-Oh

uTOYpia appears to be selective in the items they carry. For instance, they appear to have the full line of current Playmobil toys (many, many more than at Amazon for instance), and almost everything Thomas the Tank Engine, but they don't carry everything that Leap Frog produces.

Price
For the most part, the prices at uTOYpia are excellent, particularly on the brands we are most interested in (Thomas the Tank, Playmobil, Plan Toys, and others). Their prices on some other brands are about the same as at other on line and brick and mortar stores.

As an example: I purchased the Playmobil Construction Super Set #3126 for $14.15 at uTOYpia. They show the list price as being $14.99 (not much of a discount) however Amazon lists a price of $22.95 and my local Playmobil store sells it for even more.

This is not a fluke, as I also closely examined their prices on Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railway system and saw that their "list price" was usually significantly lower than the price I've paid at my local store, and their "our price" is even lower. Most Thomas the Tank items are listed as being 20% off, but often they are closer to %30 off when compared with the prices I have been paying elsewhere.

Shipping
If you live in the continental United States, all orders over $89 qualify for free shipping. Below that amount, shipping ranges from $5.50 to $9. For Alaskans, Hawaiians, and Puerto Ricans there is no free shipping deal and shipping ranges from $8.50 to no more than $13. So, the more you buy, the more you save on shipping.

Site Navigation
uTOYpia has a beautiful website. It is easy to navigate, everything loads very quickly, and for most items they have high quality graphics and adequate descriptions. You may search the site by keyword, or browse by Brand, Category, Age Range, or Price. Once in the browsing mode you may also arrange your list of items by price low to high, price high to low, alphabetical A to Z, alphabetical Z to A, product number (very helpful with Playmobil), or popularity.

The only thing I miss at this site is a "What's New" area or browsing option. There are more than 40 pages worth of Playmobil toys on this site, and I'd appreciate being able to browse new releases, which is not an option here.

Ordering
Ordering through uTOYpia was pretty easy, but I experienced one error. Once you put your order in, they are supposed to send you an email with a confirmation number. Without that confirmation number, you cannot check on your order. I never received an email from them.

Customer Service
Since I didn't receive my email, I decided to call uTOYpia's customer service line. Unfortunately, they are only available during business hours Monday through Friday. I put my order in on Saturday and when I hadn't received my confirmation by Monday, I gave them a call. They were very friendly, helpful, and - most importantly - patient with me even though I couldn't remember whether I'd placed the order under my husband's name or mine, nor could I remember which of my 4 email addresses I'd given them. They checked on the status of my order (already shipped) and gave me my confirmation number.

Today, I decided to check on my order and discovered I'd already misplaced the confirmation number. I was somewhat embarrassed to call and ask them for it for fear I'd get the same guy, and so I emailed them and asked about my order. Within a few hours they replied that my order had been shipped and should be here sometime late this week.

Packaging
My order arrived today, days earlier than they had indicated it would, and it was packaged very well and carefully. It was wrapped in brown paper which didn't give the contents away to my son and they included a Playmobil catalog for us to drool over together.

The Bottom Line
I will definitely shop from this store again. Their prices are more than competitive on the items we want, the site is a pleasure to surf, and their customer service is excellent.