Comments regarding Purely Poultry

I'm not sure how much of my issues are related to this company and how much are related to ordering live chicks in general. I have no other experience with ordering live chicks. 2/3 of the chicks I picked up Friday were dead as of night fall on Saturday. I rated neutral to try to be fair but of 14 chicks, I have 5 surviving and very good possibility of none of the primary breed I wanted.
Most of my issues are labeled as items below - I see them more as items to be aware of if ordering from this company.

I wanted hatching eggs but could only find bantam easter eggers as chicks right now. Their selection is pretty large but I ordered late in season so the available selection was limited to about half of the bantams they carry. The minimum order is 15 and I didn't want 15 easter eggers so I ordered 6 different bantam species with about half as easter eggers. One of the chick species was canceled from their side and they refunded before shipping. I only ordered one of that breed so my order had 14 when shipped. They shipped exactly 14 all together in one box with no way for me to tell which breed is which. Upon receipt, there were 9 live chicks and 5 dead in the box. Another never perked up and died within a couple of hours.
They have a live arrival guarantee and I submitted a claim for the 5 dead but it is not processed yet so I cannot comment. Not great results but I could have imagined worse.

My main issue with this company (Something they can address and seem to know about - and why I probably will not order from them again) Without a tracking number, I had no idea when to pick up chicks at post office. The shipment will not be delivered to your house. When talking to Purely Poultry, they were confident the post office would have order ready for pickup on Thursday. They were not. I don't know about your post office, but mine has lines and is only open when I am at work. I knew I'd have to take a few hours off work, but I had no idea I'd need 3 trips of 45 min each to check if post office had chicks yet. It was a relief when I could hear the chicks from the post office lobby and I knew I didn't have to ask my boss for time off work again.

Item # 1 - Purely Poultry is not a hatchery. For remote customers, they are more of a sales service that has different hatcheries that they drop ship orders from. You order from purely poultry and they send the order to another hatchery or farm to ship the chicks to the customer. This is why the selection is large, but it is where there is a gap in information and service support. They know the hatchery that shipped my chicks has the issue of not providing tracking information. There is delay between getting information from the actual hatchery & I suspect it becomes more apparent to customers the more issues one has with an order. Be aware the hatchery that shipped these chicks is in Texas and shipped to my address in Texas which is why Purely Poultry thought I'd get them on Thursday.
Item # 2 - The shipment has no indication of what breed each chick is and their site has no pictures of chicks so I don't know what died and what lived.
Item # 3 - Their claim form states to enter how many of each breed died or they will not process. I submitted by color since I don't know. From pre-purchase calls, I feel like they will process claim without issue.
Item # 4 - I doubt you'll experience same, but company closed down on the Friday my chicks arrived. I talked to them the day before and was told to call back if any issues. I feel like they could have told me they were closed until Monday.
Item # 5 - The form does not state to take photos but somewhere on site it said to take photos in case they request them. The photos are reasonable but put it on the form - digging dead chicks out of the trash made this experience worse.
Item # 6 - Emails received about shipment indicate a tracking number but it is not in any email nor details of the purchase online.
I received date the chicks were shipped and that is it. After searching emails and site, I called them and was told they knew a tracking number wasn't provided because the hatchery didn't provide it to them. This is when I figured out they were not a hatchery. I wasn't aware what effect this would have on picking up the actual shipment - yet. They were trying to retrieve the tracking number but they told me not to expect it before the chicks were received. This is no an uncommon occurrence. Impact of this is in an item below.
Item # 7 - Probably true of all hatcheries. Take this with a grain of salt, but I feel like survival rate is heavily dependent on the breed ordered. Again I don't know which breed each chick is but I know which look similar. I feel like I have certain breeds surviving and others that couldn't survive shipment. Sadly, I think the easter eggers may be one that I had the most dead upon arrival and that died within 36 hours of receiving.
Item # 8 - Unconfirmed, but I saw no indication that they included any gel food in the box as the site states. It's possible they every single trace but I would think I'd see something.
Item #9 - Another item you might not experience - the site indicated a date that I needed to place order by to meet shipment. I thought this would be near the date that the eggs ship out. I believe the date I saw was a week or more before the shipping date. Now I don't think this date has any correlation to shipping date and I think it may only display as a date when they intend to stop shipping chicks due to weather. Don't try to plan around this date if you see it (it doesn't show on site right now and it looks like they are done shipping until spring). Go by the date in the email you receive - the date was accurate for my order.

The good - I have contacted them via phone a couple of times and from a contact link on their site. They answer quickly and the people I've spoken to are very friendly and provided quite a few details and tips since I haven't received chicks in mail before. This is their main strength in my opinion - if the rest of the process was as good, I'd highly recommend them.
One minor issue with communication - their emails embed their response in a survey email. It's easy to overlook initial communications because the subject and beginning of emails when opening them look like surveys. Be sure to scroll down - once I knew this, it isn't a big issue, but it delayed my order by half a week because I was waiting on an email that I didn't know I had.

My experience is mostly from hatching eggs and most have been picked up locally and I get about 80% or higher rates. I've mail ordered serama eggs once and had about 50% hatch and about 40% survive. This sounds common for seramas but I don't think this is common percentages for mail order chicks.
Of the remaining 8 chicks, 3 more died but not immediately. I feel like I might have been able to keep them alive if I could have stayed home or didn't need to sleep.
I initially focused extra attention on the single chick that died but I think it was too far gone to drink. I didn't really pick out the other problem chicks until late in the day of their arrival. And I really didn't know I had problems with them until the following day. I thought I was at risk of losing one other chick but the other two looked far enough along to survive. All 3 were not as perky as the rest and laying under heat more. We coaxed the 3 to drink and eat every 2 hours until about noon. Upon return I was thinking I needed to check on one that was least active but all 3 were dead. Right at this moment my daughter is on an emotional roller coaster. She is really checking on the remaining chicks often today expecting the worst. I think we are past that - I hope. But at least 5 that died look the same so I'm pretty sure those are 5 of my 7 easter eggers.

The 5 that remain were fairly perky upon receipt and they ate and drink without coaxing. So I ended up with about 35% good chicks - and I personally feel like if bantam easter eggers were not in the order, the numbers would be higher. But it may only seem that way because half the order was easter eggers so I'd see more of those die. In either case, I'm assuming I only have 2 or 3 hens and I think odds are that I have no easter egger hens. I'm hoping I can determine what I have after they feather out in a month or so.

For the money spent I could have bought 3 or more hens already laying and spared our experience of all these dead chicks. I've tried to not let that influence my review, but there is room for improvement.

Ordering from here is a crapshoot because they do not hatch/ship their own poultry.
First part of my order - 10 cornish x - were shipped when it was below freezing temps with no supplemental heat, in a drafty box. Needless to say, they arrived mostly dead. Only 4 made it, and only after some intensive care the first three days. Too much work for meat birds!
Second part of my order were 6 call ducks, arrived today. Packaged with supplemental heat and box taped against drafts (and it's 70 outside) All look healthy so far!
The positive -- shipping was free, and they refunded my loss of 6 cornish x. (though no refund for all the time I spent nursing the poor things! Luckily I was off work for two days after they arrived, otherwise none of them would have made it) I would have been super mad if I had paid for shipping. I would NEVER chance a purchase from here unless I got a free shipping offer.
Also, I was able to get 6 call ducks through the mail - almost unheard of! I was very pleased with this!
The negative - I suspect each hatchery they buy from is responsible for their own packaging. So every order will probably be a different scenerio.
So, If you can find a free shipping offer, and you don't mind potentially receiving dead/dying chicks, or if you can be sure the weather will be perfect shipping conditions, I can recommend them.