I was browsing Miss Snark‘s archives recently, as I am wont to do, and I cam across a reference to a store called Kate’s Paperie. Miss Snark often wrote of herself in the third person, and she said this:

Miss Snark loves paper. Kate’s Paperie is one of her favorite places on earth. Crane and Company at Rock Center too, but in a pinch any office supply store can provide a fix.

I, too, have a great love for stationery, pens, notebooks, and the like. I collect journals, although I don’t fill them particularly completely. And I’m always on the look-out for stationery, so I naturally clicked through to the link above. And oh, boy, it is a good thing that I don’t live in NYC, because I would be in that store every day and soon I would have many kinds of beautiful writing and office supplies, and no money at all. But at any rate, I found my way to the sale page, and found some gorgeous, elegant stationery (for, like $3!) and proceeded to order some.

… Which is where the trouble started. [But please don’t stop reading at this paragraph — the troubles got better! And if this blog post was a novel, this would be the huge duhn duhn duhn foreshadowing!! section.] To make a long story short, the ordering process was fraught with errors, funky forms not working & 404s and such, and I was not able to successfully place my order. Woe! Disaster! But not to be long daunted, I fired off a note to their customer service department, detailing the nature of the errors that I had received. Then I went to bed.

Yesterday morning, I received an email from Kate’s, and shortly thereafter, a (long distance) phone call from a very sweet lady — I didn’t catch her name — who apologised for the errors, offered me free shipping, and took my order over the phone. And the email thanked me for my list of things and promised that their IT department would look into it.

And then, today, I got home from work and lo and behold, there was a package on my desk. And inside that package was the most beautiful paper and envelopes in the world. The world, my friends!

So, to conclude, Kate’s Paperie not only has beautiful products and unimaginable sale prices, but some of the best customer service I’ve ever received in my life. They were courteous, prompt, and genuinely helpful, and deserve huge kudos. So if you’re in the mood for some really excellent paper products, do consider choosing Kate’s.