List of Keyboard Retailers / Shops / Stores / Vendors?

Marketplace
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@milktooth

I didn’t mean there had to be a mistake on your side, but not necessarily on @swordfairy77 's part either.
More like in between…

I mentioned ‘‘weird mistake’’.

Such a weird mistake with shipping happened to me last year.

I bought some used parts online for my electronics hobby, some metal casing and a couple of electronic components.
A couple of days later I got a parcel, that was surprisingly flat for a metal casing, and surprisingly light as well.
I was confused, I didn’t order anything else, but the shipping label clearly showed my name and the correct address.

Inside the package was a rather expensive looking woman’s sports top. :astonished:

I got even more confused. I asked my wife if she did order that, and got it sent to my name instead of her’s, for whatever reason.
I mean, it was just grasping a straw in search for an explanation, as the top was not even closely her size.

I then wrote to the seller and asked about if he accidentally mixed up two parcels when sending stuff to two different buyers. He reacted as confused as I, and told me the casing and components were the only thing he sold recently.

Under the correct shipping label I could see a bit of the three-line shipping-code sticking out, written with a marker pen.
(Some explanation: I live in Norway. Here you can order a shipping online. You pay it, and get a three-line, twelve-character shipping code, which you simply write on the parcel. The shipping company scans that code, then prints out the actual shipping label, and sends the parcel on it’s way.)

I managed to peel off the label enough to be able to read the code.
I asked the seller for the code he used, and it was different.

The mystery started to unravel…

I contacted the shipping company.
With the code and the shipping label they were able to track who posted the woman’s top.
Also who got my metal casing, that person expecting a sports top, probably also thinking “WTF is that supposed to be?”.
This is what happend: Some person at the shipping company had two parcels to be labeled, printed out two shipping labels, but mixed it and put each label on the wrong parcel.
I got the woman’s top, someone else got my metal case.
We managed to sort it out in the end, but it took quite a while. I got my casing and the other one got the top.

Why am I telling this lengthy story?

While very unlikely, weird mistakes DO happen.

And in times like these, with scammers being a not-so-uncommon problem, it is somehow understandable to blame either seller or buyer (depending on whose point of view you have).
But: Like in my case, this seems to be another example of a weird mistake.
And like in my case the parcel size was not right as well.
As I said, if you really want to scam someone, why ship anything at all?
Even more so as the hand cream is obviously quite expensive.
As was the woman’s top, actually more expensive than my metal case, so money-wise I maybe should have kept it :wink:

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347

I just want to confirm two things: @milktooth is indeed one of the most responsive and trustworthy vendors I’ve worked with, and secondly, things can go wrong at the shipping companies involved (relabeling), customs, etc. My most notable experience was when I expected a kick-ass wireless ergo mouse but received a strange-looking pink hand glove you probably use to pet horses.

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348

Exactly.

I’ve not yet bought anything from milktooth, but everything here clearly suggests that he(?) is a reliable seller, and that the problem probably occured under shipping.

And obviously others like @dovenyi also have experienced weird shipping-mistakes before.

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349

Maybe we should stick a link to the MK Vendor Trust and Safety System list http://www.mktrust.org/ here?

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I’d like to petition for a warning or just plain removal of THOK as a retailer.

As a fan of their designs well as a customer of their artisans, trays, etc… it has saddened me to watch their customer outreach in their own Discord, as well as the rest of their social media sites, deteriorate to the point that it’s looking like a Mechs & Co. Situation allmovernagain, but on a smaller scale.

THOK is (was?) a designer of some well-liked artisans that would be part of GMK keycap set group buys, as well as having themed keycaps of their own.

As the hobby is doing it’s best to navigate the shaky seas of the current state of things, and try to hammer out it’s own regulation systemmfor consumer/retailer trust, we have to still speak up to have our voices heard and let discussion get started so that folks that are just coming into this hobby still can have some guidance until things get ironed out and firmed up.

I don’t want to have this post seen as me bashing a retailer, because that’s not my intention. Instead, I am posting this like hopefully everyone else on here; to allow folks to speak up (either the customers or shop owners) so that there can be transparency in communication and expectations can be set.

No regulation or trust systems is ever going to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything to help out others in this community any way we can as well as grow our own experience and understanding.

Every little bit helps, right?
:+1::+1:

351

The website from “Keycables” is down and has been for a while now. Also the corresponding instagram account (keycables) has not been active for over a year now. I’d suggest removing the entry from the list.

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I tried to edit the list but I get a warning about exceeding the amount of characters allowed in the body post. :upside_down_face:

MK Vendor Trust and Safety Tracker sheet is here:

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Hey Folks :wave:
I hope it’s okay that I post your own store here. I started BeaverKeys this year with the main focus of offering affordable keyboard gear to folks in Canada and the US. Been in the hobby since 2017 or so.
I’m based in Ottawa, Ontario :slight_smile:

Site: https:// beaverkeys .ca
Type: :shopping_cart: : Storefront
Region: :canada: :us: :eu:
Merch: Switches, keycaps and keyboards
Brands: Akko, Monsgeek, Durock, Aflion, KTT, Tecsee, HC Studio, JWK, Gateron
Services: lubing, assembly, consulting for builds
Socials:
Instagram @beaverkeys
Youtube: @beaverkeys

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For custom cables there is “Cables Hero” : cableshero .com based in France.
Cables are mainly inspired on GMK themes

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Hi all, hope it’s fine to post our own store here. We launched in 2021 and are based in the Lower Mainland in Canada. Our selling point is FREE Canada-wide shipping on all orders, including single orders of lube!

TurtleKeebs
turtlekeebs .com
Type: :shopping_cart: = Storefront
Region: :canada:
S/H: :earth_americas:
Merch: Switches, Keycaps, Deskmats, Parts/Tools

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would you mind to add us? from China. and ship to global country.

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357

It would have been really cool to see how this list looks pre covid, at the end of (the height of)covid, and now :stuck_out_tongue:

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https://pullingkeys.com is a family run US based switch vendor that is also a Gazzew authorized reseller. Most orders are shipped the next business day.

359

This wiki exceeded the maximum character count / the maximum character count on keebtalk was reduced after the wiki was created.

Effectively it is impossible to add new vendors or even edit the already existing data.

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I’m sanitizing my vendor database at kbd.news, contacting every single store to check who’s still alive and kicking. I’m pretty sure there are dozens of closed shops in the list above who can be removed. Will get back to you with the names. However, this would not solve the main issue with the character limit ofc.

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361

I think some caution is warranted about ordering from MyKeyboard. I know they’ve been a solid vendor for a long time, but their communication seems to have really dropped off in the past month or so.

They sent the wrong keycaps to me after their BFCM sale in November: I ordered Brown on Beige and Beige on Brown HSA but they sent BoW and WoB HSA. I’ve emailed them three times without any response (waiting a few weeks between emails so as to be patient). Their discord is FULL of people complaining about unanswered tickets, no communication, and products not shipping on time or at all. I feel kind of lucky to have received anything at all considering the other issues people are having. Some people have mentioned calling on the phone helps, but it’s apparently $3/minute for me to do that internationally.

Not sure if there’s some extenuating circumstance or if this is the beginning of the end for them…

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So in the past few weeks I went through all of the shops in my list of 500+ keyboard vendors, contacted them one by one, and just finished this major update adding missing locations, social links, logos, etc. where possible.

One byproduct of this endeavor is this image sprite with the logos of 576 shops:

sprite-1-20240331
sprite-1-202403311920×1080 345 KB

The other result is the almost 150 strong list of vendors offering you various discounts with the KBDNEWS coupon code now: :smiley:

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Btw, I have identified almost 100 closed shops… No idea how to incorporate it into the top table. It’s not a secret that I used this thread as a start when there were 210 entries in the list.100 abandoned shops would mean almost half of that initial set is gone.

If anyone is interested I still display these shops as grayed out.

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364

Awesome work. Thanks for this

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