Rainbow Mealworms

I have been buying insects from Rainbow about once a month for about five years or so.

In that time, I recall one or two orders that the weather got the best of (winters in the northern tundra here are rough) and one that was an understandable mis-pack (ordered large mealies and got large supers).

Upon notification (I sent a polite email with a photo), reships came fast. Better than that one cannot expect.

The quality and consistency from Rainbow really helps my hobby business run smoothly. I've ordered from other companies and got hit and miss feeders, so I know what the market is like overall.

Keep in mind that insects will only arrive in good shape if the customer chooses the correct shipping speed (overnight is very often the best option).

I buy my mealworms from here. Always a good experience. I am only 20 miles away, so the worms usually arrive the next day and are in good condition. I always use US Priority Mail because the mail is delivered early. UpS doesn't arrive until around 7pm here, so the worms would spend the whole day in that truck.
I feed the nesting Western Bluebirds the worms to help them out a bit, feeding their little ones and some to the local Western Fence Lizards in my garden. They love them.

We've been ordering mealworms from Rainbow for three years without issue, but we've had to request refunds from them THREE TIMES, just in the last three months alone.

Most recently we ordered 10,000 mealworms which, due to hot weather in Arizona, were to be "held for pickup." We paid the extra $ and had them sent FedEx 2 Day.

According to FedEx, Rainbow failed to mark "hold for pickup" so FedEx refused the shipment and had it sent back to Rainbow that Friday night.

I left a message on Rainbow's voice mail with my phone number over the weekend asking someone call me. Nobody bothered.

I had to reach out myself on Monday after not hearing from them at all. Every time you contact customer service, you will get a different person who doesn't know what you're talking about or what the last person told you. Frustrating, to say the least.

You cannot speak to the owner -- "Candice Rincon" which sounds like they gave me a fake name -- apparently she has a phone phobia and won't speak to you. WIth customer service like this, I'm not surprised.
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Of the four people I was passed to, eventually someone named "Patti" promised me that, 1. A new shipment would go out Tuesday morning first thing b/c they just missed the last shipment for Monday... and, 2. that they would refund my shipping and give it to me as store credit.

When Tuesday rolled around, we never got a notice that the order shipped. I tried emailing customer service again with the same results. So, I called them. I was told not only were they not going to refund my shipping but they were going to use the store credit to pay for reshipping my worms.

So we reordered. They promised they'd ship that day.

They gave us duplicated tracking numbers, so there was all kinds of confusion, with FedEx saying we'd have to wait till MONDAY at the same time they were telling us they arrived at the pickup station.

When the worms FINALLY arrived...they were a day late AND ALL DEAD. For the second time.

Now here's the kicker; attempts to contact Rainbow failed. They put us on hold for 15 minutes, dropped the call and then blocked our numbers. On the one email we got from them it said very clearly next to my name in the subject line, "BLOCKED - IGNORE."

I'm disputing the last two credit card charges since both shipments were DOA. They tried to sneak the shipping costs back on my card after saying they were refunding shipping. We're disputing that charge too.

DO NOT ORDER FROM RAINBOW. They are incompetent, rude and sadly completely DISHONEST.

Awesome prices and healthy meal worms. My animals love them. They are fast and efficient at this shop and I will be back.

Great company to work with. Recently helped me via chat and email quickly resolving in minutes a question with my recent order. Knowledgeable and friendly. Have had excellent delivery of lively mealworm

Always have a good experience when I visit. Cheaper feeders and lighting is always helpful these days too.

Prices are really good. The store is well stocked. Lots of critters and and critter accessories. I did a lot of research on some beetles that I was interested in. I texted and immediately got a response. The person on the other end was knowledgeable and helpful. I went into the store and had a good look around. Ever employee I dealt with was friendly.

They are so lovely, and their feeder selection and quality are so much more than I have experienced anywhere else. This last order was lost by the shipping folks, and Rainbow Mealworms immediately sent out a replacement order. When the first one was found at the shipping depot (and to my surprise were still alive!) I emailed to offer to pay for the extra ones. They politely declined to take any payment for the replacements, since the error was not on my part. I will definitely be a longtime returning customer if this quality experience persists!

Great place for buying reptiles and their supplies. Friendly staff that were very helpful.

Trigger Warning: giant black roach like insect horde waiting for you inside


I am still waiting for any response, apology, anything. This company clearly doesn't care. So I'd say if you have any interest in getting accurate info, shop elsewhere. I will. The latest few orders I've gotten have been the wrong size insects or completely packed wrong. This order was the wrong size crickets and they weren't secured in any way. The last order all my Phoenix worms were dead. (4 containers worth) the previous order they just didn't send something. And several orders before those, they often sent the wrong size. Usually they contact you back but this is really bad customer service to ignore this. So I guess I just won't buy from this company ever again. All I wanted was for them to contact me so I could get some assurances that this would never happen again! I'm still finding crickets almost 2 weeks later. It's really gross. Take a read below to find out what happened.

Unfortunately my last experience made all my 4 and 5 star experiences fade far into the background.

An improperly packed box of 200 black huge crickets (which look and sound like roaches) were dropped on my house without warning in two boxes, no containers. Fast forward to the crickets apparently either tunneled through the inner box or too large an air hole was poked in the inner box with NO CONTAINER inside. The second outer box has the usual large air holes poked in it.

Since I was on vacation, I had a pet sitter coming every day to deal with my lizards and when she brought the box inside, a horror was unleashed on her and in my house that I'm still cleaning up over a (or TWO!) week later. Every day we find these horrible, nasty crickets everywhere. Our beds, our laundry hampers, book cases, shower curtains, window coverings, AC filters, windowsills and most horrible one yet? Inside the t shirt my husband just put on. Imagine your 6 year old crawling into bed with 5 or 6 of these things every night. Yeah. It's been horrible.

It's awful. I have been sending photos of the situation and emailing, texting and calling to try and resolve this and make sure this fiasco wouldn't ever happen again. For 5 days I've been now ignored and that tells me all I need to know about how any future orders may go.

We've had a few issues along the way but they have usually made it right. I order several hundred dollars worth of insects for my lizards every month, so we have had a few orders go awry before. This time, this is not cool. Imagine unleashing a plague of hundreds of crickets on your house. Imagine a pet sitter frantically calling me while on vacation say she had to bring over two other people to try and control the situation. Then imagine arriving back home to another 40 or 50 more crickets in every room and piece of clothing and furniture imaginable.

This is some biblical level infestation here.

I'm really upset that they not only unleashed this horror on my house and kids and myself, but now have completely absolved themselves of any apology or remedy. I cannot subject myself to this again. This happened once or twice before but not on this level and last time the post office had crushed the box, so not their fault a few things got loose. This time, they packed this plague into a box that couldn't contain it and dropped it on my doorstep.

NOPE!

Sadly, I like to support local businesses. But this, this is not cool. I'll find a business that won't do this and will apologize and make this right. These stupid things were like $5 but they unleashed a nightmare I've been dealing with for almost 2 weeks now. Thanks for ruining my vacation and traumatizing the pet sitter!