Dick Blick Art Materials has served artists with discount art supplies since 1911. Blick is well known for our enormous selection, dependable savings, and fine customer service on thousands of in-stock art supplies.
Blick Art Materials, LLC (dickblick.com) has 291 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 3.4 out of 5.
Also known as
Blick Art Materials, dickblick.com
Website
dickblick.com
Category
Art & Handicraft
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
About these reviews
Replies
The company replied to 62% of reviews.
Latest
Most recent review: September 2026.
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Reviews are shown as their authors wrote them. The company can reply, but cannot edit them.
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Incredibly poor company with awful customer server.
GH
Grace H.
Untrusted
I ordered a bunch of supplies to keep me busy in quarantine and they cancelled my order without giving my money back.
Response from Blick Art Materials, LLCApr 3, 2020
We are very sorry for any misunderstanding regarding your order. We did email you to get approval of the shipping charges, however after 2 weeks we still had not received a response so had to cancel the order. Because you did not approve the shipping, you were never charged for the order. There may have been a temporary hold placed on funds to cover the order amount at the time you submitted it online, however no money was ever transferred to us and the hold should have been released automatically. The hold process is determined by your financial institution. Please contact your financial institution directly with any questions you may have about their hold process. Again, we are very sorry to hear about this, and will be happy to work with you on this if you would still like to complete your order.
AF
Al F.
Bait and Switch
I was looking for some acrylic paints and found the three colors I was looking for. Blick was having a promotion where, if you spent more than $x, you would get a complimentary kit of Atelier mediums. So, I went ahead and ordered other paints to bring my total to $x.
I received the paints, but was told that the Medium Kit was on back order and would be in in another 2-3 weeks. I waited about 4 weeks and asked them the status. They said that the order had been cancelled. I said "No, then why did you send me the back-order notice email".
Then they said they apologize but that kit has been discontinued.
Response from Blick Art Materials, LLCMay 21, 2020
We are very sorry for your disappointment regarding the special offer. Please note that when special offers such as this are made available, it is always with the disclaimer that it is while supplies last. We did have an order in with the vendor to receive additional kits for the offer, prompting the back order notice you mention. We only later found that the vendor had discontinued the kit and would not be shipping any additional kits so unfortunately, we did not have any kit to send you.
KR
Kristin
Bait Click prices to get you to their Website!
While searching easels, I came across one of Blick's Easels in my search results. It was what I wanted, so I clicked on it to take me to the website so I can purchase. When I added the easel to the cart, the price jumped up from $107 to $139.99. I called customer service to see if they could adjust the price....after all, that is what they were advertising. The customer service guy was very patronizing....just repeating himself over and over again like I'm unintelligent. "The pricing is set by the manufacturer. On my end, it shows $139.99. I'm sorry we can't change it." They ARE the manufacturer, and the price was being advertised as $107 until I added it to the cart. It felt really wrong. Like, total bait click. It's too bad because I was planning to purchases brushes, paint, and canvases, as this was a birthday gift for my son. Honestly, the worst customer service I have experienced in a long time from any company (online or brick & mortar).
JP
Jennifer P.
Have a had a very poor result with this…
Have a had a very poor result with this company. Placed order 2 days ago. Noticed that no confirmation email was sent. Called company and they stated security hold was placed on my account, but money for order was taken out of my account. Tried to speak with supervisor. Was told that no supervisor was available to resolve this issue. Customer service agent states" oh this happens all the time". Have since read multiple reviews and complaints about this issue and this company. Will not order from this company again.
Response from Blick Art Materials, LLCMay 21, 2020
We are sorry if the information provided to you when you called was incomplete or confusing. When you place your order, the order amount is placed "on hold" by your financial institution and they are still in control of your funds at that point. No funds are transferred to us until your order ships and we actually bill your bank. While there was a short delay in the transaction being approved, resulting in your order status showing as being held, our records indicate your order was still shipped and delivered on time. Again we apologize for any confusion and hope you will give us another try!
TR
Tricia
Ordered a gift card online on 2/12/20…
Ordered a gift card online on 2/12/20 at 11am PST - paid $7.50 for two day shipping to receive by 2/14/20. Shipment did not arrive until 2/17/20. Sent an email requesting a refund of the $7.50 . The response I got was that I their cut off for 2 day shipment orders is 2:30pm (I asume EST since in IL) and my order wasn't placed in time. I forwarded a screen shot of my irder confirmation time stamped 10:59 am PST. This is the response:
"I see that the order was placed in time. However, this was on a system hold that the system puts on the order that was not released until after the time of shipping for that day. This did not ship from our warehouse until 2/13 and since it is business days the date it arrived was two business days on 2/18/20.
As a one time curtesy I will refund that shipping amount for you."
Very poor quality customer service. Definitely left a bad taste in my mouth - would not recommend.
Response from Blick Art Materials, LLCFeb 19, 2020
We are terribly sorry for the delay in receiving the gift card order and for the lack of empathy regarding the delay. You did place the order before our cut off time and regretfully the order did not process in a timely matter, and that was all on Blick.
The refund of the express shipping fee has been issued as the gift card order did not arrive on time. The refund should appear on the statement within 3 business days. We will work on our internal process to prevent this issue in the future and hope that you and your loved ones do shop with us again!
PM
Phil M.
Stick to Brick and Mortar, get out of ecommerce
Worst website, worst eCommerce service. They should stick to brick and mortar. They have no clue about how to run a website. I placed an order in December. Early enough for Christmas. I received a notice about a week before Christmas after I asked when the order would ship. They told me the items were on backorder. I said, shouldn't that be on the product page before checkout? they said it was. You just had to scroll to more information, find this funny little button that was not obvious, click it and it will tell you a generic message. Dumbest thing ever. Did they ever look at an Amazon page which says right on the page "3 left, order soon" or "not available right now. Expected to be back in stock on xxxx". So, now it is nearing the end of January and they still dont know when they will be back in stock. Really bad.
Response from Blick Art Materials, LLCFeb 6, 2020
We are very sorry to hear that you had a frustrating experience with items that were out of stock at the time of your order. We do display icons on the product pages to indicate the available status of each item. The item status for each item is shown again in your shopping cart and again on the order confirmation email we send. Out of stock messages are displayed in red font. Also, we do also include messages in the cart for items with low stock, displayed as “2 Available, Order Soon…”. We truly appreciate your feedback though and we will review our process to see if there is some way to better indicate when items are out of stock.
Regarding when out of stocks items are back in stock; we have to rely on the vendor to provide us with the date that they expect to be able to deliver their product to us. Though we use a state of the art inventory system and reorder on a timely basis, it does sometimes happen that there are delays in delivering the product to us, resulting in the item being out of stock and sometimes not back in stock on the date we were expecting them. Usually, if a vendor proves to be unreliable on a regular basis we will find a different one, but for some products, there are no alternative vendors which is the case for your backordered item. There is only one source for that particular product so we don’t have any alternative, unfortunately. But unlike some vendors, we do allow out of stock items to be placed on your order, rather than removing them from the order requiring you to check back and make a separate order when they do become available. This locks in the price of the item at the time of the order, plus we don’t charge additional shipping if backordered items result in multiple shipments for an order. Backorders are filled first when more stock is received, and we don’t charge you for the backorder until the item actually ships, so you can easily cancel without needing to wait to for refunds, etc. Again, we appreciate your feedback and hope you’ll give us another try in the future.
XN
xuan N.
Unauthorized charges for a non-existing order!
Update:
11/12/2019:
After they said they canceled my order, two days later they said it was shipped and charged me in full. I let it go and got the order a few days later. Shipped in a Blick Art box, from IL, their headquarters, missing two items. At this point I searched out the company and lead to the BBB site. I searched for Utrech art and was taken to Blick Art, same company from the BBB. I left roughly the same review there and they answered.....and sent the two missing items. Please check BBB or order, review, message and more.....
Here they claimed it's two different company, so why I ordered from Utrech, email and customer service were all from Blick, the order was shipped in a Blick box? So did Blick sent me the correct order I made from Utrech? Come on, really?
--------------------------end of update.
I placed an order on their sub sites, Utrecht but was charged under Blick art and also the customer service are all from Blick. They are the same company.
My order was to be paid with paypal, part balance and the rest on my cc. They put a hold/authorization on 10/11 but never email or ship my order. I waited a few days and contact them. They then told me there was issue with my payment and I told them to cancel that order paypal and I will reorder using my cc directly. On 10/16, I got an emailed they canceled/released so I can try again. Little did I know, they put a second hold/authorization on my Paypal again for the same amount/order. Causing all my balance I had gone and part hold on my cc. Basically when they do this, Paypal and cc will put a hold/pending on the amount. Eventhough not charged, The balance money are not available for me to use.
I contacted them and they said they found the two authorizations from paypal. However they cannot void the 2nd one until the order is shipped.
The order was already cancelled by them. So of course there will be no shipping. Second, they suppose to void the first authorization, instead they tacked on another one without my permission. I have over $82 on hold by them and not sure how many more. What a scam of a company. If they keep doing this, I might have to file small claim court to get my money off hold to use. As both CC and Paypal cannot get involved until the transaction is completed.
Response from Blick Art Materials, LLCFeb 3, 2020
Thank you for your recent order. Although Blick and Utrecht are under the same management, certain things are handled separately for various reasons, including company reviews. Please accept our apologies for the issue you experienced with your Utrecht order. When an order is placed using PayPal payment, an authorization is created which puts a hold on the funds. When the order attempted to ship, we attempted to charge against that authorization. PayPal did not allow the charge to go through. At that point you contacted us to remove the shipping charges and to try again. Due to a system glitch between us and PayPal, instead of charging against the original hold, it created another hold on the funds. Please be assured this is not a common occurrence. When it does happen, if we void anything off of the PayPal payment, they will consider the order voided and they will not allow us to charge for the merchandise that we ship. Our contract with PayPal, states that we must obtain the requested payment for shipped items before we can request a hold removal. Once the order shipped and it was charged, we successfully removed that additional hold as promised. Our apologies that it took longer than intended. We also resent the items missing from your order due to the damage that occurred in shipping. If you have any further issues, please contact us so we can do our best to make your next experience better. We do appreciate your business.
