Hancock’s of Paducah

I ordered some fabric and they immediately put the funds out of your account on hold; in pending status… several days later I get an email that says the product isn’t in stock. I’m glad I didn’t make a large order because this way of doing business sucks.

First, let me say that I am not a quilter… or should I say wasn’t a quilter. But my sister is, so we took a road trip from Nashville to Paducah! Hancock’s was our first stop (and only stop because we ran out of time) and I ended up spending $ 100 on quilting fabric! I guess I am a quilter now. The selection was awesome and for a non quilter a little intimidating, but the staff were so very helpful and went out of their way to help me pick out «beginner» quilted table runner kits to get me started. I’m hooked.

I have been fortunate enough to visit this magnificent fabric store on 3 previous occasions. I try to make every trip south go through Paducah so I can shop here.
The very first time I came here I could barely breathe I was so excited. I loved it then and I still love it now. My most recent visit was during quilt week when 35,000 quilters descend on this town and the majority also come here.
The store was packed and still, the clerks were chipper, funny and efficient. The lines moved quickly and the chaos was somehow organized.
I’ve probably bought a hundred yards of fabric here, 25 yesterday. I love everything I got and the prices were great.
If you are a fabric nut, you have to come here.
Yes, you have to. So make plans!

I ordered some on sale fabric at a great price and it arrived a week to the day after ordering. I was very pleased with the order and cut size of fabric was generous. Half yards were at least 20″ after washing. I will order again from this store based on price and quality and generous size of cut fabric. I called customer service midweek for an update and the person I spoke to was courteous and pleasant. I see others have reported negative experiences with this company but that was not my experience and I was more than happy with my order.

Unbelievably bad website that crashes within an hour of a sale announcement. No fun spending time shopping, only to have the cart vanish when you go to check out. The phone staff sounds as sick of it as I am. Hancock;s changed the website a year ago or so, and it has been a nightmare ever since. Good luck adding an item to your shopping cart without it recycling to page one, not page 275 where you were shopping. They suckered me in with another so-​called sale, only to have the page crash when I started to check out, and no customer service on a Big Sale Sunday. All I can say is, thanks for saving me $ 300. Guess I didn’t need it anyway.

Their prices are fair but their handling of online orders SUCKS, big time. More often than NOT they don’t even have the fabric in stock, and by the time they DO, you don’t NEED it any longer (I’ve cancelled back orders with them before as I figure, if you can’t get me the fabric in 3 months, why bother?).
it takes an inordinate amount of time for these guys to FULFILL an order, then when they finally DO, they ship it FedEx via the CHEAPEST means possible. I placed an order at 7:45 AM on October 20^th for 5 cuts of fabric. Today is October 29^th and I am STILL waiting for my order to arrive — essentially TEN days later. UNFORGIVABLE.
They had all day October 20, 21, and 22 to fulfill my order, but didn’t get it cut and packaged for shipping until the end of DAY #4, a Friday evening. Please keep in mind that I had SPECIFICALLY requested and PAID for USPS PRIORITY MAIL service for this order as I NEEDED it ASAP for a sewing project promised by the first of next month.
When I contacted them yesterday Customer Service guy Justin advised me that because it was so late in the day on Friday when they got my order ready, the shipping clerk processed it through FedEx as they had missed the USPS pickup for Friday. OK, I get that, but WHY, then, DO THEY SHIP IT FEDEX GROUND, TAKING A WEEK TO ARRIVE, OR LONGER? They should’ve stuck with USPS Priority Mail because … NEWS FLASH … The USPS picks up (and delivers) on Saturdays!!!
If they’d’ve used USPS Priority Mail my package would’ve gone out Saturday and been delivered Monday or Tuesdat. Instead, FedEx let it sit in the Deeth NV warehouse for THREE DAYS doing NOTHING, because Hancock’s tried to save a buck or two on shipping, AT MY EXPENSE.
If you don’t need anything soon, then yeah, maybe order from these guys and they may get it to you some time in the same calendar year. But if you DO need it ‘yesterday’ (as most seamstresses and quilters do) do NOT buy from Hancock’s.

Still waiting for part of an order placed, and paid for, almost three months ago. The only updates I have received is when I have reached out to the company. The fabric was backordered
in early March and I am still waiting. I am not impressed at all.
July 10^th and I cancelled the order today. I still never heard from Hancock’s unless I reached out to them. I will not order from the company again. So disappointed with their customer service.

ZERO STARS! Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware! Customer service is non existent. Rude, rude, rude, and I live in NYC and know what rude is. I bought 108″ wide Robert Kaufman quilt backing and after three washings, including one at 190 degrees, it is still like cardboard. Who wants to have that next to their skin? Their customer service defended it and told me it was Robert Kaufman’s problem. As I see it, if a fabric is too stiff to hand quilt through, Hancock’s should return it to the manufacturer. With all of NYC in my back yard, I should have known better than to order hideous fabric from rude people in KY.

Hancock’s has an overwhelming amount of fabric and especially batiks. I walked in today looking for 4 batiks: chocolate brown, turquoise, mustard, and orange, and lo, a half hour of browsing later I had exactly what I needed. It was the day after christmas and the store was busy. It is true that there are many middle-​aged women here and a lot of bored husbands. But it’s a *fabric store*. Kind of the king of fabric stores in my neck of the woods (I live in Missouri and was visiting my inlaws).
I finished up my browsing, during which I was left alone, which is how I wanted it, and stood in line to get it cut. A worker asked me if I was waiting for cutting, and I said yes and she said to follow her. There is no number or line system, which might irritate some. She cut my fabric, throwing in the last quarter yard of one of the fabrics for free because it wasn’t worth it to them to cut it off and make remnants. She complimented my color sense and sent me on my way.
It is a store for people who know what they’re doing, frankly. This is not JoAnn Fabric or a craft store. This is cotton fabric, a whole barn of cotton fabric, and it is assumed that you know what you’re getting into. And I appreciate that.
Other notes: Never bought online. And the parking lot is poorly maintained gravel.

This sole purpose of this review is to provide the missing floor plan for the physical store
Key: front door = front, 6 o’clock
front left has solids, 7 – 8 o’clock
front left to back left has patterns, 6 o’clock to 10 o’clock
right front 5 o’clock to 3 o’clock has home dec fabric
back right corner at 1 o’clock has a table of heavily discounted home dec
right side corridor at 3 o’clock leads to a «back room» containing many sale fabrics, and sale packs
left side has men’s and women’s rest rooms
deep left side (from the vantage of the entry corridor) of this back room has precut fabrics of varying lengths for ~$ 6

I have been shopping online from and recommending them to others for at least 3 years now. Still a good selection of fabrics-​but they recently decided to «update» their website-​and it completely stinks! Pages take forever to load, pictures won’t enlarge, things say they are in stock, you add to cart, and then get a message during checkout that you need to «fix» your order before it can go through. But when you go to your basket, you have to search your order for the item whose final price is 0 and delete it. Time consuming and frustrating. I called repeatedly since the update (customer service used to be stellar) and representatives are unfriendly and unconcerned. Seems like the new motto is-​get used to it and tough luck if you have an issue. I miss the way this company used to be! Ps-​they have been throwing out better coupons through email and I can only guess many individuals are unhappy and looking elsewhere to purchase fabric.

I can’t complain! I walked in for the first time and was promptly greeted with smiles all around. I told them I had never been here before and was told all the specials going on and was pointed to certain things around the store to look at. I was then given free reign over the whole store. LOVED IT!!! If there was something specific I wanted, I just asked and someone hopped to help!
I WAS IN HEAVEN!

What a mess! Was it just me? First they have totally screwed up my order which I had ordered b/​c my niece gave me a gift certificate and there has been one problem after another, stuff sent I didn’t order, some things NOT sent, things on back order then I called to substitute after waiting from before Memorial Day to the 4^th of July then part of back order and not what I order that was substituted. THEN to top it off when you call customer service it is the rudest lady there named Becky… OUCH…poor service all around… I have NO idea if I even have any money left on the gift certificate… there are way to many places to get fabric and this is NOT the one for me… wish my niece had read all of this b 4 she wasted her money and got me so pissed off having to deal with them.

After checking the website and listening to the phone message for store hours, my wife and I went there at 8:30AM on Memorial Day on our way to the National Quilt Museum. The hours stenciled on the door state that they open at 9:30AM, but there was a piece of paper taped to the door that said «Open 8AM Weekdays.» Well, they weren’t open at all on Memorial Day, yet there was nothing on the door, the website, or the phone message stating that they were closed. While we were sitting outside waiting to see if someone showed up, several other potential customers drove up. One woman said that she had travelled from Alaska to see the museum and shop at Hancock’s, but now could not do the latter because they were closed.
I could certainly understand them being closed on Memorial Day (I am surprised the museum was open). However, not communicating that to their customers is just poor customer service, and they need to get their hours straight between the phone message and what posted on the door.
Fortunately we were able to go back on Tuesday and my wife had a good time shopping there. While I am not a sewer, I was very impressed by their stock and when I asked a question the staff was very friendly.
Aside from the episode about being closed without notice on Memorial Day, it seemed like a nice enough place, so I can’t rate them too low.

I was at the store twice during QUILT WEEK and thought the employees went out of the way to help when they could, most were friendly even if the place was a madhouse.
Would I go back? Of course I would, for those that had a bad experience last week, you must not have ever been around crazy quilters before.

The only reason Hancock’s of Paducah gets one star is because if I left no stars, someone might think that I accidentally forgot to rate them.
Admittedly, I’m not a fabric store kind of person, but I’m married to someone who is, and since I enjoy her company, I did the driving from Nashville. The place is a dump, and it is so cluttered, it’s impossible to move around. Since they actually bus people into the place, there is always a crowd standing around, blocking the only door, both inside and out.
And as a warning to other guys, all of the indoor restrooms are for women. Men have to use the porta-​potties on the far side of the muddy parking lot. That’s a real treat in the pouring rain.

First off I must say that this company has some good prices and excellent variety and quality fabrics. However they must be the slowest company I have ever ordered from! I placed my order on ³⁄₁₃ and received a «we are processing your order email.» Two days later I get an email that one of my items was back ordered. So I decided to cancel the request for that item figuring they would have, or already did, ship the rest of the order.
Well on ³⁄₁₉ I go online to see when my fabric would arrive only to find the ship status showed «No status available». When I checked the details of the order it showed a tracking number but also had «in the Warehouse» for the status.
To take the cake it showed that the item I cancelled with a ship date of ³⁄₁₉. I received a cancellation email from on ³⁄₁₆ — why did it ship?
I wrote them and asked them why they shipped something that they did not have in stock. By this time I had ordered it from somewhere else and was not going to accept the order from them.
Here is the response from Hancock on 3/​20, «I’m sorry for the confusion, the backorder has been cancelled, the available items are being prepared for shipment now.» Sigh… not much to say here but FTLOG pay attention people.
I am thinking why in is this taking so long? I ordered this on ³⁄₁₃ and now it a week later ³⁄₂₀ and they are just preparing it for shipment. What have they been doing all this time? If you are going to have an internet business do not make people wait 1 week before you prepare their order for shipping.
Recently I have purchased fabric from two small companies on eBay and had the items reach me in 2 days from across the country! Come on how difficult is this?

I’ve ordered from this Hancock’s in the past, but my most recent experience made me not only write them off completely, but make sure everyone knows about their appalling customer service.
First, when you place an order, most browsers will flash a «Warning! This site could harm your computer!» page, indicating that their security certificate is out of date. When I pointed this out to them, they insisted everything was fine and that there must be a problem with my browser. (This is not a browser problem, and any IT person worth his/​her salt knows it.) I used another browser, took the risk, and placed my order.
Second, the order was sent to an old address, and when I tried to correct this over the phone, I was told it was too late. When I looked for order-​confirmation and shipping emails, I couldn’t find them by looking for «Hancock’s.» Why? Because the company sends from «Hancocks.» This would be a simple problem to solve, but, again, they weren’t interested in my suggestions.
One month later, I received a duplicate order after the first had finally been delivered to the proper address. I called Hancock’s of Paducah to let them know, and to make sure I hadn’t been charged twice. They said, «Oh, just arrange a FedEx pickup.» I said, «That’s a little inconvenient. Could I talk to a supervisor?»
Someone named Justin gets on the phone and proceeds to shout, «Erin! We have TRIED to fix this! Just go to FedEx!» Stunned, I said, «I’m sorry, I don’t know you, and there was no note or apology of any kind included in the duplicate order. This order has been the most unpleasant online-​shopping experience ever, and I’m just trying to let you know.»
Justin – who turns out to be the co-​founder of the company – then shouts, «GOOD LORD!» At which point, I hung up.
In short, if you really enjoy being shouted at by someone who needs to either take anger-​management classes and/​or turn over the Customer Service department to a more capable staff member, then this is your place. If you prefer a company that knows how to do business online without shouting at customers, screwing up an order on every level, and ultimately inconveniencing customers with no apology or explanation, then I’d go somewhere else.