Advanced Rentals Party Store

I had my first experience hosting a full-​on hostess with the mostest party for 70 guests and used Advanced Rentals Party Store for my rental company. Never in my life had I used a rental company and didn’t know what to expect, but I can assure you that Advanced rentals Party Store is an excellent recommendation for your party rental needs.
I worked with Alice (5 stars plus plus plus) and I’d like to explain how I learned about what a party store and rental company does.
My grandmother gave me a paper copy of their «menu» which offered a brief description and cost for everything they offer, but I quickly learned that I simply needed to go to their website and their online ordering system was quite sophisicated for a peninsula area company. I was pleased by their online ordering system and I quickly got to work with my list.
Hosting a garden party for 70 people in June came with many different parallels that I had to think about and let me be brief on my order:
Initially, I only expected 50 people, so I ordered:
50 salad plates (finger food)
50 forks
50 champagne flutes
50 tumblers (for either water or cocktails)
30 coffee cups (assuming not everyone would consume coffee)
2 glass beverage dispensers
1 10′ x 20′ EZ UP canopy (for a June event I had no expectations it would be beautiful and sunny like it was)
50 white napkins/​linens
1 portable sound system
a few white linen table cloths, a few plastic white table cloths, etc.
Honestly, there was so much going on in my head that I was happy I could just work with one company and they were going to be able to help me with all my rental needs.
Long story short, I created the request on a Sunday and received a phone call from Alice on Wednesday saying she had time to review my order and went through the «things we need to talk about» because they didn’t have available for my time frame.
Instead of glass beverage dispensers (2), she had one (1!) acrylic dispenser, so that was a compromise.
We were right on track for party day with 2 weeks to go, so I was REALLY happy about everything going well.
She emailed me the invoice with costs and what I could expect and I was really happy with it.
A week before the event I was getting nervous about the amount of supplies I had rented so I called up the store to improve my numbers.
I ended up needing the sound system, so I nixed that. And then, of course, everything that I requested 50 of I ended up requesting 70 of. I doubled the amount of coffee cups I ordered.
The ONLY reason the party store gets a 4 star rating instead of a 5 star rating is because every time I called into the store to talk to someone about my order, an ornery old man would always answer the phone and he was really annoying to work with because he acted super annoyed to be answering the phone.
This is how Alice answered the phone, which, thankfully she answered during my initial call cause I probably would’ve found another vendor if she hadn’t answered.
Alice: Thank you for calling Advanced Rentals Party Store, this is Alice, how may I help you?
Grumpy Old Man: HELLO (in irritated voice). What do you want?
I TRIED ONCE to explain to the old man that I needed to update an order I had going and he was like: woah woah woah there, hold on a minute, are you talking about party rental or equipment rental?
I was annoyed at that point because I spent all this time explaining what was going on, I gave him my invoice number, and we could’ve already been passed this if he had greeted me on the phone and asked how he could’ve helped me instead if just saying «what do you want?» If I needed to talk to another department, that could’ve been resolved immediately versus me explaining the whole story.
After that one awful interaction (time is money and I didn’t have a ton of time to spend talking to this old grumpy man) I would call in and immediately request to be connected to Alice. If she was unavailable, I’d call back because he proved unreliable in relaying messages to her.
SO ALICE WAS AMAZING AND THE OTHER GUY WASN’T. Only reason it’s not a 5 star.
THEY DELIVER TO KINGSTON, WHICH IS EVERYTHING IN MY BOOK! So kudos to them!
They dropped off my supplies (I had over 500 individual items) in nice racks and picked them up the day following the event after noon, which gave me time to prepare everything.
The delivery and pick up was exceptional, Alice was phenomenal, and I’ll use Advanced Rentals Party Store in the future for any needs I have.