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The Essential Fly Reviews

4.8 Rating 2,064 Reviews

97 %

of reviewers recommend The Essential Fly

Company Reviews

Product Reviews

4.8

Based on 2,064 reviews


Shipping & Delivery
Delivery Methods	Postal Service
Average Delivery Time	Within 5 Days
On-time Delivery	Greater than 91%
Accurate And Undamaged Orders	98%
Customer Service
Communication Channels	Telephone, Email, Live Chat
Queries Resolved In	Under An Hour
Customer Service	4.9 out of 5

About The Essential Fly:

Specialists in Fly Fishing with salmon, trout flies, and flies for lots of other species. We sell Fly Fishing Tackle and gear and a huge range of Fly Tying Materials and Tools - The Essential Fly is a leading supplier of gear for fly fishermen, rainbow & brown trout flies, salmon flies and flies for every species from our massive selection. Fly tying materials and tools to satisfy every fly tyers needs. With tackle from Greys to Wychwood, from fly rods to waders, luggage and all of the accessories you will need.

We have won awards for customer service and believe in value and quality. Check our reviews from thousands of customers all around the world. Having delivered to over 50 countries from homes to fishing lodges for that last minute requirement.

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The Essential Fly 5 star review on 18th January 2024

The Essential Fly 5 star review on 18th January 2024

The Essential Fly 5 star review on 18th January 2024

The Essential Fly 5 star review on 29th November 2023

The Essential Fly 5 star review on 29th November 2023

The Essential Fly 5 star review on 29th November 2023

The Essential Fly 5 star review on 29th November 2023

39

Anonymous

Anonymous // 01/01/2019

Filter: Rated 2 None 5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Stars Helpful

“The parcel never arrived as the address was wrong it did not say flat23 Kiln House even though I have had parcels from you before”

Posted 11 months ago

Hi David, Thank you for your order with us. I can see that your order was placed on a new account by yourself and checked out via PayPal to a different delivery address to another normal account and email you previously may have used. The address we sent your order to was provided by yourself at the time of check out, our system does not link the address up with PayPal and if using a new email to create an account it does not link up with other addresses. We have fulfilled your order as specified to the address provided by yourself. If the Royal Mail returns the order to ourselves we will then be able to contact you to arrange re-delivery and confirm the address to send it to. Kind regards The Essential Fly

Posted 11 months ago

“My order took a long time to be delivered and was not complete, not great service”

Posted 1 year ago

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to discuss your order and review with us. We have discussed this also with our customer services team who were also in contact with you during and at the time your order was dispatched. In summary we can see you placed your order on Friday 3rd March. Some of your items ordered were special order items ie we order them in especially for you from the manufacturer as is shown on the site and in the check out. Our customer services team also emailed you regarding this. Bearing in mind we had the weekend where our suppliers are not working, we dispatched your order on 9th March by first class mail and you were given the tracking number. The service selected was regular first class mail and not Tracked 24 so we are all reliant on Royal Mail to get deliveries out as quickly as they can. We are sorry that one fly was out of stock and we could not supply that to you. This was refunded to you, directly back to your payment method. For your reassurance, as we see you have ordered from us previously, if items are in stock we aim to ship same day/next day depending on time of ordering. But when we have special order items, as was the case in your order, there will be a few extra days before we can dispatch. We feel we have done what we can to keep in touch with you and get your order to you as quickly as we can in the circumstances. In the future, if you would like to double check on stock availability before ordering, please do check our online stock advice (to the right of each item on the page) or call us on 01757333003, we will be happy to advise you. As you have already been emailing with us we are aware you have our customer services email address and we welcome you keeping in touch so we can do our very best to help you. Thank you and with all good wishes for a fabulous season.

Posted 1 year ago

“I ordered a fly line, in the sale, and given a refund as product was "unavailable" . Only to find that the line was advertised, and available, on their site, on the same day as refund, at a higher price. Poor practice to say the least. Not the first time sale items have not been available.”

Posted 2 years ago

“My order was incomplete, and has not yet been refunded nor replaced. I chased but no reply. Lack of comminication.”

Posted 2 years ago

“I have always been impressed by The Essential Fly's service and speed of delivery. Sadly, not this time. Not once, but twice, my order of two 50m spools of 3.5lb 6X Fluorocarbon tippet material (not cheap) was confused. First with 6lb (instead of 6X), and then with 4.5lb BS. I have kept both (mistakes), rather than compounding the error. Attention to detail in this trade is key......”

Posted 3 years ago

“Disappointed ist not the service of your own organisation but the art of delivery. You chose the DHL Express, that disappointed me for the second time. On the agreed day I was at home all the time but they never called me. Instead they urged me to visit their office to pick it up. Do not deliver me anything through DHL Express!”

Posted 3 years ago

We thank you for your recent order Mr Kamizuru. We are sorry that you are disappointed with DHL's courier service. We ship worldwide every day and to be honest DHL normally provide an excellent service. Unfortunately here it appears that a local office has provided a less that satisfactory service. Unfortunately this is out of our control. As mentioned to you on email, we can use the Royal Mail service as an alternative. However for the large item you ordered, Royal Mail cannot accept this as it is too large for them. Equally the mail service can take a lot longer than an express courier service - especially at this time when mail services are swamped and parcels are taking much longer than normal to arrive. However we do hope you are enjoying your purchase and for any future purchases you may wish to make, please do check in with us for any assistance via customerservices@theessentialfly.com. Thank you Team TEF

Posted 3 years ago

“Good products and prices but the order delivered didn’t match the order placed. 1 week on still waiting for a response from customer services”

Posted 3 years ago

Hello Mr Knott, we were sorry not to be able to respond to your emails over the weekend, but we were closed for the bank holiday. We are glad we were able to chat with you on the phone to clarify the position on your order over that we dispatched to you earlier this month. We are sorry we don't have any more of the 3" Devon Minnow Standard Blanks - our stock has sold out unfortunately. But we hope the extra 2.5" we sent you are helpful to you. Assuring you of our best attention to any of your queries. We are here to help. With kind regards Team TEF

Posted 3 years ago

“Well over a week and still no order. Maybe the c19 has slowed things down..... not happy”

Posted 3 years ago

We are very sorry that your order has not arrived yet. As you are aware it left us on 27th April by Royal Mail international airmail on a tracked service. Unfortunately due to the worldwide crisis mail services are taking longer than normal to arrive in some areas, including international deliveries. We can see from the tracking number that your order is in Ireland and we sincerely hope it will be with you very soon. Please feel free to keep in touch with us via customerservices@theessentialfly.com or by phone 00 44 1757 333003 for any queries so we can help you directly. Thank you Team TEF

Posted 3 years ago

“I have not received my purchase yet. It is now sunday 4/5? I understand why there is a delv issue due to the Covid19 problem. I do expect to receive this sometime. Please give me another opportunity to review you and contact me regarding my order. Thank you”

Posted 4 years ago

We are sorry to hear your order has not arrived. We dispatched it to you by first class airmail from our UK office promptly. We are aware that you are in the States and that there may be a delay on international shipments currently. We sincerely hope it gets to you soon and that you can enjoy your goods very soon. If ever there is anything we can help you with please feel free to email us directly at customerservices@theessentialfly.com We do hope you will keep well. Kind regards from Team TEF

Posted 4 years ago

“Have yet to receive my order .Dec 11 shipped.still haven't received order Dec 26 very dissatisfied.trail run ordering material from a new supplier.”

Posted 5 years ago

Hi James, Your order was shipped from us in the UK on the 11th December via the Royal Mail on a First Class International service. The Royal Mail aim to deliver world wide within 5-7 working days. However there are sometimes unforseen delays and during peak shipping times there are excessive post which can also cause delays. Due to it being Christmas next week there is a increase is post and this does cause some delays. I have checked the Royal Mail website and their last date for poste to be guaranteed to be delivered before Christmas for the USA was the 8th December You placed your order at 15:37 GMT on the 8th December this order contained special order items which we ordered in for you hence the delay in shipping, however the order was shipped within our advertised timescale. I am sure that you will receive your order shortly it may arrive before Christmas or just after. I am sorry that your order has yet to arrive and for any inconvinience this may have caused. Kind regards The Essential Fly

Posted 5 years ago

“Received a fly line winder that was sent in a broken condition, I sent an email complaining about the said item but had no reply or any aknowledgement whatsoever, fortunately the broken winder was repairable and as I needed it to load some reels up I repaired it............... hence the poor rating.”

Posted 5 years ago

We are genuinely sorry to hear that the winder arrived in a broken condition. However our team did contact you but did not hear back. The manufacturer of this item is normally very good at arranging replacements under warranty in such situations and we contacted them on your behalf to discuss this. We shared your photo with them. However in our email to you, we did recommend to you not to repair the item yourself as it would potentially invalidate the warranty. It is certainly rare that faulty goods come in to us like this but we can assure you that we do our best to look after our customers when this should it happen. So we are sorry to hear that you are dissatisfied with our service. We hope you will give us an opportunity to reassure you of our commitment to the best customer care. Thank you The Essential Fly Customer Services Team

Posted 5 years ago

“I WOULD LOVE TO SAY HOW GOOD THE FLIES WERE BUT I STILL HAVE NOT RECIEVED MY ORDER”

Posted 5 years ago

We are sorry to hear that your order has not yet arrived. It left us very promptly from when you placed your order. It was sent first class airmail. I notice that you live on the other side of the world to us so imagine it must still be in transit but we do hope it will be with you very soon and that the flies will be very lucky for you. Please do keep in touch and let us know once they arrive? With very best wishes The Essential Fly Team

Posted 5 years ago

“I don’t normally write reviews but I did query this order that it was green in colour by description and picture and it was yellow,when it arrived, not what I wanted, and as boss man said he would phone back and never did. Regards one not happy customer not to order again. Malcolmblackshaw”

Posted 6 years ago

We are genuinely sorry that you are not happy with the follow up to your order query. It took us a while to fully investigate the nature of your query and have been in touch via email on two occasions to confirm our findings - we liaised with the manufacturer on this for you along with checking our stocks of course. I hope you have received these emails. By way of clarification, the packaging of your item has been changed by the manufacturer (something of which we have no control as a regular dealer for them) but the name of the product has stayed the same. The product whilst called optic green does appear a yellowy green on the line itself. Unfortunately we cannot control the technical details on products supplied by another manufacturer. However if at any time you are unhappy with a product, you are welcome to return it to us for a refund, credit or exchange of course. We do pride ourselves on our customer service and hope this will not deter you from shopping with us again as we do our best to provide a wide range of goods for the fly angler. With kind regards Customer Services.

Posted 6 years ago

“Second order over several months. Delivery times were very long and items advertised on both occasions were not in stock or available. Will probably not shop with this company again.”

Posted 6 years ago

Hello and thank you for your recent orders. I would like to discuss the points you raised and hopefully clarify the situation and reassure you. We have 3 orders from you on record - the first was dispatched same day and the second next day. The most recent one was placed immediately after the Christmas and New Year break. One of the items you ordered was a special order item - the barred fibbets. We carry very large stocks of flies and tying materials but for some items we offer a bespoke special order service. This is where we order in especially for customers from the manufacturers. The site clearly shows both against each product and at check out which items are in stock and which are special order. We also give an estimate as to when the goods are expected in at both stages of online purchase. Unfortunately the supplier of this was not open for a few extra days after the holidays. So as soon as it came in, we dispatched your order to you immediately. I believe it was just 1 day after the estimated timeline. I hope this explains the situation and goes a way to reassuring you of our commitment to customer service. If you would like to discuss it further please do let us know. With kind regards Ann and team at The Essential Fly

Posted 6 years ago

Hello and thank you for your recent orders. I would like to discuss the points you raised and hopefully clarify the situation and reassure you. We have 3 orders from you on record - the first was dispatched same day and the second next day. The most recent one was placed immediately after the Christmas and New Year break. One of the items you ordered was a special order item - the barred fibbets. We carry very large stocks of flies and tying materials but for some items we offer a bespoke special order service. This is where we order in especially for customers from the manufacturers. The site clearly shows both against each product and at check out which items are in stock and which are special order. We also give an estimate as to when the goods are expected in at both stages of online purchase. Unfortunately the supplier of this was not open for a few extra days after the holidays. So as soon as it came in, we dispatched your order to you immediately. I believe it was just 1 day after the estimated timeline. I hope this explains the situation and goes a way to reassuring you of our commitment to customer service. If you would like to discuss it further please do let us know. With kind regards Ann and team at The Essential Fly

Posted 6 years ago

“Unable to contact, called number listed and left several messages never received call back. Not yet received merchandise but have received emails asking about enjoying it.”

Posted 6 years ago

“Received the item quickly but the price was much to high especially when I found the same item for sale at third of the price you are charging.”

Posted 6 years ago

“Flies not the best bombers too thin. Constantly pestered with marketing after purchase .”

Posted 8 years ago

The Essential Fly is rated 4.8 based on 2,064 reviews