[If you don't feel like reading this long post just check out the cliffs at the bottom]

I'll start out by saying that this review won't cover their packaging methods because I picked up my order because they're only an hour north of me, and even with current gas prices it's still cheaper to drive then it is to ship them.

When I relocated to Atlanta, GA I thought that it was going to be easy to locate an exotic petshop, considering that Atlanta is a pretty extravagant place with lots of interesting people with even more interesting hobbies, but I was wrong. I managed to find 1 or two pet shops but they all were about 45 minutes away from me and they all seemed to have a very different idea of what a "Small" and "Medium" rat was from what I had come to know them as. So in an effort to save money I started looking to online bulk order solutions.

I looked at a few places and while not many of them had unsatisfactory reviews most of them weren't near me and I didn't want to get killed in shipping costs but lucky for me Mice Direct is an hour north of me and they also had what I considered an acceptable scale of rats/mice.

According to the website in order to do a local-pickup you first need to contact them and schedule an appointment. I used their website's E-mail form to in form them that I wanted to place an order for local pickup. Within about 5 hours I received a reply e-mail from "John" stating to call "Heath" at 'X' number and he would get me taken care of. So I gave Heath a call but he was probably busy because I got his Voicemail. I left a simple message stating who I was and that I wanted to place an order. That was about at 3PM. At 5PM I received a call back and Heath and I discussed what I wanted to order and what time I would arrange to pickup the rats.

On Mice Direct's website it said that they were currently out of stock of the Small Rats and I asked Heath if they had any available and he informed me that they've had them for a couple days and that they just must be slow about updating the website. My entire order was: 1 Bag of Small Rats (50 Count) and 1 Bag of Medium Rats (20 Count). My total was $68.00USD and I was scheduled to pick up the rats at 11:00AM EST.

Well I got up at about 8AM and ended up having to do some unexpected chores (don't you hate it when you forget to do stuff?) and I knew I was going to be late so I gave Heath a call and told him that I was going to be about an hour late (12:00PM) he said it was fine and to just let him know if I needed help finding the place.

I arrived at their facility at 12:07PM EST and Heath had pulled my order however he told me that he had mistakenly assumed that they had some medium rats frozen which they didn't so he had gone a head and 'put down' some rats and bagged them up and for my inconvience he discounted the Medium rats by $5.00 (making my total $63.00USD) I told him that I highly appreciated it and I got my rats and went on my merry way.

I got home and thawed out some of the rats and just fed them to my snakes. The rats were clean and didn't stink of urine or feces and my snakes loved them.

Overall my conclusion is that I highly recommend Mice Direct for anyone who needs to order Rats online. I have sent them multiple e-mails in the past asking various questions and each time they were answered within a reasonable time frame and were always courteous.

Cliff Notes:
Contacted MD on their Website.
Got a reply within 5 hours.
Called "Heath" and placed Order for Local-Pickup.
Arrived at the MD Facility but the Medium Rats weren't frozen so I was given a $5 discount.
Rats were clean and didn't smell bad.
My snakes are happy with their nom noms.
I Highly Recommend Mice Direct!