Sorry Danny
I'm not trying to sell a cage to anybody, I'm just sharing the research that I've done over the years to help people narrow down their decisions or to open up their eyes to more brands. I hesitate to recommend any one company over another because there are always exceptions to the rule-- people who LOVE their economy cage or people who HATE their super expensive custom one.
I really wasn't trying to make a recommendation for a cage, just relating the real experiences I had when having some cages shipped to me as well as stating what I probably was going to get after those experiences. I got the cage from Petco Online and didn't have a lot of good experiences with the customer service when trying to get repair parts or other action because of a lot of damage during shipping or manufacture (I had both kinds of damage). At Petco, it seemed like no two persons seemed to know what was being done about my cage problems (and I was forced to talk to multiple persons despite my efforts to talk with the same person). I didn't explore the option of taking the cage to my local Petco, as (usually), most online stores and the retail stores operate somewhat independently. I should have asked about that, but didn't. I thought this would probably cause a problem trying it that way. I eventually got repair parts for my cage, but often, the repair parts received came more damaged than the initial parts that needed replacement. I had problems with rust and corrosion on the waste tray, as well as some heavy bang marks from manufacture. I had a "caster socket" broke on the leg of the front or back piece, which is the part that holds the caster. With this problem, I couldn't even put the cage together with other damaged pieces, even if I wanted to, and I now had cage pieces all over my house while they were giving me different answers on what was going to be done with my cage. The damage to the caster socket was caused by this cage (a Grande Dometop from Avian Adventures) having been picked up and dropped step by step during the delivery chain. Imagine delivering a package about 75 lbs. as wide as your arms can possibly reach. I might have had bad results solely due to the size of the package and the delivery method. Maybe receiving a cage of equal size from another manufacturer might result in the same problems, I don't know. Midwest wasn't really helpful and the woman that I talked with was actually kind of rude, telling me that I had to deal with Petco, even after I explained the difficulty that I was having Midwest finally sent (grudgingly) the replacement caster socket (which is about a $3.00 part...which I would have replaced on my own if I could have found the exact size from other sources). I also received some other spare parts (which were also damaged, and worse than the ones they would have replaced). Eventually, with the caster socket received, I was at least able to build a cage with some "grade B" parts. During the build, I also had to bend some pieces of the cage that got banged in shipment so that I could assemble the cage. This was namely some square tube sections that were welded to the cage to facilitate a toolless assembly. Unfortunately, that flexed some of the paint, allowing it to flake off, but I did get a cage together and was done with dealing with customer service and I "had my house back". All in all, my biggest fear with Avian Adventures is damage during shipment or manufacture. With their cages itself, I tend to like them aside from those issues, except that I think that the food dish holders totally suck compared to all others I've had on other brands. I may try the Featherlands Stainless, or go back to the A&E, but in stainless, but I still do like Avian Adventures cages, except for the feed dish system and the problems I had with damage (It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth). I'll have to make a decision eventually because my African Grey is tearing up his painted cage and it won't last a lot longer. Again, I'm only presenting my experiences in getting a cage and letting people know what *I* might do.
Danny