TOPIC:

Gents,
Lets keep the "who said what" and "you said this and that" to the emails between seller and buyer. There is no way this forum can tell who is right or wrong (no, I don't want to see/read email printouts...)

-Lars

Thanks Lars, appreciate your input, had it not been on here i would not have needed to explain the "Other side".

Regards

Jeez.... Don't think I've ever known Edou to be angry about anything...
Pretty sure I've dealt with vintagetamiyaparts at some point, pretty sure it went well.

I personally feel that half of the "problems" people have with Ebay & the like is that the whole deal is done without ever seeing/feeling the product in person, you're buying blindly & have already agreed to buy & have paid for an item before you know for definate whether or not it truly is acceptable to you. Different people have different ideas about what exactly "mint", "used", "faulty" etc mean, so the blind-buying thing will always cause problems.

We seem to have forgotten that buying stuff online is a "convenience" thing & can never work as well as dealing with someone in person.

I often read seller feedback & get left in disbelief at what some of the buyers are giving as reasons for NFB, things like "Someone else was selling it cheaper" & "Postage was too expensive" really make me want to go slap some sense into them! If the deal ain't acceptable, don't buy it, simple, it's no good agreeing to the contract (By buying) then whining about it afterwards.
Buying second hand stuff is always a gamble too & unless the seller's description is massively fictitious, you gotta just take it on the chin & move on when it doesn't go your way - how often do you take stuff back to a car boot or jumble sale because it wasn't as good as you first thought?

I ain't mad. Just disappointed.

Just making clear this is my personal experience and does not represent any opinion of Tamiyabase (= Lars).
Which should be obvious in general but also by the earlier message above...

I've ordered from Hobbyking six times now, which I think is enough to form an opinion & share it...

I do need to differentiate between their "International" warehouse in Hong Kong, and their other warehouses (I've also ordered from their UK warehouse) - service levels are absolutely not the same - but more on that later.

Communication... you do get a lot of emails from Hobbyking - up to six per order in fact, you get:
1- an order confirmation email
2- a Paypal receipt email
3- a "payment approved" email
4- an "order sent to warehouse" email
5- an "order picked" email
6- a final email when they claim to have sent it.

My problem with these is that they're all automated - and not always honest. Emails 1 to 4 all come pretty much immediately, but the "order picked" one takes longer - 0, 2 and 3 days for my 3 orders from the UK warehouse, and 3, 6 and 7 days for the three from Hong Kong. Bearing in mind these were all supposed to be "in stock" items - 6/7 days to take something off a shelf seems excessive to me.

Checking the claimed despatch date in email #6 for each order against what was on each package shows that one was not sent until six days after Hobbyking said they'd sent it.

Delivery times for the UK warehouse were 3, 4 and 5 days, for Hong Kong: 13, 20 and 21 days.

Packaging - again this was very dependant on where it came from - UK items were reasonably well packed in new boxes & air pillows, Hong Kong items less so - jiffy bags for smaller items (no matter how fragile, or how many in the order), or just green paper round the outside for boxed items.

Shipping costs seemed a little high on UK orders, but my shipping was upgraded from the Post Office option I'd selected to a courier firm instead.
Shipping was a lot less fair on Hong Kong orders though - I estimate a markup of at least 50% on the actual costs. In fact, on one order, there was only one shipping option - "express air" for 67 USD - it took 3 weeks to arrive, and because they'd charged like a wounded rhino on the shipping, it took the shipment over the import duty allowance, so I got hammered on taxes and an administration fee.

I haven't had to deal with any returns/ wrong or damaged items, but my impression is I'd have been SOL with anything ordered from the Hong Kong warehouse.

Overall, I don't think I'd deal with the "International" warehouse again - I think I'd rather pay more for something more local, or do without.

The UK warehouse, on the other hand, I'd use again & recommend to anyone

I have only ever ordered from the German warehouse (delivered via DPD), no import taxes and quicker delivery, have not bothered to order from UK warehouse as combined shipping prices from Germany were always decent.

Agree what has been said about HK postal charges, although I dont think its just Hobbyking, I think most HK sellers load up the costs.

Being quite new to EBay and buying parts for my 2 hotshot 2 restos i found Victor101car to be very helpfull not only did he have some of the parts i needed for both the cars he offered to keep an eye out for any parts i need if i sent him a list.

I sent him said list and to my amazment he found just about every thing i need execpt the metal pressed parts bag so after a bit of Email swapping i did a deal with him on a bulk buy and got nearly all the orignal black palastic parts and drive trains to build 2 new cars for a criminally low price.

So yes indeed i would recomend Victor101car to any one wanting to do a vintage resto.

Now does any one have a roof and acess hatch for a hotshot 2 ?

That illustrates the MO of Lightwatermodels quite well. Always going the extra mile and helping out their customers.
Just got a package from them to get excited about. At a really nice price and with lightning shipping.
And like with Si06, even helping to think a step ahead for additional parts that might be needed.
Wish every seller communicated that well.



On the other hand, I ordered some parts at jr-rc last week that haven't even seem to be shipped yet.
Naturally I got no reply to an inquiry about this.
Advantage there is always parts availability, low prices and no-nonsense quick shipping.
Would hate to start avoiding their store too...

I've always found jk-rc (MelianW) really good with their comms, even had some private sale emails to-ing & fro-ing just before xmas, but haven't heard from them recently. Wonder if they're on holiday?
They've always been really helpful, last help of note was when I was doing that Grasshopper & they did some mixing & matching of some of their spare parts to do me a package of just the bits I needed at a much lower price.

JE models & RC Geeks are driving me around the bend with their email spam. JE Models in particular after they sold me a non-fitting part then charged me to put it back in their stock

Edou wrote:

On the other hand, I ordered some parts at jr-rc last week that haven't even seem to be shipped yet. Naturally I got no reply to an inquiry about this.

Don't ask him again Edou, or you know what will happen .