Hobby Search Shipping

[alpineaustralia]

Beware of HobbySearch's shipping terms.

 

I recently have had a bad experience with Hobby Search which you all should be mindful of when buying items not in stock.

 

In May 2009, I reserved:

 

1. YP-522 Storage Case F for Railway Wagon (Taki II) (Black) (Model Train) Casco N Scale Storage Articles Item price = 1,620 yen

2. YP-523 Storage Case G for Railway Wagon (Koki, Chiki II) (Silver) (Model Train) Casco N Scale Storage Articles Item price = 1,620 yen

3. 600735 Japanese Constructing Machine 8 pieces (Shokugan) Platz|F-TOYS 1/150|N Scale Item price = 4,560 yen

Total cost  7,800 yen

 

On 26 June 2009, HS notifies me that item 3 of my order was in stock.

 

On 1 July 2009, HS notifies me that they are about to ship item 3 of my order. I ask them to hold my order pending items 1. and 2.

 

On 2 July 2009, HS notifies me that they shipping item 3 of my order, the cost of shipping is 2,220 yen and that they would not hold my order because they were different order numbers.

 

On 3 July 2009, I email them again asking them to hold my order because they were the same order number.  HS then emails back telling me that they can only hold the stock for one month.

 

The very same day (3 July 2009), I receive a shipping notice from HS notifying me that you are shipping items 1 and 2 of my order at an additional cost of 3,600 yen. This was not even 24 hours after they emailed me to tell me that they cannot hold my because they can only hold the order for a month!

 

I suspect that is why they do accept Paypal ie. because people like me would be inclined to tell them to stcik their shipping where the sun doesnt shine.

 

They have effectively charged me twice the shipping because they wouldnt hold my order for two days.

 

I have written them an sternly worded email expressing my displeasure with their shipping policy. I'll keep you guys posted.

[cteno4]

Alpine,

 

Trying to read and make sense of HS posted order combining makes my head hurt each time i have tried to go through it. due to the high ems costs i have stopped trying to do pre-orders with them unless it for one big ticket item. I tend to only use HS now when i have a small pile of stuff i want to get that makes it worth paying for the EMS shipping in one batch and only if all items are in stock. from the way they worded their order combination terms it looked like they just dont want to go there.

 

for backordering i use HW as they have been very wonderful in trying to order odder things or things they have listed as backorder. most things listed as back order show up in a few days and ship out, i think one item held a shipment up once for maybe a month, but it all came once it was in. they have also been great about combining orders that are both waiting to finish up an combining the shipping. on a lot of pre-orders that HW lists also they will do a 20% discount on (big savings on my galaxy express 999 train last winter!).

 

I also use rainbow ten for small preorders like trams as they will take a preorder (just email them what you want after its announced) for an item like a modemo tram and then ship it sal for like $5. works great and no worries a single item coming and costing $20 to ship. you just have to fax them your cc info to have on file

 

i would just use a cc instead of paypal, you have a lot more options with a cc if there is a problem. all the times my cc security has been violated its been from physically handing the card to someone and not over the net and i have done a huge number of internet transactions with the cc for biz and fun! (i have two cards for the net and one in the wallet for over the counter) if there is a problem no worries as you just dispute and account is frozen till its all settled out and both times i have had fraud there were no costs to me in the end and the whole bill was frozen till it got worked out. with paypal if there is ever a security breach they can dip right into your bank account! once the money is out of there it can take a long time to get it back and you are out the money till its figured out. i have had only one person i know have this happen but it was 6 months he was out like $2k.

 

i still use the paypal for small personal transactions and of course ebay, but there i still charge it to my cc instead of a bank transfer as i always have a backup of using the cc dispute if there is real trouble.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

Those of you who use HobbySearch (and it seem there are a lot of them in this forum), will have noticed that they have changed they webpage format - I for one think that it is certainly NOT an improvement 

 

I like it a lot more now. When using Firefox, the update cart function would always double my order. If I ordered 1 train, the page would record one, then when I added something like a tree, the cart would update and show 2 trains 1 tree and so forth unless I manually clicked the stop button. The other option was to use IE which will not function correctly becasue IE7 isn't talking to WinXP, and  IE7 under SP2 won;y allow me to rollback to IE6.

[Guest ___]

 

The very same day (3 July 2009), I receive a shipping notice from HS notifying me that you are shipping items 1 and 2 of my order at an additional cost of 3,600 yen. This was not even 24 hours after they emailed me to tell me that they cannot hold my because they can only hold the order for a month!

 

I had several items I had to combine, cancel change and so forth. Atsu I haven't heard from in a while in our dealings bet we had a side conversation via email last fall talking about the ordering system. From what I gathered, the online ordering system is sub-contracted out and their ability to access, change and modify orders is very limited. (It's similar to US companies that have stores, but use Yahoo for their checkout system) this was partially why they had issues with the shipping costs on orders (not to mention they trucked orders to the local office via Yamamoto Delivery to the PO from the store)

[alpineaustralia]

These items have increased dramatically because of their inflexibility. They happily take multiple item order but then wont even take basic steps to try to assist in shipping those items at the same time. That being the case, they shouldnt take orders for multiple items.

 

Perhaps it is for the reasons Shashinka suggests. But whatever the reason, I am now sufficiently p*ssed off with them that I will not be pre-ordering from them again. I will either use HW, Rainbowten, Popondetta or simply wait for the thing to be released. I simply cannot justify a 60% cost blow out.

[Guest ___]

I'd be fracked too for that alpine.

[alpineaustralia]

Isnt it amazing how many words there are in the world for being pissed off?

I havent heard "fracked" before.

[Guest ___]

Yeah I'm using my BSG slang for the f-bomb.

[NGT6 1315]

Yeah I'm using my BSG slang for the f-bomb.

 

 

BSG = Battlestar Galactica? (Apologies for the small off-topicness!)