Hobby Search

[bill937ca]

I'm not Jeff :) and I most recently bought from HS last month :D

 

But that's what I'm saying: I place order, they ship immediately, plane flies quickly, customs is prompt, and the truck drive from Chicago to STL is fast. 72 hours from the time I place order to model in my hand. That's faster than most domestic retailers.

 

 

But with the PayPal option, well over 72 hours passed between order placement and mere notification of shipment. Likely it won't ship until tonight. Which means that most likely the total time will be about 120 to 144 hours total. Unacceptable for EMS costs (but just fine when its half off!!)

 

In the past, EMS orders from HS have taken right about 72 hours from clicking "yes, I really do want to spend that much money!" to delivery. I made a PayPal purchase on Tuesday, and over 72 hours later, I just got the shipment notification. Considerably slower indeed!

 

That was several years ago, Jeff.  As I recall you haven't been ordering from HS until recently.  I've had many orders ship the same business day in the last year.  PayPal is slower.

 

Oops, sorry Captain.  I thought you meant 72 hours only at HS before PayPal.  No wonder I went for a nap shortly after wards. 

 

I have the feeling HS knows when planes leave for certain destinations.  I've heard planes from Tokyo to Toronto (nearest international airport) leave Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights and it seems they ship most of my orders Monday or Wednesday.  The flights must be marked on our profiles at HS.

[westfalen]

Time is a relative thing, even if it did take a couple of days longer I still got my new Kato high rise buildings from HS months before any local hobby shop is likely to get them (if they do), and considerably cheaper.

[to2leo]

Okay I ordered mine buildings with Tomix Track cleaner to complement my existing one for vacuuming.  Thanks Bill.

[Eliphaz]

72 hours yeah? thats amazing.

I got my shipping notice this morning, I can start working on my brass EF59 this weekend.

[Darklighter]

I hope this promotion will finally end in a few hours. 14 orders in one month...  :help:

[KenS]

Yeah. This sale is certainly enabling my addiction. 

[rankodd]

Looks like it's done :( Don't see half off showing for shipping on the item pages, and there isn't any new updates on the news page.

[Krackel Hopper]

hey hey,

 

When pre-ordering from HobbyWorld - if one item gets released sooner than others, they will pull and hold that item until the rest of my order is complete.

 

Does HobbySearch do the same thing?  I ask because I pre-ordered a couple Kato Koki 200s along with some ProHobby containers that were supposed to release the same time (in June) and the ProHobby containers have still not been released.  They are still up for reservation and the release date still says June.. grr..  now I see the Koki 200s are out of stock.

 

Looking on my "order info" my order is still there, but there is nothing that says they have Koki 200s ready for me.  The HobbyWorld order info will shows what items they have prepared for your order.

 

Anyone have experience with pre-order items releasing at different times?  Does HobbySearch hold the items for you?  Or am I just SOL on the Koki 200s now?

 

Thanks

Jon

[bill937ca]

When two pre-orders scheduled together split I believe they ship the item on hand at the end of the month.

 

If you have a HS registration ID you can sign in and check your order status.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/authentication_e.asp

 

You probably should send an email to HS support, but don't expect an answer until Tuesday Japan time as Monday is a holiday (Marine Day) in Japan.

[westfalen]

I think there is a box somewhere in Hobby Search's checkout process that asks if you want to hold the order and ship it all together.

[cteno4]

HS does hold till the end of the month then they ship what ever is there regardless if its on hold to ship with something else. had this happen to me only to get the notice like a day later the second item is in and ready for shipping, groan!

 

HW seems to hold much longer as they will do back orders and such. i guess they just start your box and put it on the shelf until the last bits arrive. couple of orders were like 2-3 months waiting on some odd prohobby items a couple of years back. on one i inquired just to make sure it had not gotten lost in the shuffle and they said it was waiting for the last item but if i wanted they would ship the stuff on hand right away and the remaining items when it came in.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[David]

I've been checking the shipping cost of potential batch purchases (and doing a lot of it lately as I'm trying to decide if I really want/need some things, and how much it will really cost). Up until yesterday you could select Paypal and your desired shipping in the checkout (or enter a credit card but that would be unnecessary) and then be able to see the shipping cost/total on the confirmation screen (and then click rewrite to avoid actually placing the order unless you where happy with the shipping cost).

 

However today the shipping cost seems to be gone - has Hobby Search stopped giving an up front shipping cost, in favor of something like Plaza Japan/eBay style combined shipping invoices after the order is placed? Knowing the shipping cost is somewhat important - you can't get the real cost just by adding up the weight (due to size/packaging), and some items (cases and items in cases) can have surprising shipping costs I might not want to pay.

[jdnewemail]

Hello

 

Here is my story with Hobby Search

 

I live in New York , with very limited funds for Model Railroading. I enjoy the look of Japanese trains and the enviroment they live in. I would love to continue to model them. I have dealt with Hobby Search for 3+ Months now and what is turning me off of using them is, If you pre order something (A Magazine) you can not add anything to that order before it ships (and if you do not pre order there is a good chance you will not get the magazine). I have tried twice now and both times they ship it as seperate packages. That to me is such a waste.

 

Here are the emails I sent to Hobby Search and the one response I got back.

 

Email #1

 

Hello

 

At the end of august I had a magazine on reserve when it came in I tried to add to that order. But they were shipped seperatly because it took so long to get the email to pay for the added books I wanted to be shipped as 1 order. I have other items on reserve, but I want to add to the reserve order with items in stock when those items come in. How can I do that?

 

Thanks

 

John Durr

 

Response

 

Dear customer,

 

Thank you for contacting Hobby Search support.

Unfortunately we cannot combine your order items. Please be informed our general

rules in shipping as follows.

 

1. Items under different order numbers are to be shipped separately.

2. "Already-released" items and "pre-ordered" items are to be shipped separately

even if they are under the same order number.

3. You cannot recombine those items that are to be released in different months.

 

 

For additional information about shippment, please refer to the FAQ page of our

website as follows.

http://www.1999.co.jp/faq_e.asp?Typ1_c=110#s5

 

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

 

Regards,

 

Yuri Daisho

 

Email #2

 

Hello Yuri Daisho

 

Here is my idea, when someone reserves an item and it comes in you send them an email saying would you like to add to your order or just pay for the item. Then if they want to they can buy more stuff and save on shipping if it all fits in your shipping limits.

 

How is that

 

John Durr

 

To clarify what I am trying to do is add something that is in stock, to an order I reserved for in advance. To my understanding you can not order a Item in stock with one to be reserved for future release and have them shipped at the same time.

 

Is there anyone else selling to the us market that carries Magazines and Train Supplies

 

Thanks for any answers to this, I am seriously thinking of dropping my idea of modeling japanese trains because of this added expense.

[CaptOblivious]

HS does have some admittedly weird shipping policies, but you CAN re-jigger your orders according to the following rules:

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/faq_e.asp?Typ1_c=104#g9

 

When you place an order that contains both in-stock and pre-order items, you can choose to have the entire order shipped at once, when the pre-order items arrive in the store.

 

Two different orders containing items on pre-order that are scheduled to be released ON THE SAME MONTH can be recombined into one order.

 

Two different orders each containing in stock items that have not been shipped, pending delivery of pre-order items can be recombined yielding one order of all in-stock items, and one order of pre-order items. (That's a little complex to explain, but it's a pretty rare situation anyway. The FAQ handles it better than I).

 

SO: The general rule is: You can add to orders containing pre-orders, but only when the new item is a pre-order slated to be released in the same month. Your best bet is to be careful, and simply order everything you want all at once.

 

Otherwise, your best bet is to find a different company with less complex shipping practices. Others here will know of alternate outlets for magazines.

[bill937ca]

I would also suggest SAL shipping for books.  A heavy Japan Railfan Magazine runs 1380 Yen for shipping. That would run you 2800 Yen by EMS.  SAL takes longer but is half the cost.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/ems.asp

 

Keep in mind HS is a relatively small operation running amazing volumes.  I recently placed an order early in the day which was #10-0918-218 for that date.  Later I decided add another item and  the order number for that day was over #10-0918-2113.  Over 2100 orders in one day! This is not a mom and pop LHS operation.

[cteno4]

We actually are a bit spoiled with what HS and HW will do with combining, canceling, and modifying orders even within their sets of rules. in my work i have to, at times, order a big pile of equipment for a project and most online places are pretty surlly if you try to do anything to the order. I started to move to amazon for many of the items as usually i could get it within a few percent or cost of other places and their policies actually gave the most flexibility in changes and returns, but even then its far less than we have with places like HS and HW.

 

I have been frustrated in the past by some of HS shipping policies and how they will not waiver from their rules, but for the most part the rules i think work to keep themselves from slipping into chaos of special orders which when there are thousands of orders laying around at any one time could lead to mistakes in orders which is much much worse for your customer relations, especially when you are shipping overseas!

 

You can order instock items as well as reserve items at HS in one order and they will hold till your reserve items come in or till the end of the month, which ever comes first. HW is a bit better at holding a pile of stuff till all your preorders on an order before they ship. if you think about it, its must be hell trying to grow a box of stuff for an order and keep track of it while stuff comes in.

 

There is the added shipping expense when modeling japanese trains, but by using SAL that really gets cut down to pretty much the same as shopping online in the states (except for heavy items like magazines and books). HW seems to be a bit cheaper for SAL for smaller orders as they tend to use smaller and lighter boxes than HS does. I just got an order of a number of smaller items (maybe $50 worth) in a small SAL box from HW that shipped for 580Y, doubt i would have gotten similar sized order shipping from a us online shop for less than $6. only difference was the 2 week wait for the shipping.

 

i tend to order piles of stuff that are $50-100 at a crack that end up around 1kg shipping. this seems to give the best bang for the buck with SAL shipping as a total percentage of money spent to shipping cost. even though a small order of $15-20 costs only $5 to ship thats up to 25% of your money spent going into shipping. where as a $75-100 order costing $10 or so brings that down to more like 10% or less. big orders can tip you up closer to 2kg where SAL starts getting expensive and HW and HS revert to EMS and the shipping costs start going up again. so the medium sized orders are the best bang for the buck. may mean you have to save your $$ for a tad longer to get what you want cheaper.

 

on the reserve items it just hard to make those work out to do the above maximization of shipping. i will do multiple preorders of things coming out in the same month at HW as they hold things till the order is already to go to get a mid sized and thus best shipping price, but downside if something is delayed you may have to wait a while for the whole order. you can always email them and tell them to send whats in, both HW and HS will do this then they send the rest when it comes in. in fact if something is really delayed HW will usually email you and suggest you do this.

 

So it is a bit of a change to order from japan, but once you learn the ways to order that work best for you i think you can get what you need to feed your hobby. I have found dealing with japanese stores much better than most of the major suppliers here in the states overall and the overall cost of the hobby about the same with japanese and us trains. there are a lot of economical structures and such for the japanese models not available in us models and the trains give a much better bang for the buck than the us trains IMHO.

 

Hang in there, i think you can find a way to be happy in the hobby even with some of these order restrictions.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

We actually are a bit spoiled with what HS and HW will do with combining, canceling, and modifying orders even within their sets of rules. in my work i have to, at times, order a big pile of equipment for a project and most online places are pretty surlly if you try to do anything to the order.

 

I have been frustrated in the past by some of HS shipping policies and how they will not waiver from their rules, but for the most part the rules i think work to keep themselves from slipping into chaos of special orders which when there are thousands of orders laying around at any one time could lead to mistakes in orders which is much much worse for your customer relations, especially when you are shipping overseas!

 

I can confirm a shipping error can could cost you big time--like $140.  EMS rates from Canada are more than twice what the EMS rates from Japan are.  BUT I was compensated within hours of shipping the order back with HS points (other option was PayPal, but less 3%). 

 

Many retailers will not list an item until it is in stock and on the shelf.  No pre-orders for that magazine, train set or whatever. We are very lucky with all the services HS offers us.

[jdnewemail]

Hi

 

Thanks for the replies

 

I just wish they would send an emailstating

 

The item you resevered is in would you like to add to your order?

 

Then they can sell more stuff

 

and we can save on shipping

 

John

[bill937ca]

Hi

 

Thanks for the replies

 

I just wish they would send an emailstating

The item you resevered is in would you like to add to your order?

 

Working in a distribution center (far bigger than HS) one issue I can see with this is how much time do you allow for a reply?  Another issue is how much room is there in shipping and receiving?  You are going to bring in all these items and hold them until a customer gets around to placing another order.  What about customers that just want their items shipped on arrival? 

 

In our operation there is receiving, put away, mail filling, and pack-sort. Items are stored in several different areas within the warehouse. Items are stored on up to four different floors in each area.  To fill orders we start pulling mail at 5 AM.  Sorting and packing starts at 6:30.  I have no concept of when the trucks depart from the warehouse.

 

Sorry, I don't think there is  a practical answer to your request.

[spacecadet]

Sorry, I don't think there is  a practical answer to your request.

 

Your points are all valid, and just to add my perspective as a retailer (not of trains, but online retailing is online retailing), any time you get into this trap of leaving things up to the customer, you introduce the potential to screw things up both for the customer and for the retailer.  What if an email bounces?  What if a reply comes in 10 minutes after the deadline that's been set?  What if the store doesn't receive your reply for whatever reason?  These are all cases where the store would be perfectly within their rights to just say "screw it, we're shipping what we have" but customers don't want to hear that.  Customers want you to go chase down that postal employee and get the package back so they can make changes to their order.

 

It also becomes very hard to keep track of things, if you've got 100 packages sitting there all waiting for responses, and those responses are coming in at all different times... and maybe some of them are an easy "no, just ship it" but others may be difficult things like "well, I'd like to add this thing, but only if shipping doesn't go over this amount, in which case I want to add this other thing instead, but if shipping is still going to be that much, then I just want to cancel the whole thing."  I mean that's what you open yourself up to as a retailer if you don't set strict rules in advance.

 

There really should be as little dialogue between the customer and retailer as possible.  The transaction is, customer pays for something, retailer gives that thing to the customer.  Anything beyond that, especially when you're talking mail order and especially when there's a language barrier, has the potential to cause problems, which means it *will* cause problems.

 

I agree with those that say offering reserves is an extra service already.  Retailers are under no obligation to offer things for sale before they have them, and a lot of retailers don't want to because then they end up having less stock in their stores... they're basically acting as a shopping service.  If you don't balance it right, it can actually hurt the physical store business over the long term.

[cteno4]

spacedot,

 

very good points and well said. all points to while its nice to do extra things for the customer, it can really screw up the business doing so!

 

i am impressed with HS and HW pay when the order is ready to ship system as it makes a whole nother store, wait, and proceed step in the ordering process.

 

i am amazed how well HW and HS do on order fulfillment as over the years and lots and lots of orders only a couple of small mistakes by HS which they instantly shipped out the missing items by ems (i told them to just do sal as not worth them spending all the money on ems, but they did ems anyway). HW never has missed an item.

 

i did get miffed at HS once when an EMS parcel was returned (i was on vacation when it arrived and our post office would not hold the ems under our vacation hold claiming it was a rush thing so if not picked up in 7 days its set back, all rubbish) to HS and they would not just take the item in return for credit for the item and i eat shipping. it was either pay for a second shipping or not pay and they just keep it and all the money for it. i have forgiven them, but still favor HW when i can as they have always been really helpful in any special circumstances.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[spacecadet]

i did get miffed at HS once when an EMS parcel was returned (i was on vacation when it arrived and our post office would not hold the ems under our vacation hold claiming it was a rush thing so if not picked up in 7 days its set back, all rubbish) to HS and they would not just take the item in return for credit for the item and i eat shipping. it was either pay for a second shipping or not pay and they just keep it and all the money for it. i have forgiven them, but still favor HW when i can as they have always been really helpful in any special circumstances.

 

I'm not sure where you are, but in the US there is a 5 day period to return EMS parcels, and when someone sends an EMS parcel, the only two options available in the case of non-delivery are to return the item to sender postage due, or treat the package as abandoned.  Obviously unless the item is super-cheap, anyone is going to select to return the item, but the return shipping costs the same as the shipping outbound.  So their policy on that is probably their only way to ensure at least breaking even in a case like that.  (The alternative would have been for them to say "ok, we'll give your money back minus the shipping costs, but the shipping costs are actually double what we told you before."  Most people aren't going to accept that, even though it's true.)  Unless it was a super-expensive item, I can almost guarantee they made little or no money on that sale.

[Guest ___]

I would also suggest SAL shipping for books.  A heavy Japan Railfan Magazine runs 1380 Yen for shipping. That would run you 2800 Yen by EMS.  SAL takes longer but is half the cost.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/ems.asp

 

Keep in mind HS is a relatively small operation running amazing volumes.  I recently placed an order early in the day which was #10-0918-218 for that date.  Later I decided add another item and  the order number for that day was over #10-0918-2113.  Over 2100 orders in one day! This is not a mom and pop LHS operation.

 

If he is in NYC, why even order Japan Rail Fan, they sell them down on Avenue of the America's at Kinokuniya.

[cteno4]

I'm not sure where you are, but in the US there is a 5 day period to return EMS parcels, and when someone sends an EMS parcel, the only two options available in the case of non-delivery are to return the item to sender postage due, or treat the package as abandoned.  Obviously unless the item is super-cheap, anyone is going to select to return the item, but the return shipping costs the same as the shipping outbound.  So their policy on that is probably their only way to ensure at least breaking even in a case like that.  (The alternative would have been for them to say "ok, we'll give your money back minus the shipping costs, but the shipping costs are actually double what we told you before."  Most people aren't going to accept that, even though it's true.)  Unless it was a super-expensive item, I can almost guarantee they made little or no money on that sale.

 

i got into this with the USPS. they do claim its a regulation and returned, but not postage due, they said the return was not charged to HS. it went slow boat at it took over a month to show up again at HS. HS said they were not charged return shipping charges (i asked as i was worried they got stuck for that).

 

The manager at our local po was embarrassed it happened a he said they hold stuff like that when they have a vacation hold usually, but this just slipped thru the cracks as the person who usually did the express locker was on vacation. others around the country say their posts do the same. just this time it didnt happen and the rule got followed. the odd thing is the vacation hold says ALL mail and packages will be held. if you look at the rules they publish on express mail the 5-7 day return is not listed anywhere to the public that i could find and i dug and asked a lot. USPS customer service also says that express mail (that is what ems is on state side) should be held with a vacation hold as well. so you get a lot of different stories on this. lesson is try not to have ems packages show up while you are on vacation as its a risk this could happen. this was a reserve train so i didnt know it would be shipping while we were away.

 

HS was not out any money as it was returned except for the effort shipping it out. was a product in stock that sold out easily so i was just not happy when they would not just credit the item amount to me and i eat all the shipping and they just resell the product. i have done a lot of business with them over the years so it was just that they would not help out in this odd situation for a good customer who dropped a lot of $$ on them.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

I have absolutely zero problems with HS. They have assembled and shipped me orders from frigging Tokyo in much less time and for about the same amount of money as online retailers in California or the Northeast.

 

That being said, I've never pre-ordered with them (or anybody, at all - for anything). I don't like delayed gratification and I don't like committing to buy a discretionary item at a later date when my financial situation may be different than it is now.