HobbyKing?

Hi,

Has anyone had an bad experiences with HobbyKing?  I went through the motions of purchasing a RC txn and rxn from them and realised I had the wrong item in my order.  I contacted them to cancel immediatly after reecieving the confirmation and was ignored - up until the point the item shipped.  I was then told I could return it - but at my own cost.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had issues dealing with them?

Thanks
Tonino

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  • I've just given up on getting satisfaction from Hobby King for my first purchase. I bought a Turnigy 9X set, which arrived packed in green paper. No corrugated paper box, no packing other than the styrofoam in the display box. When I opened it (it was delivered while I was at school), the foam had clearly been crushed, and the left gimbal was damaged.

    I took pictures and weighed the package (?) as Hobby King's website directed, and corresponded with one of their people by email. After some going back and forth about investigation, I heard nothing further for two weeks. When I asked for a follow up, I was told to pack and ship the broken radio back _at my own expense_, and they would investigate whether there was anything they would do about it.

    The cost to re-pack correctly and ship it is about equal to the original cost of the radio. It will also take weeks, and they won't tell me whether they will repair, replace, or simply deny the claim. Rather than go though that, I'm cutting my losses, and apply that money to a different radio from a reputable manufacturer.

    Anyone got a dead Turnigy radio I can salvage a gimbal out of, or want a deal on my 9X as-is?
  • I've had several orderes through HK over the last couple of years, delivery to Arkansas typically runs about 10 days, not too bad I'm thinking. Had one minor glitch so far, forget exactly what it was but had email correspondence and got store credit. I'm sure they ship a LOT of small packages so there's bound to be a few fubars in the mix...
  • I placed 2 orders early last week. The first, was valued over US300, the second was under US100.

    Instead of combining orders they sent them out separately, fair enough. The first order arrived today and everything was as ordered. They sent a power plug for a different country, but luckily I happened to have plenty of compatible plugs handy.

    The products were well packaged and everything seems to be working to specification.

    But I am mildly concerned about the second order. They sent it via 'nothing special' post and the tracking number and link they provided doesn't work.

    So hopefully it'll show up soon, and next time I'll make sure I order more than US300 per transaction ; )
    Work.so
    Work.soは国内最大級のバイト情報サイトです。アナタが探す希望のアルバイトを掲載しております。最新のバイト情報をチェックしたいなら見るしかない!!
  • I have placed several orders and no problems at all. im actually very satisfied with the service and products ( i never place orders on back ordered stuff since i like to know exactly when my order is arriving ) the ups prices are good for a nice heavy package the one thing that i dont like is that they limit your order mass size. i always the maximum capacity
  • T3
    Hi, I've made 24 orders from Hobbyking so far and will order more.
    I've had one issue - one order which I originally selected to be paid with Visa, I paid with Paypal, and this order did not go into "Processing" status automatically. I sent e-mail to support and got no reply for couple of days. Then, I waited for an hour to get contact with live support, and he fixed the issue in 5 min. I believe the customer support person they have talks to 4 people simultaneously and has buttons for standard phrases.
    Goods quality varies - I did not know that one needs to balance propellers or glue loose magnets back to motors before use, while I dealt with LHS only. However, the price is so much cheaper at Hobbyking, and if you do your own Q&A you come out pretty good. Its also good to read product reviews.
    If you cancel an order, then the money goes into your bonus balance, which you can use for new purchases - but you cannot pay for shipping with bonus points, you will get billed for that anyway.
    One more issue that comes into my mind - sometimes they have delays with shipments. This is usually caused by local holiday or some disaster which affects shipping companies.
  • I just received my first order from Hobby King today. I didn't have much time to look through it but I did check to make sure everything was there. One thing I noticed was that the invoice was split into 4 pages... each had all of the items listed but the cost was split by 4 on each. Shipping was also divided by 4 and listed. I have never seen this I will probably look into it a little further. Tracking on the order wasn't very detailed, which bugged me a little.

    This is also the first time I have ordered anything from Singapore. I'm curious as to what other people were paying for their shipping.

    If everything checks out I would say I am mostly pleased with the process.

    Sebastian
  • In fairness: I've NEVER been successful in canceling an order over the phone with ANY online merchant.
  • Very limited personal experiences .... but I've read enough on the net over my time searching for a high wattage electric motor to learn 2 things:

    - that a lot of folk have very serious issues with the quality of electric motors that are sold under the Hobby King brand name - in partiuclar with the quality of bearings and the quality of motor windings, with folk reporting how, on rewinding Hobby King branded motors have substantialy reduced losses and/or increased power outputs for the same volt/amp input.

    My single personal experience with a Hobby King motor: the copper wire used was very poor quality, and the winding was equally poor quality - both equally unsuitable to the 2Kw plus usage the product was marketed for use in.

    - that there is a disproportionate amount of feedback regards the quality of ESC's - many folk complaining that the ESC they purchased for a particular application burnt out.

    For what its worth I note that Hobby King prices (per watt) for a lot of its hardware is lot lot lower than comparable European/Western made products.

    Far Eastern branded and manufactured products can certainly offer value for money in many cases (cheaper labour, material and manufacturing costs (to mention just a few of the reasons why Far Eastern branded products can be competitively manufactured) but if I am not mistaken Hobby King is a brand name primarily - not a manufacturer i.e. HK sources products made by 3rd parties to which the HK brand name is then attached. Hence HK has limited, to no control over QC.

    The words "you get what you pay for" come to mind with a lot of Hobby King products .........

    Thats my personal 2cents worth regards HK - by means feel free to disagree.
  • well - to make matters even worse - they are not going to refund me the full price - only 90% and then only store credit. Apparently their site now says that you should not use email - but rather call or use their "not really working" live contact chat system

    I have opened a dispute case with paypal to get them to interviene... lets hope that its worth it.

    I will _NEVER_ buy from them again... just plain poor customer service.
  • I'm also stopping buying from HK. I received the transmitter after being in back oder and after almost 2 months from initial order date without the module and receiver and took a month to they say that they would send the missing items.
    Before I'd to take picture of all the items that arrive in a kitchen scale and they said something about contact the warehouse manager - the WM answer cost me 3 weeks or so of daily calls. Now I'm still waiting. I think that the whole process will take 4 months now.
    I think that I'll order one DX8 when here in US they start to have in stock.
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