am i being fobbed off by hobbyking

[Shaun Marshall]

hi i ordered 2 seperate items from hobbykings euro warehouse and had emails saying they were dispatched 1 on the 12th dec the other on the 14th dec neither have arrived yet upon speaking to hk all they keep quoting me is the delivery times are 10 to 21 days and 10 to 39 days for each parcel so they are still within the delivery times. find it strange that only coming from the euro warehouse they are taking ages as i send post all over the world and it takes no more than a week to arrive

also looking at the order status on my account 1 says dispatched the other says in stock

[Greybeard]

It's quite possible that they are coming from China. Your experience seems to be not uncommon.

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Hi Shaun,

Hobbyking's T&C's do state incredibly long delivery times - a hang over possibly to when most of the stuff had to come by boat from Hong Kong! But they are the T&C's and I think HobbyKing are quite within their rights to invoke them and say "No problem - yet"

I have limited experience in ordering from HobbyKing but what experience I have tells me two things;

1. It can take a while, but things do arrive - and within the delivery time quoted

2. HobbyKing are a fair and upright trader. If they can't deliver they will fix the situation. They are not interested in having unhappy customers.

So, I'm pretty confident it will be OK - you'll just have to be a bit patient!

BEB

[Codename-John]

if you go into your account, and where it say`s orders near to your points box, click the "check" link and it takes you through to all your orders so far,

At the end of each line of orders is usually a tracking number, copy that number and input it into parcel forces website track and trace, then you`l know where your parcel is

[Shaun Marshall]

thanks for the info i suppose ill have to be more patient as the wife says i always want everything now rather than waiting

[Simon Chambers]

Make sure you don't go over the 45day PayPal dispute resolution deadline. After this time, if they are lost and/or never arrive, your relying on HobbyKing to resolve the issue - rather than PayPal. The time limit starts from the day the PayPal transaction was made.

Si.

[Mark R]

Hi Shaun, I have had an order thats been despatched by HK back in early December. I used Parcelforce 48 as the i thought it would be the best way. It arrived in the UK 23 Dec and has not been processed thru customs etc yet. So i am not sure you can blame HK as its a very busy time of year and Parcelforce even state on their website that they have a backlog to clear. Checked my order today and its taken from 23 Dec til today for it to clear thru Customs, guess they had a lovely long Xmas off.....wish i did, rather than the 1 and 1/2 days.

[scott cuppello]

Posted by Greybeard on 04/01/2013 11:55:50:

It's quite possible that they are coming from China. Your experience seems to be not uncommon.

The only way your order can be despatched by the Hong Kong Warehouse is if you have mistakenly ordered from the Hong Kong Warehouse......I have had a few cases of people swearing blind they have ordered from the UK or DE Warehouse.....only to find when we have checked that they have ordered from HK......This is why I strongly advise people to log in and select their country before ordering.

In terms of postal times, delays are not uncommon at this time of year and we can not assume that there is a problem until deadlines have passed, only then do we potentially have a problem, in which case, I would urge you to contact HK CS before resorting to Paypal disputes that will complicate things even more.

[Kevin Fairgrieve]

Like Scott says. Make sure you order from the UK warehouse, unless you want to wait for a slow boat from China.

If something I want is not in stock I use the email alert facility and order from the UK warehouse when it is in stock.

Kev

[Kelly]

Yes check the little flags,not an easy site to navigate at first .

Delivery from Hongkong,via china via customs not that bad really

Shame about the standard of packaging on some of the older models though.

[John Olsen 1]

I have noticed an interesting thing with the two Hobbyking warehouses that I have had stuff from. My first few orders came from Hongkong and there was a relatively short time between the HK site saying shipped and the item appearing in the postal authorities tracking site...3 to 4 days at most. The last three orders have all come from the Singapore site, and have all taken about 10 days between HK saying shipped and the Singpost site acknowledging that they know of the item. Now that seems to me to be a long time for a parcel to take to get from one place in Singapore to another, considering how big the island actually is. You can't actually spit across it, but mainly because they would lock you up if you tried.

Once Singpost has it in the tracking system, it only takes a day or so before they say it is in transit, and within another day or so it is in the hands of NZ Post, which is another story...they always leave a card saying nobody is home, even though consistently there has been. They won't walk up the steps and knock on the front door. But that is not an HK issue.

So why does it take so long between HK Singapore saying the parcel has shipped, and Singpost actually knowing about it, let alone having it in their possession? Does HK only send a truck to the post once a fortnight?

So if I had a choice, I would be ordering through the Hongkong warehouse...they are both much the same distance from me, and anyway the actual flight time is pretty insignificant compared to the total time taken.

John

[John Privett]

I must admit John, I wasn't aware that HK actually had a warehouse in Singapore, though it starts to make a bit of sense if they do.

Some while ago there was a temporary(?) issue with sending LiPos via the Hong Kong postal services and lots of people reported that orders with LiPos were being sent through SwissPost and going "via Singapore" and taking longer to arrive. Maybe I (or others) misunderstood, but it hadn't occured to me that HK might have a depot in Singapore - I'd assumed Singapore was just being used by SwissPost as a shipping hub and adding to the delay.

[Simon Chaddock]

On the HK web site you can find their warehouse locations:

Hong Kong (International warehouse), Australia, United States, UK, Netherlands, European & Brazil.

[John Privett]

OK, so if they do have a warehouse in Singapore, they're keeping quiet about it! So, perhaps it IS just a transport hub then?

And what happened to the German warehouse? That doesn't appear in Simon's list. Or did they haul it across the border into Holland?

[Simon Chaddock]

John

I believe the 'European' warehouse is in Germany. I think it was the their first in Europe.

[scott cuppello]

We don't have a Warehouse in Singapore, believe me, certain items will go via Singapore depending on the postal service chosed.

The DE (Euro) Warehouse can be found quite easily on the front page of the website.......and has been for some considerable time.

[Daithi O Buitigh]

Singapore Post handle its tracking from their regional office (in this case it's Singapore). The fact that it says 'Singapore' on the tracking is a bit of a red herring really - it doesn't actually mean that's where it is, just where their regional office is.

Swiss Post are similar - if it says it's in Zurich, it's actually not there at all - it's in Frankfurt am Main, but, 'Zurich' is where the regional control is, hence 'Zurich' (I had occasion to query Swiss Post when their database went down and that was the answer I received - that it was actually in Frankfurt, despite the database having shown it as 'Zurich'

[John Privett]

Posted by Simon Chaddock on 05/01/2013 10:55:36:

John

I believe the 'European' warehouse is in Germany. I think it was the their first in Europe.

Yes, of course. Thanks Simon!

[Andrew Jarvis 1]

Posted by Scott Cuppello - HobbyKing on 04/01/2013 17:10:06:

I have had a few cases of people swearing blind they have ordered from the UK or DE Warehouse.....only to find when we have checked that they have ordered from HK......This is why I strongly advise people to log in and select their country before ordering.

To be fair Scott, they may have logged in and selected UK Warehouse and UKP, however, the site does have a nasty habbit of defaulting back to Global Warehouse if there is a period of inactivity, it has happened to me several times when browsing and something crops up, you go back to your browsing only to find the site has gone back to Global Warehouse and prices are in USD, ok buyers should easily pick this up at checkout as the goods will be priced in USD and the delivery costs will be high, so no real excuse for ordering from the wrong warehouse.

[John Olsen 1]

Ok, but then if Singpost has it it should be in their tracking system. Actually their site implies that it could be in their tracking system even before they have it...I could see that happening if the sender has a way of notifying them what parcels there are to be picked up. But what I have seen is a long delay before it appears on their tracking site. So why is it taking so long for HK to get the parcel to them? Does it come by ox cart from Shangri-La?

It shouldn't actually matter much which warehouse things are coming from, none of them are more than 24 hours away from me by air, and it is apparent from the tracking delays that I see on parcels (not only HK ones) that the airlines are not mucking about, eg within a day of being "in transit" a parcel will be in this country.

Back in the bad old days when we could only get one five shilling postal note at a time and had to collect them up, I used to get a letter with an order to the UK (from NZ) and a reply back in typically ten days, and often 8. That was when mail was sorted by hand too. Now it takes longer just for one direction, since the Internet makes the ordering part instantaneous.

John

[Erfolg]

I assume that the Honk Kong postal service is stretched at present.

I ordered a few parts just before Christmas from HK. Within a day or two it was shown to have been posted and a E-mail (28-12), indicated dispatch. I then wondered when the items would arrive, so checked the postal reference (the items being above the 100g). It indicated that was posted on the 31 Dec. I have just checked again, it is still awaiting dispatch from Hong Kong.

You just have to be patient at this time of year it would seem.

[Glyn R]

My experience with Hobbyking is that they normally deliver in about 2 weeks from HK. My recent orders from UK were delivered in about 3 days. I always use Royal Mail from Hong Kong. China post can be unpredictable. I have had 31 orders over 3 years and evrey one has arrived OK. HK are a big outfit now, I wouldn't worry.

[Daithi O Buitigh]

It's not just HK Post Erfolg. I had a parcel despatched on the 22nd, shipped 25th (well that's what HK Post said although it was date-stamped 24th), arrived in GB at 9 am on the 31st and it's STILL sitting in Coventry 'awaiting clearance'

[Bill Brown 3]

Customs can hold them up, i recently waited about 6 weeks for an item from HK

[Erfolg]

In my case i am not really that bothered with respect to the delay. Although it is interesting to see where the delays apparently are and some what reassuring that it is not the UK postal service that can be useless.

I do not know how many orders I have had with HK, but as be written by Daithi, all have eventually arrived.

Even if one or two had not, I would not be that bothered, as the values are low.

In fact the only item in recent years that did not arrive. Was unable to deliver according to the PO. When I went to collect from the local office after returning from holiday, I was told it had been sent to Belfast. After some time the PO informed me, item destroyed. Now that is a service to complain about.