topspin

I understand the exchange rate issue and how expensive it must have been to pay shipping from the US to AU, I' sure it was very expensive. I'm willing to bet however, that Tower or any of the other US suppliers never took your money and walked.

I'm pleased for you that your experience with HK has been good although I fail to see how that makes rockin daddy feel any better. It looks to me like they simply took his money and kept it. We call that stealing in the States, you may call it something else in Oz like, borrowing from a stupid Yank. The fact is that based on statistics if you continue to buy from HK you will get burned at some point. Please be sure and let us know when that happens so we can re-examine your feelings about them.

AlphaWhisky

OK, so it finally happened.... My order for sundry lipos and a couple of other things placed mid-November last year failed to show. I let it go over Xmas as I was otherwise occupied and got on the trail a week or so back. The tracking trail I followed went cold at the outgoing border on 29 November. HK raised a number and suggested I look to my local Post Office for a start. They first denied any knowledge, but when later pushed reckoned it parcel had reached and was sitting in the care HM Customs in Sydney, about 2000 kms south of here. Those goods were delivered to my doorstep barely 12 hours later - thankyou HK.

Just yesterday I received an offer from Tower Hobbies I figured I couldn`t at last refuse. Aimed specifically at me, an international order for goods in excess of $100 offered freight free. Great, that Great Planes P-51 kit I have been keen on will at last be mine. No problem that the sale price has increased almost 10% since around Xmas, I`ll go for it.

That is until Mr Tower`s freight free deal translated to a direct freight charge to me of $US 131 on top of the kit price of $124 - total for the box of sticks less covering an lots of other things a mere $255.

HobbyKing hasn`t done that to me yet...

Alan W

TheKennyKiller

Free international shipping on an order over $100 sounds to good to be true. I have been a tower member for about 6 months and I have never seen an offer like this. I did get an email offer from them the other day offering me $10 off the shipping on an order over $100, are you sure that is not the offer you are referring to?

topspin

Tower does offer free shipping from time to time and you can bet that if they offered it they would make good on it. I'm not sure what happened in Kenny Killers case but it doesn't sound right. I have been dealing with Tower Hobbies for a long time and they don't do that sort of thing so I have to question the details in the stated issue with Tower, I'll bet we are not getting the whole story.

scale only 4 me

My Feedback: (158)

Believe it or not, shipping from the US to Austrailia isn't that bad,, I shipped a dirt bike muffler there a couple years ago and was amazed it was so low,, Big planes like 747s flying there with cargo holds they are trying to fill I guess

TheKennyKiller

I ordered a traxxas summit from tower about a month ago and I paid $250 postage... Not even kidding. I did order a few other small things and got the order to $1000 and got a $250 discount with a code so yeah it was kind of like free postage if you want to look at it that way. Tower has free shipping to people in America if you spend $100 but I would find it hard to believe they would make that offer to international customers. I have no idea how tower calculates there postage prices but I do have family in America (well my American partners family) and I know it costs them a lot less to send stuff here then it does for us to send stuff to them. Are we off topic yet?

AlphaWhisky

I`ve no desire to see this develop into a mud slinging exercise, and consider the 'dispicable` thing may be more of a bi-product involved with the massive growth of HK in recent times'. The reaction to my recent query re slow lipo delivery - Zurich was involved somewhere aong the line - was a lot more clearly dealt with than a similar enquiry a couple of years ago which obviously had a more 'chinglish' involvement.

topspin - TheKennyKiller thing is right. Tower go to great lengths to advertise waiving the freight charges for us international customers from time to time. This happens to be $9.99 domestic freight charge which we normally pay as well as a matter of course, but then slug us with the full international 'commercial' rate on top. Although the Tower invoice shows the freight charge, the actual freight cost never seems to be displayed on the parcel as in postal stamps etc... I'm sure that if I was to have my P-51 kit sent to a mate somewhere in USA, and get him to onforward it to me, the freight component would more likely be in the region $30 or thereabouits, rather than the $131 on offer now. (Last week the freight quote was $141 so maybe I should keep at it...)

As far as the 'whole story' goes, my correspondence with Tower is current. Overnight I received an email from them, basically a plastic 'apology for the misunderstanding', but that`s the way things are .....

At least I still receive regular offers from Tower, and still deal wth them occasionally and expect to continue to do so.

Different from another American outfit I used to order from years ago. The reaction to my last order was a curt 'we no longer supply customers outside USA and Canada'. I seem to recall Gordon Banks from 'R C Report' took similar steps with his great magazine some years ago. I wonder what he is doing now...?

Alan W

topspin

I know what you mean, my wife is Australian and she/we also have relatives there. It is not bad sending air mail stuff like cards but packages are a little high. It cost $53.00 US to send a toy that weighed about 1.5 kilos to Peterborough and it took about 6 days is all. We do get free shipping from a number of US vendors on orders over a certain amount but they don't do it for overseas stuff, they would go broke.

We have the same problem here when ordering from Hong Hong, anything over about 800 grams or that reaches some majic dimension costs an arm and a leg. Those cheap planes from Hobby King wind up being very expensive cheap planes.