Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

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camdyson

sounds like you were taken advantage of.........

HeliBru

Peter,

I agree with you. I'm in worse situation. Bought something (almost forgotten on what I had purchased) nearly to $500 on April, 7 2008. Track the items in USPS, left the US in 2 times surprisingly. First was on April, 19 and the second on April, 27 and until now May 9, exceeded a month with nothing except the charges on my creadit card bill.

Several emails sent to Advantage Hobby and to my frustration there is no (ZERO) (NOT A SINGLE) reply from Advantage Hobby at all. I even tried using all the email addresses under their contacts & the automatic fields they have. NO REPLY.

Contacted USPS with a reply "no additional information" with a message saying only the US sender allow to initiate further inquiries depending on the type of shipment they used.

My advice for buyers in the east, to get those from China/Hong Kong with 3 days delivery which in fact better than getting something domestically in my case. Perhaps in my case, being & carrying a muslim name make the package transitted at FBI/CIA for anti-terorrism checks. Who knows?

Thus only God knows where my order is.

To Advantage Hobby, this is first and last time I will purchase from you. You just tarnished the rest of US online suppliers to the far eastern buyers.

Hong Kong suppliers are still the best. I may not get my question answered or understood by them correctly sometimes but the eastern suppliers do answer my emails and send items so quick to the rest of the world.

No more buying from the US!!
Helibru
Brunei Darussalam.

tevans55

Peter-
On any international purchases I have made the liability has been with the manufacturer not the seller on a warranty item...the warranty is issued by the manufacturer. Horizon Hobby has this liability unless you have extenuating circumstances. Horizon Hobby lists Australian hobby stores on their web site so the fact that you are outside the US would not seem to be an issue. I would follow up with Horizon if I were you and ask where you can get warranty work handled.

tevans55

HeliBru-
Sounds like a USPS problem since the package left the US on different dates. The liability here is with the shipper. Call your credit card company and have the payment removed since you did not receive the goods you ordered. I once had an order delivered to the wrong address twice in another state I had never lived in. I just cancelled the order through my credit card company.

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

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LDM

My Feedback: (15)

I have to laught when people say take it up with the manufactuer , yes if its technical in nature and work will void the warinty like a futaba radio ect , I agree to a point ,but with basic parts like a incidence meter , simply replace it and that is defined as customer servace .
When you lose 1 customer at a rate of $750 , he will certainly tell 7 more about his experience and in this case on RCU that 7 will soon be 500 . We all see there mega ads on line and in the mags and we all know that if this were tower , horizon , hobby lobby ,hobby people the outcome would be differant .
These guys are big and successful because there good and they dont leave you as a the small guy dealing with the big guy supplier on your own .

Remeber most suppliers are "power buyers" with there sourceing suppliers , so for them to send back less then 5% of there good in defective merchandise is probaby part of there deal , that is not the case with you the consumer so that is why they need to simply step in and help

TimJ

just a little in site:


1. It is in most hobby shop agreements with horizon or GP that any issues your customer may have with a product, you can refer them to their customer service. I would begin to think that maybe the shop rep you talked with did no know you were out of the country, or they may have helped you more...... Hard to say.

2. Most Warranties are void when the product is sold out side of the respective country. This is a big risk when you don't purchase from your Local Hobby Shop, or from a online retailer that is with in your country.

The hobby shop or distributor are not obligated to honor any warranties when the product leaves their respective countries.

This is another reason why it is best to support your local hobby shop, or at least one with in your country.

tevans55

A warranty is an expressed binding agreement between you and the manufacturer. Use it to your "advantage" it's good customer service to honor the agreement. If manufacturers make a defective product no matter what the price or complexity what in that is the suppliers liability unless otherwise stated? Make the manufacturer honor the warranty and we all will benefit from higher quality products. Force the supplier to deal with it and the price goes up.

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

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CaptainFlynn

Couple of weeks ago I tried to "buy" some stuff from advantage hobby but all my emails have been left unanswered as well. I wonder where all those happy customer comments on their frontpage come from. But seriously, one could at least expect to receive an answer back within a couple of days... but no answer at all?

I went off to buy from Towerhobbies instead. I ordered a P-6 Hawk from Greatplanes. Ordered Tuesdays and Thursday morning i had the kit delivered to my doorstep.

LDM

My Feedback: (15)

One more thing , when you have a customer servace issues and no one responds where you live is irrelavant , a no responce is poor business no matter how you measure it

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

deleted

pc55bomber

Hi Guys

Thats really poor service and as I have only dealt with them once for a small value item (no problems) I wont deal with them again if this is how they provide service for International customers.

Might be worth a quick phonecall to the boss man and let him know about the situation.
Mention the great backup service Tower provides in exactly these situations. They are the best with backup and replacement.
I have had good results in the past after a call.

Shame on Advantage Hobby

Cheers
Paul

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

deleted

G-Pete

All right Peter,


Here is my e-mail which I send on 5/13/2008 to Advantage Hobby:
___________________________________________

Whoever cares?

To start a new project I need to order parts an a whole lot of them. In the past I looked for a good price and a combined shipment.

Target is to pay less shipping charges. One big order makes sense.

Because of the high volume of the order, resource is a necessity. When I searched about Advantage Hobby this

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_7474270/tm.htm

article came up and it raises concerns on my side.

My simple question is, how that happened and what is the solution?

_______________________________________

As of today - no answer!

This shows clearly they have no interest to communicate with existing or potential customers.


I will never order from them, matter of fact if somebody ask me my answer

BUYER BEWARE!

Happy landings
G-Pete

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

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NCIS

Peter,

I would call your credit card company. If they won't respond to them they will take the charges back from them and credit your card.

Barry

Larry S

My Feedback: (6)

Good to know how this company does business. I saw them at Toledo and will admit, the girls were pretty but that doesn't cut it when I order parts that are defective. Never have I ever had any problems with Tower Hobbies but was planning on ordering the new Airtronics radio from Advantage until I read this post. I'll wait till Tower gets the new Futaba 10 channel 2.4 in and order from a company that I know is good.
Larry

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

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rt3232

My Feedback: (6)

YES

Bob T

Advantage

Dear Peter;

We were directed to this post from one of our customers.

Advantage Hobby was under the impression that this issue had already been resolved. We checked our server, and for some reason we do not see any follow up e-mails that you referred to on this matter.

After reading your post, I have spent several hours talking with the staff at Horizon Hobby about what you were told when you contacted them in regards to returning this defective item. After much discussion, here is their reply to us:

"Len, we honor our warranties regardless of where the product is purchased. We require the consumer to return the product (their shipping expense) for inspection and if indeed it is a defect we repair or replace and ship it back at our expense. This applies to domestic and international consumers".

Based on the above, it seems to be different than the information you were provided when you contacted them. I would like to know what you were actually told when contated so I can follow up with them. If their staff is giiving customers inaccurate information, we want them to know so they can train their people as needed.

As you can see, when we told you to send the item directly to Horizon, we were in fact correct, you were just given incorrect information from Horizon service when you contacted them.

When we did not hear back from you (your e-mails cannot be found as mentioned above), we assumed that all was well, as Horizon is generally top notch with their servicing of their products. Obviously, this did not happen in this case.

It is also common practice for customers to send defective items directly to the manufacturer for service, in fact, some manufacturers demand this direct warranty procedure. This is regardless if they are a domestic or international customer.

We want to make sure that you are taken care of on this issue, regardless of your decidion to purchase from us in the future or not.

Please send the defective meter back to Horizon Hobby as we originally requested.
Once the item is shipped, please e-mail us ([email protected]) with the amount of the postage, and we will refund your Paypal for this amount.
Horizon will then replace the defective meter, and they will pay for the return postage back to you.

If you follow the procedure above, we will gaurantee that you will receive your replacement unit.
If you do not receive a replacement unit from Horizon in reasonable time, we will either credit your Paypal back 100% for this item, or we will replace it for you at N/C.

We are hopeful that this helps to clear up this misunderstanding. We hope that you can also understand that we felt that the situation had been resolved until we were notified otherwise.

We do appologize for your follow up e-mails to us somehow falling through the cracks in our e-mail system. We are a small and quickly growing company, and this is obviously a growing pain that we need to address and tighten up as we move forward.

Defective items are a problem for us all, and we do the best we can to handle these issues so it is the least inconvenience for us all.

We thank you in advance for your understanding and patience with this matter, and we hope that we have helped to bring it to a quick close.

Best regards;
Len Sabato
Advantage Hobby

NCIS

ABOUT TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gibbs

G-Pete

that was me on 05/13/2008 []

happy landings
G-Pete


PS: you guys lost me as customer...[&:]

Peter_OZ

My Feedback: (1)

no need for this post now, problem sorted out to my full satisfaction.