It's all about price to me. You can call me a bas***d and if you have the item I want for less, I will order. I don't know if beginners need to be warned about rude behavior or not but I have a suggestion that might fit in here. I'm a beginner also and assumed I could just go to the hobby shop and would be met with expert advice. The hobby shop I'm speaking of is a very large hobby chain in Kennesaw Ga. I was asking about the different fuels and was told by one kid that the oil in one particular brand evaporated and formed water. Well after that bit of advice I decided to research and know what I needed before going in to that store. Another store, about 20 miles away in Dallas is run by the owner, who always has good advice and suggestions and is very knowledgeable.

HI CAFEENMAN! The reason why that lady scowled at you was because she knew what your DEFINITION OF FLAPERONS IS!

Personally, i'd rather someone to be straight up mean than to be 'some timey'......I was planning on buying a Nexstar from a hobby shop near me...when i tried to inquire more about the plane by asking the dealer questions he would sometimes give me the answers i needed and other times he acted as though he didn't want to be bothered (where did this guy get his business license???)...SO, i saved $100.00+ and bought my First plane from EbAy.[>:]

I guess I lucked out, though I doubt my wife would agree. I have a LHS about 5 miles from the house, and since the first day I found this place (about 3 years ago), I have dropped about $7000 to $8000 there. From my first nitro car, all the way up to the heli, this guy has been nothing but awesome from the beginning. I've dropped enough money there that I now receive a 15% to 30% discount on anything in the store, depending on his profit margin. He has always answered every question I have ever had, even if he has the look of "you dummy", he has never talked down to me, and of course smiles every time I walk in (cha-ching), because I now have the son into trucks, and working him on the trainer plane. This a pic of my "arsenal", although everything isn't pictured.

[img]Mj24282.jpg [/img]

something i was told in the retail business... the customer isnt always right, but they are the customer...

John must own a hobby store...

There are two Kinds Of Customers One that you taken away from someone else because you had a better product, service ext.. and the one they didnt want anyway........... Ha !!

Wow...this really sparked some good conversation. i am the originator of this string. no i am not a competitor trying to get an edge on the competition, no i am not some a-hole that is mad at the world, no i do not live here in rcuniverse posting everyday (only when i need to). i am just a consumer that has enough experience buying consumable products and i expect a certain level of reasonable service - when i don't get it, i ask myself "did that person just have a bad day?" if i think the answer is yes - i go about my business. if the answer is no and i think they are inherently rude i make it a point to warn others. in my opinion nesail.com is inherently rude. thats all.

nose-n

ps. FYI...BBS does not measure rude people.

I have from time to time delt with some service person and thought to myself, "The world would be a better place if that person were on wellfare."[]

Jim

Wings, I do not own a hobby store. I am in no way associated with anyone or any business that sells hobby stuffs. I own a computer networking firm.

I realize there are some just plain rude persons in service, but just because someone doesn't want to answer your questions does not defacto make them rude. If anything, it makes the customer rude for insisting that they expect every store owner/employee to cater to their incompetence. It is really YOUR responsibility to learn the basics of what you need to know, not the store. Besides, do you really want to take advice from someone that is trying to sell you something? If so, I have some beautiful beach property in Nebraska for sale.

The same basic rules apply to ANY business. Will the auto dealer teach you need to know about driving a car? Will they give you detailed instructions on how to read error codes, check alignment, and repaint all for free? I think not. Will they become rude if you start asking these questions... possibly.

The same rules apply to the hobby world. If you call a high end or specialized model store and ask beginner questions I can guarantee the store will not be interested in helping you learn RC. Even a more general retail store may have determined that it is cheaper to lose the sale as opposed to paying employees to answer an hour's worth of questions for a $100 sale. Everyone cries "SERVICE" but no one is willing to pay for it. If service is really that important, let's see some cash up front.

Point being, you are already a member of RCU if you posted here. Why didn't you ask the RCU community your question? I doubt you will find a better answer anywhere else.

We are loosening point here. It is not a discussion about general store. When I walk into the McDonalds I almost certain that the sales person there would be the dummies in the town. Almost the same thing with many other stores as well as car dealers. When I start ask questions, the simplest ones, no sales clerk knows what to tell me. You are lucky, when they know where to find that particular item on the shelf. It's just the reality of life. Good service happens too, occasionally. I've got used to it. No problem. They want to sell, not to help.
But this is not the point. The key word is - ARROGANCE! They do not want to speak to you? Or God! This is a HOBBY! The nicest part of your life, why do you have to tolerate their behavior? Beginner never asks difficult questions - he just does not know them. The only thing he can ask - which trainer is better, what radio to buy and what engine. That's it. If you do not have time for me - I will understand, just be polite. But as I recall from the beginning of this thread, the vendors of LHS do nothing usually. I've seen them half-sleeping too. The best local hobby shops I've known were more like clubhouses.
I think, it is a good idea to post bad business here. It is the only way we can let them know - they are wrong! I will never, never buy anything from such people, it does not matter - hobby shop or Hobby Sack, Canadian Tire or Sears, even IKEA, any brand. There are some principles in this life, and this is one of them. I work hard for my money. I do not want to finance arrogance. Arrogant people deserve no mercy.

One more thing. I know there are bad customers - their existence is not an excuse for an arrogance. We are not talking here about bad customers, we are talking about BAD BUSSINESES. If you are unhappy business owner with "bad customer" knowledge, please, I am not interested.

No, you miss the point. Have you owned a business? How is a retail hobby store different from any other business? It's not! Locally, we have a large hobby franchise which is of the most successful franchises ever, regardless of business type. They are listed in the top 5% of all franchises of any type. I know because corporate is located where I live and I deal with corporate on occasion. Believe it or not, one of the most important criteria they look for when interviewing potential new store owners is that they should NOT have any prior involvement in the hobby. This blows a lot of hobbyist' away... why would they do such a thing? Because it is a business, not a club house with parts on the wall. It is a hobby to you, it is a BUSINESS to them. If the hobby store wishes to stay in business they need to make good business decisions, and good business decision may be mutually exclusive of what a hobbyist wants. However, I can say that I have NEVER been treated poorly at the franchise's store. Sure, sometimes they don't know an answer, but they were always polite.

There is generally no room for arrogance when dealing with customers... no argument here. Beginners don't ask difficult questions, but they may ask a lot of questions that take time to answer. Nearly all the complaints here revolve around beginners getting some attitude when they ask beginner type questions. I can envision a beginner in a LHS asking easily asking hours worth of questions. Even if the LHS sells them something, they probably lost money in the process because they spent oneplus-man hours on one sale. Now, if we are talking high ticket items, like a $40K car, sure, this can be justified. For all that work for a $300 RTF trainer? Just look at bobs_202 post. He goes to his LHS, looking for answers and maybe to buy. He gets PO'd so he buys on Ebay instead... so how many hobby answers did Ebay give him? Like I said in my previous post. Everyone say's service is top priority, but when it comes right down to it, cost is king.

I still think it would be MUCH more useful to list hobby sources that offer good services to new pilots as opposed to just listing one's people are PO'd with. Who cares if one person had a bad experience. I want to know the business where 95% had a good experience.

Cheers.

I use to buy my "begginer" stuff in my local hobby shop, spent over $1000 in 6mo, is this nothing? Do they want sales higher than this? I can't imagine a non beginner spending $5000 on each purchase!
After feeling the local shop was treating me as just another "beginner", I stop buying there last month and spent after that other $400 on line.
Well, seems we should have only online shops and questions being answered here in RCU.

Nilo

I know a lot of hobby shops owners and a lot people from this hobby who are working at the shops just as a sales persons - the excellent people, and their businesses are strong. Will always prefer to deal with such people. But I've got your point of view, John, regarding "good for business" remarks. You are right, unfortunately. To be very, very successful in business you have to be impudent, unscrupulous, cruel and vice versa. I know that. I am working now in the one of tropical Asian countries, and the people here are very successful in business, country is very prosperous, but the way they are earning money - it is not for me. I know what stress is, and do not like the idea to spend all my life taking stress every minute. Especially, I do not like to have stress each time I visit the hobby shop. It does not have to be this way.
As per beginner, who have asked a lot of questions and turned to e-bay, e-bay is also a business, and it does prove that they proposed a better deal. If somebody goes to e-bay to buy things, not to you, even with shipping, handling fees and with risk involved it only proves that something wrong with yours, nothing else.

Ukrconsul... I hear ya, I too must do business in Asia on occasion. I never look forward to those transactions as buyer-beware takes on a whole new meaning. Maybe it is possible to make a hobby shop profitable (not just make ends meet) and still offer a lot of useful presales service to newbies. Without a doubt it is a goal to work toward for LHS, but I think it will be a very difficult goal to obtain.

nilo, I know how you feel. However, it is not gross that matters, it is net. On that $1K you spent, maybe $500 was profit, but I doubt it was that high. Even so, considering overhead, wages, inventory costs, everything else that goes into running a business, even a small RC shop of three employees and a small retail storefront probably needs $150K/year net to break even. Your $1K in total purchases only helped keep their doors open for one day at best. I too can't imagine a beginner spending $5K in the first year... but that is kinda my point. Many LHS don't make enough on sales to hire knowledgeable persons that will spend a hour answering questions. My LHS actually will spend a hour with a new pilot and they are never rude or arrogant. However, typically the help are not modelers, so often the advice they give is bad or just wrong.

I guess what irks me about this thread is the negative context, i.e., post hobby stores you don't like because they are rude, won't help beginners, etc. While this may help some avoid a bad store, it doesn't provide any help in selecting a good store. On that I bow out. Cheers.

One more thing.

#Believe it or not, one of the most important criteria they look for when interviewing potential new store #owners is that they should NOT have any prior involvement in the hobby. This blows a lot of hobbyist' #away... why would they do such a thing? Because it is a business, not a club house with parts on the #wall. It is a hobby to you, it is a BUSINESS to them. If the hobby store wishes to stay in business they #need to make good business decisions, and good business decision may be mutually exclusive of what #a hobbyist wants.

Did not own a business. But I've worked as personnel manager for a big ministry. Above mentioned sounds very strange to me. Do not hire book lover for a book shop, do not hire computer specialist for a computer store, do not hire a pets fan for a pet shop, do not hire a man with knowledge and education for the job that requires that knowledge and education? It is questionable policy. I'll tell you what. When you see advertisement like - the big company is hiring, looking for people not older that 35 years and blah blah blah, what do you think? They need young people because they are more motivated, have more energy and blah, blah, blah. But I see that the big company just does not want to pay more to older folks, because they are more experienced. The same thing with your example.

There is a diff between a owner and an employee and you are stretching my example a little. Just because you love books doesn't mean you know jack squat about running a bookstore. You hire business people and sales persons to run a store... If they are good and make sound business decisions, they really don't even need to know ahead of time what they are selling to be successful. If you hire the hobby expert, they may know a lot of hobby answers, but do they have a clue about margins, inventory management, marketing, human resources? Probably not. This would make them a very poor person to run a hobby store. The two are not mutually exclusive, but a businessman makes business go. That's all I was saying.

I can see both sides to this arguement. A post in here flaming some merchant can appear to be just one individual venting about one experience gone haywire, and it may not give an overall picture of the merchant's performance. Most people don't go out of their way to praise a company, but often you find them recounting their negative experiences. This medium (a very active forum) is not the most effective way of learning about retailers, for these reasons as well as the fact that there is just too much information to look through. Not everyone has the time to read every thread, so at best any resulting rating would be skewed and biased. I would imagine that the people who do have the time to read through every post probably already have pretty good contacts and know how to choose a good company from a bad one.

It would be nice if there were a system in place to rate hobby retailers, just as there are for most other items you can purchase online. For instance, nextag.com allows you to view a list of merchants selling a product, with a rating next to their logo of 1 to 5 stars. If the rating is not perfect, you can look at the number of people who rated the merchant, so a high number would show that a negative experience happens a lot, and a low number may indicate an isolated experience. If you want to look further still, you can read the reviews left by some of the people who rated their experience. This is a very common system which I am sure is probably available as a canned website addon.

Perhaps RCU could incorporate such a system into their website?

By the way, I would like to add a couple of points:

1) I would imagine that most people getting into RC sales are in it because of their interest in the hobby (at least former interest), and not for the money making potential. Let's face it, selling a balsa airplane cannot be handled with the same dis-interest as, say, trading stocks. To suggest such is a bit naive. This is also something of an assumption when you meet people who deal in this hobby. This "assumption" is one of the things that attracts people to the hobby in the first place.

2) Businesses based around recreational hobbies depend on expanding relationships and repeated business. People get into this and other such ventures because it is fun, and researching/purchasing is all part of the experience. If that experience is not fun, why would a customer do it? As a matter of fact, in this type of business, a lost customer will not only hurt your business, but could also hurt the hobby as a whole when that customer decides he didn't have fun doing it and moves on to something else.

3) You cannot say that even the most novice customer can ever be considered unimportant. It's not like these people are calling Lockheed for advise on building RC planes. Every new customer expands interest in the hobby, and every new flier could be one of those $5k customers down the road. Why do you think that value-priced RTF's are out there? It's there to attract beginners and get them interested in more expensive products later on...this is a standard in most businesses. Bait and hook, plain and simple. Customer service is part of the expense incurred in attacting those high dollar customers.

4) Finally, people do not need to fly model airplanes. To make comparisons with a business such as an IT firm is a gross mis-identification of your customers as well as your product.

Totally agree. Couldn't say better.

.

I like dealing with beginners in the R/C hobby! Our sales is now looking towards mostly newbie sales. JohnWildman Willman has a lot of good points and he knows business! I didn't read every word of this thread, but most people I know in the hobby retails sales are in because the want to be. There is no big money to be made in the Local Hobby Shop business. Most owners to it because they want to be there! Then you have the shop owners who think when they get in the business they are gonna make a living and it just doesn't happen. Sad but true. We own boogerboyhobbies.com, we do this because I like building, flying, helping people if I can and all we do is sometimes I make enough to buy something for myself. Any newbie's that need anykind of help feel free to email us anytime, because we have spare time! Thanks Boogerboy

I'm a newbie in this hobby and don't know much about it. You can call me a dummy when you talk to me about flying but you better be SMILING! [>:] Tagcaver

Stormin': I agree to a certin extent with what you are saying, but here is the rub. Let's assume a LSH is run by a hobbyist becasue of thier interest, and they aren't in it for the money. The end up eeking a meager income, or worse, lose money, and then we get another thread on yet another LHS is closed. A LHS that is making good money will NOT close. A LHS that is losing money or breaking even WILL eventually close. What you are suggesting is that any nonrequired goods/services related store must have a owner that has personal interest in the good/services they sell. This thinking is why many LHS are closing. There is no significant business diff between owning a hobby store, an IT firm, or Wallmart. Beyond the theoritical and to the emperical. I know the "non-hobbist as a owner, but must be a busines person" works in the hobby industry becasue the US's largest and most successful Hobby franchise is run this way. They couldn't be large or successful if they were wrong. I know this is hard for some to swallow because this is OUR hobby, but to many, this is how they put food on the table. It is still a business.

Here's what it boils down to people, I've owned my own business for 20 years & in that time with all the seminars on retail
& customer service I've gone to, one thing keeps coming out,

In business (any business) you have three things to offer a customer......Quality.....Service.....Price.

You can give any 2 of these & have a succsesful business, try & give all 3 and you WILL go broke.
If your customers want Great Service & Quality product, they have to pay the price.
If they want a Quality Product & Great Price, then they have to give up the Service.
If they want a Great Price & Great Service, then the quality has to be less to afford the business to give those.

Any 2 in any combination, but only 2, NOT all 3.

As I stated earlier in the thread, I went to a LHS & was treated terrible, I then found a LHS that was more than willing to spend time with me and
answer all my questions as a newbie to the sport. Am I willing to pay their price (higher) than ordering from a web-site with no service, YES,
& I will continue to spend my money with them. I've been in this sport since November & now am building my 6th plane, I've spent ALOT of money on planes, flight packs, engines, radios (2) & LOTS of misc junk.

I can promise that there are those buttheads in this world, that think they can order from Tower Hobbies, Horizon or any of the hundreds of places on the web, & then EXPECT the LHS to help them solve any and all their problems, & answer all the questions they have on the new stuff the bought. Those are the people that have no brains or common sense, & should be thrown out of anyplace they try to do this. If your reading this & know your one of these people, understand why you are not welcome in most places of business, if you do it to one store, your very likely to do it to most stores you deal with.

Think about this, when the Major Discount stores, break all the Mom & Pop LHS's, they don't have to be discount ANYMORE!!!