What Happened to the FT Store?!

Mr_Pickles

New member
I was taking a look at the Edge SBK, and here's what I found:

Includes:
  • Flite Test Edge DIY Cardboard Stunt Airplane Kit

I really hope they get things sorted out soon.
 

overeasy

New member
I hope they overhaul the site soon. Never heard of Amain before and now I know why. Navigation is a mess; you shouldn’t have to drill down 6 levels just to find a prop. No filtering, no intuitive cataloging, Amain should have taking a lesson from Flite Test in how to market products instead of presenting like a chinese hack job. HobbyKing is easier to shop and that company is a joke.
However, I believe FT will slap Amain (seriously, how much crack do their developers smoke!?) into order eventually.
 

Ray K

Ray K
Have to say I don't care much for the new store. Prices, product presentation, and I still haven't been able to get the stupid robot to send me anything for logging in. Leaves a lot to be desired. I bought Graupner products based on FT videos, and now can't find Graupner with the filters. Apparently, Graupner, and by default me, have been kicked to the curb. Oh, well.
 

randyrls

Randy
I did, it does not send me a link to my email to reset it.

It did not yesterday for me either, but I was able to do it this morning. Make sure your email address is correct. I think they are sending it "blind".

PS Watch out for upper vs lower case in your user-name. At one time all email user-names were case insensitive, but a mod to the RFC some time ago made them CASE SENSITIVE (but only some ISPs have made the change). Makes it very confusing.
 
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randyrls

Randy
I thought about starting a new thread, but decided to keep it in one place.

Is FT still going to be shipping from Ohio? I'm in Pennsylvania so shipping is very quick but AMain is in California.
 

JimCR120

Got Lobstah?
Site Moderator
I have to admit I did not like it at first. But having taken a asecond look at it I will share these:
1) The pages load significantly faster even with more products on the page which means if the product is not on the page, switching doesn't consume near as much time as before.
2) I agree there is almost always more products on the page than I care to see but with the handy filters, they can be easily enough filtered out.
3) One thing I thought about the old store that was unfortunate was the frequent out of stock products. I'm thinking with a larger organization there should be less of this.

What I am curious about is one of the biggest benefits of the Flite Test store was its customer service. I hope that hasn't been negatively affected by the change. Problems do happen and when they do it's always nice to have a prompt friendly response from Jen or someone from the team.
 

Namactual

Elite member
I have been ordering most of my electronics from Amazon lately just for the convenience and security. It seemed like most of the items I wanted to order were either not carried by FT or never in stock. What I could find and use on the FT store I bought from them using Amazon Pay.

I have not tried the new store yet, but having more of a selection is nice. I needed to buy a few more things which I could not find on the new store either so back to Amazon I go, but I will hold off judgement until I actually order something and see how it goes.

The store is a mess though.
 

cranialrectosis

Faster than a speeding face plant!
Mentor
I have scoured the STEM section but can no longer find the cases of planes and chuck gliders I could purchase last month. Is this a glitch or is FT backing off on the bulk orders?

I located the FliteTest products by expanding the brands list on the left side of the front page and there, at the very bottom, was FliteTest. Once I opened the FT filter page, I could use additional filters on the left to quickly narrow my search and find a Simple Cub.

However.

I'm with Jim on the service questions.

Buying from FliteTest was buying from Josh and Jen. When things went wrong, things got fixed.

To me the FliteTest brand will be significantly diminished if FT customer service leaves Ohio.

Please, don't turn the FliteTest store into HobbyKing.
 

mrjdstewart

Legendary member
i'm just scratching my head why you would want to try and compete with places like horizon, HK, tower, all those places that already have all this stuff. FT is for FT stuff, why add all this other junk? i don't know about your part of the country, but around here "hobby shops" don't usually fair to well. FT has a very successful little niche in the hobby, why they would want to mess with that i don't know.

my $.02,

me :cool:
 

abieex

Member
Mentor
It would have been better to ease into this by letting the "community" know what was coming. Where are things being shipped from? Who handles service? I for one have not done business with A Main and won't start now. Too many changes for my taste.
 

ElectriSean

Eternal Student
Mentor
I'd hazard a guess that the expansion in the online store and new partnership is to ease the planned opening of the hobby shop at Edgewater. I'm not a big fan of change myself, but I think in the end this will be a good one, assuming customer service isn't hampered.
 

flyfree

Member
Amain is okay - I've bought stuff from them in the past. No issues. They're based out of CA (so for me, being in OH, shipping would take longer than shipping from Canton, OH), but I don't know if that's where the flitetest store stuff would ship from. Time, or perhaps flitetest folk, will tell. Amain also has a reputation for good customer service on rcgroups, but I've no experience with it one way or the other personally.
 

TrooperCooper

New member
Was just going to say what Luis said...if you look at the bottom there's a notice that it's now powered by amain.

Not sure I'm a big fan of this. I liked the FT store in large part because it didn't have a bunch of stuff I wasn't interested in so it was super quick and easy to find the things I did want. Like servos. Before it was just the servos you'd likely need/want for FT builds...now there's 239 servos listed and I have to filter and search to find the ones I want.

Prices appear to be higher too. Like the ES9051 servos I was looking for (which are out of stock :( ) are now $5.99 but last time I bought them in March they were $4.75. Buying four servos that's a big enough difference to be like buying 5 at the old price :(

Took the words right out of my mouth. Personally, I could care less about the Balsa ARFs and Great planes brands. I was fine with just Horizon products, a little bugged, as FT hadnt even reviewed them yet. I buy from FT to support FT, not Amain. I loved the old store. Anyone else notice that the FT merch is no longer available? Seems to me like FT has turned more corporately aligned... not my cup of tea. (n):cautious:
 

kdobson83

Well-known member
I agree with everyone else here. I bought from the FT store because they had exactly what I was looking for, didn't have to rummage through mounds of cheap parts, and all my money helped support FT. Now you gotta dig through heaps of parts to find your stuff and it's not only supporting FT. If I wanted to shop at amain I'd shop there...
Anyone else find it amusing that FT was pretty adamant about not supporting cheap Chinese companies like eachine, but now that they merged their store with amain it's everywhere?
 

varg

Build cheap, crash cheap
Gonna reserve judgement on this because IT and websites are messy business, but there does need to be a dedicated section or filter for flite test stuff from the 'old' store.
 

DharanFlyer

Active member
Been poking around some more.

Looks like this started (at least in programming) around August 2nd of 2017. When all of the older planes where added to the database. Anyone know if A Main has been selling them this whole time? Just curiosity.

It's all a homogeneous environment. Reset password and then logged in on the AMain page and it worked. Added a wish list on Flite Test and it was on AMain. 100% just skinned with a few elements removed a new references for images to brand the site.

Related products seems to be really wonky at least when compared to what I'd expect for related products to a Flite Test SBK. A $159 servo for a $39 Bushwacker?'

Have different support numbers, but looks like shipping of products did move out of OH;
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Purely personal, but don't like the Affirm financing option being there.

If you go to the About us on Flite Test you see a picture with Josh, Alex, Austin, an AMain employee, and a fifth person I can't see the full logo for.

For our EU friends it doesn't look like AMain, who promotes international shipping, has done anything for GDPR based on the privacy policy dates.
 
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Planiac01

Active member
Yeah, while I still love Flite Test and all they do, I quite despise the new change on the store platform. It was a bad choice in my perspective.
 

kdobson83

Well-known member
What's the possibility of them switching back to the old format? Is this a trial thing or have they merged warhouses already? If this is just a trial maybe the community can ask to have the old store back.