When it rains it poors... More HK Bad Luck

[John Campbell]

Well, they done it too me again... Trying to get live support to fix it...

Ordered

Ordered 2 TRStrob-II's and they sent me 2 TRStrobe-I's in the TRStrob-II's box... I wonder how they are going to stick it to me this time... I now have 30 orders with them, and this makes the 3 screw up in the last 5. That makes 10% failure rate and that is just not acceptable. I will keep you up to date on what they tell me, and I hope they don't just disconnect me like they did the last 2 times.

 

[John Campbell]

HK Chat Log

You are now chatting with : Cheryl (Customer Service)

Cheryl: Thank you for contacting the HobbyKing Support Team. How may I help you?

You: Referencing Order Number 2003971630, and part number TRStrob-II, QTY 2. Upon arrival found that the TRStrob-II was actually mis-boxed and had TRStrob-I instead. I need to have you to send a pickup order for those 2 and ship qty 2 of the TRStrob-II units. Please have stock room to verify the contents of the other boxes as they are probably incorrect as well. Please ship those units today with the UPS 3 day as previously ordered.

You: Send me a pickup order and I will have the other units shipped back to you.

Cheryl: One moment please while I check your Order.

You: Ok. Standing by

Cheryl: I apologize for the inconvenience. Please could you take some photos of the wrong item received as well as pictures of the parcel box and packing materials, including the postage label. Please also take a picture of the barcode label on the product. Please email the images to support@hobbyking.zendesk.com so that we may show it to the warehouse manager. Rest assured that this will be resolved soon. Thank you so much for your patience.

You: Will Do. Will only take a moment. Stand By

Cheryl: We will need to forward the email to our warehouse department, you are advised to wait a few days for a reply from us

Cheryl: Would there be anything else that I may help you with?

You: A Few DAYS!!! This is the 3rd major error in the shippments in the last 5 orders. Really need immediate resolution. Pictures being processed

Cheryl: I'm very sorry for the inconvenience. We will forward your request to our warehouse manager however you will not receive an immediate resolution as our warehouse is not open until 9am. It is currently 6am here. We will respond to your email as soon as we can

You: OK..... Guess that is better than you disconnecting me like the last 2 service reps did... Starting to get a bad taste for HK. I would ask you to look at my order history. I have 30 orders in the past 2 years totalling now over $5000. One one they charged me double shipping and then offered me a free item, which turned out to me a pack of Turnigy Decals.... Fell majorly insulted and considering my future of dealing with HK.

 

[jetpackninja]

Hi John,

Again good luck with HK support. My personal experience with customer support was very frustrating.
But for the most part I haven't had the same level of difficulties that you seem to be having.
I think it's plenty fair that you continue to post your experiences here but I hope you are also posting them on HobbyKing's forum. I don't suffer any delusion that it will resolve your issue any quicker but there is complaint thread there that is actively monitored by customer support.

Dear Anthony Hand/HobbyKing:
Why does a customer support representative have to check with anybody before resolving an issue?
If there is a problem, FIX IT!
Until you have customer support representatives that are empowered to resolve issues, you will have customers that are left hanging with no feedback as to what is being done (if anything) to resolve their issues.

 

[PaulT]

Having issues again?
I have not invested as much money as you have, and I just placed my 13th order with HK last night.
I have a ways to go until the magic 25 orders (which is where you apparently started having problems).

Glad that you are getting a favourable response this time.

Say hello to Cheryl, he's awesome when he's sober and not celebrating Chinese New Year.

 

[John Campbell]

Having issues again?
I have not invested as much money as you have, and I just placed my 13th order with HK last night.
I have a ways to go until the magic 25 orders (which is where you apparently started having problems).

Glad that you are getting a favourable response this time.

Say hello to Cheryl, he's awesome when he's sober and not celebrating Chinese New Year.

I do a lot of business with them, but starting to really consider if I should continue or not. There customer service is just about as bad as anywhere I have ever dealt with. My last 2 planes (just arrived) I ordered else where, primarily because of recent problems. I hope I do not have to take all my business else where.

 

[PaulT]

I have just made a suggestion to the powers above to maybe start up a for sale column.
You might just be able to sell those strobes and forgo the angst of RMA's and such..
I know it won't resolve the issue but it might soften the blow.
Thoughts?

 

[John Campbell]

I have just made a suggestion to the powers above to maybe start up a for sale column.
You might just be able to sell those strobes and forgo the angst of RMA's and such..
I know it won't resolve the issue but it might soften the blow.
Thoughts?

Interesting idea... But I am going to hold HK accountable... One way or the Other.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I have a ways to go until the magic 25 orders (which is where you apparently started having problems).

I have 31 orders in with them, and only had one issue. It was my fault. I somehow placed my order, and didn't include my street number. It had the rest of my address. My post office didn't even try to deliver it. They held it in their back room for about 24 hours, then sent it back to China, where somewhere along the way it got held up/lost. So I had items I wanted, a timeline I wanted them in (had an rc event I was attending soon) and was stuck waiting for them to get the order back, before they could resend it with the correct address.

Well, as it turns out, I was able to get a credit for the items in route, since they could see it was never delivered, and was on it's way back. The trick is, to offer the customer service person a solution. It's like they're not allowed to make suggestions, but if you give them a reasonable solution, they'll do it.

I do feel bad for them to some extent. They're getting yelled at, for a problem that someone else created, be it the person making the order, the guy who packaged it, the guy that shipped it, or somewhere way up the food chain, who made a bad management decision. I try to remember that when dealing with any customer support personnel.

 

[UndCon]

45+ HK-orders and no issues so far...far worse luck with goodluckbuy...2 times on 2 orders they sent me the wrong stuff

 

[jetpackninja]

I won't say I feel bad for them, but, this is the biggest part of the problem:

HobbyKing's corporate culture and policies do not enable the support personnel to make the decisions that are needed to provide world class customer service to the end user customer.

No doubt HobbyKing has had to deal with people that are trying to scam them of something, but, that is part of the challenge of being a world class company, this does not stop other companies from being able to provide excellent customer service.

Really? I'll have to forward the email over to our warehouse manager? They messed up. The customer has proof they messed up. HobbyKing knows they have to fix it. John should have had an answer telling him what they were going to do to fix it before they closed the chat session. Plain and simple. There should be no need to get a manager involved. HobbyKing's customer service process is broken.

 

[Tritium]

I have had good luck till my last order. It has been sitting as Processing for the last 9 days now and no reply from Hobby King about what the issue is or might be even though I submitted a help desk ticket 2 days ago.

Thurmond

 

[lobstermash]

Yeah, HK is a place to avoid from about 10 Dec. to 10 March... They barely keep up with orders during normal days, but around Christmas and Chinese New Year, they can't seem to keep the place running.

 

[con244]

This all sounds real familiar. I ordered a Mini Stik Kit from them back on the 7 of November plus all the bits and pieces to make it a flying model. The kit arrived short the bulkhead kit parts that give the fuselage its shape and the battery cover and a couple of other bits. Contacted them, got the old photo and weigh bit they agreed it was light and they would send the bits. Well here we are 3 months later and many conversations with their so called customer service line and no joy at all. The conversation I had with Cheryl, who is probably many different people using the same generic name, was very similar to the one John had, I would not be surprised if they just cut and paste the relevant phrase into the conversation. I also asked if they could just give me a store credit for, say, $5 and call it quits. I would have been happy with this as I could always just make to missing bits myself but I still got a no go. To be honest I don't even care if the parts come. The quailty of the kit was rubbish. I don't know but it seems to me that the quality of service from this company is going down real quick. I am sure that if everyone who has had a bum deal or crappy service from them was to send an email to Mr Hand explaining that business will stop if he doesn't make an effort to get his customer service and quality control up to scratch he might just make an effort. I am sure that the emails would be in the thousands. I know that HK sponsor FT and I appreciate the quality of work that FT does, perhaps they could go into bat for us poor smucks that have been screwed over by the company.
Con
ps anyone got A Hand's email address?

 

[colorex]

They took a week to pack a KKboard...

 

[John Campbell]

You may have a good point there. With Christmas, the new year, and then everyone wanting to build there winter project for the upcoming summer.. Kinda makes since.

 

[ands]

Guys, from what I have read on here and numinous other posts on other sites I have come to the conclusion that I will never use Hobby King to supply me with any products related to this fantastic hobby. Personally I feel product quality and customer service are King...I watched the FT episode where Josh was interviewing Mr Hands and it was cringe worthy!
Of coarse there will be 1000's of positive experiences with HK but I just cant be bothered with the hassle or waisted energy when it goes wrong...life's to short!

To be honest I kinda wish that FT would disassociate themselves with HK...just thinking aloud

 

[Tritium]

I might buy the timing problem If I had not received an order placed a few days before their new year holiday in record time.
They seem to be very inconsistent at best. Bad customer service can break an otherwise good company and many Chinese companies don't get this fact yet. The Japanese were very slow to learn it in the 1960's. I suspect that they (Hobby King) like other Chinese companies I know, try to run with minimal staff which doesn't work well during times of increasing business. No foresight or projections or training of new staff to prepare them for future growth.

Thurmond

 

[con244]

Damn! just when I had got used to the fact that those missing parts weren't going to come I get an email saying that my parts have just been mailed. Hopefully they are the parts I need to complete the kit. I don't know why they couldn't have just removed the bits from another kit and sent those. Oh well I'll let you all know what arrives and when, could be a while more yet
Con

 

[John Campbell]

Damn! just when I had got used to the fact that those missing parts weren't going to come I get an email saying that my parts have just been mailed. Hopefully they are the parts I need to complete the kit. I don't know why they couldn't have just removed the bits from another kit and sent those. Oh well I'll let you all know what arrives and when, could be a while more yet
Con

I might be stupid and looking for punishment, but for some stupid reason, I still use them. I wish there was a competitor that carried everything that they did at similar pricing. For LIPOS and other small items, no one else really competes.

 

[John Campbell]

I might buy the timing problem If I had not received an order placed a few days before their new year holiday in record time.
They seem to be very inconsistent at best. Bad customer service can break an otherwise good company and many Chinese companies don't get this fact yet. The Japanese were very slow to learn it in the 1960's. I suspect that they (Hobby King) like other Chinese companies I know, try to run with minimal staff which doesn't work well during times of increasing business. No foresight or projections or training of new staff to prepare them for future growth.

Thurmond

I am at the point where it is just the normal excuses... I was supposed to hear what they are supposed to do for me on the Strobes that were shipped incorrectly but have not heard anything yet. Guess they have a stand to up hold... Some people have high standards, others have Low Standards, and then there is Hobby King.