I've had 5 HK orders processed reliably/quickly, but for whatever reason the 6th was a very similar experience to what kiwipete is describing. $600-ish order, hear nothing from them for 6 weeks, no status updates, nothing. At that point I start chatting with customer service reps only to be told "it will ship out tomorrow" or "very soon", which was never what actually happened. Another few weeks and multiple chats later, I can't even get them to answer a simple question: "Has my order shipped? if not, when?" Nothing but the same excuses and some Chingrish non-answers.
I was polite and courteous all the way through, but they simply ignored and/or refused to provide me with any real info regarding my order. I didn't care that it was late, what bothered me was that nobody would tell me what was going on. Has it shipped? Is it waiting to be fulfilled? Even now, I still have no idea what actually happened to cause such delays and breakdown in communication on their end.
Another week passed, still nothing, so I started the Paypal dispute process thinking my order was MIA and a lost cause. They didn't bother respond to the dispute request after a couple of days, so I started another customer service chat before escalating to a claim. I stated my same question. This is when they pulled the same line as with kiwipete: "We can't check on your order status because you have an open Paypal dispute". I stated that I'd be happy to close the dispute immediately if someone could simply tell me what had happened with my order.
Any useful answer here would've been quite acceptable.
Eventually, after tons of hopeless dialog, they somewhat implied that the order would ship out very soon if I closed the claim. After closing the claim, a tracking number was provided several days later after another support request asking about the shipment. The order eventually arrived, but the tracking was stuck on the first "shipment lodged" type status for at least another week after they added it.
Sunder said:
kudos said:
The problem is people who don't have a problem with them think no-one has or should have a problem with them.
There's a big difference between someone taking weeks to get back to you, and someone giving you a refund within an hour of asking, because your order was delayed right before Christmas.
I don't doubt that sometimes they may slip up, but the OP seems unjustified in his statements.
He's entitled to let people know about his experience, just as you're entitled to have such high praise for HobbyKing.
Also, there's no 10 day Paypal wait for claims. You can escalate from dispute to claim almost immediately. Just because HK is the only viable supplier of LiPo doesn't mean such crappy customer service is ever acceptable. There's a huge online record of people who've had horrible HK experiences, which IMO go beyond just the squeaky wheel types complaining. It's a pattern of the same crap happening, usually a missing or very late order, then the fun begins. It's order roulette with HK, 95%+ of the time you're fine, but hope you're never stuck dealing with customer service for anything.