What would you do?

A while back, (January 2008) I ordered an SV 26 from Hobby City in China. It arrived okay in a couple of weeks. I saw their SV 50 and ordered one of them. They were on backorder, but they still charged me $232 and change. I heard some bad things about the engine and cancelled my backorder, which was legal according to their website, though I would, for some reason I cannot explain, lose the shipping portion of the total amount. Okay, no problem. I went to order another SV 26 and use some of my credit. No visible credit was to be found. I thought, no problem, I'll email them. No email address is available. No credit shows in my account. I mentioned this is another post elsewhere on RCU. I tried calling their customer service number dozens of time. No answer, even during our late night, which is their day time.

I went there again today, brought up my account, but found that all of my previous orders had been erased and no mention of a credit. Remember this all occurred in 2008.

Not only was my account information erased, but there was a nice little note saying, "No talking about your price on the forums". Say what?

I can't contact them, they have my money with no way for me to get it back - and then they have the nerve to tell me not to warn other customers so that they won't be stolen from? I said a while back that I was going to go to war with them if they didn't refund my money. I'm giving them a week to contact me - then I get serious about ruining their reputation on the internet.

Beware of United Hobbies/Hobby City. They are crooks.

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger
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I would get my money back through my credit card. You'll have to write them(on paper). mk

Reply to
MJKolodziej

My flavor of Visa Card has a form (can get this at my bank) for reporting fraud, and more importantly, getting your money refunded. Print out as much of the record as you have (your order, your emails, etc) and attach to the form. Then wait about three months. The money will eventually reappear.

Reply to
Tom Minger

Thanks, Tom. I really don't want to stop buying from them if this is just an accounting mistake. If I weren't so danged upset, I wouldn't have called them crooks. I don't believe that they really are. I'm convinced that this is a simple accounting error. But it really ticks me off when I can't find a way to successfully contact them after several months.

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger

If you paid via paypal, you can open a dispute with paypal. You need the order number and the transaction number. Explain what has happened and even include copies of your emails to hobby city.

Reply to
Vance Howard

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I have found the problem. And I agree that the real problem is one of miscommunication in a non native language.

When I cancelled the order for the SV50, they made a mistake and listed that order in their own database as having received a credit, when, in fact, they had never charged me at all.

For reasons that I will not go into, I did not have access to my own credit card or bank files, so I was relying on their saying that they had issued a credit. It only figures that if I have a credit, then they must have charged me. True?

I can see how this would be difficult to convey in a foreign language. It also makes sense as to why they erased their transaction records in my account because they were in error.

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger

In article , MJKolodziej wrote: ... | > Beware of United Hobbies/Hobby City. They are crooks.

Beware of anybody in a country other than yours. They may be completely honest, but the odds of having a problem you can't resolve in any practical way go way up.

Another thing to beware of is places that only accept payment through paypal ...

| I would get my money back through my credit card. You'll have to write | them(on paper).

Actually, if I recall correctly, UH only takes payments through paypal. So if you pay with your credit card, there's two transactions

-- one from your CC to paypal, and one from paypal to UH. And as far as your credit card goes, that first transaction went perfectly, and so they won't refund your money. And as far as paypal goes, well, the horror stories are well known, and since it tends to take over a month for stuff to get here from Hong Kong, that means that the transaction is often too old for paypal to do anything about.

Beware of paying through paypal! Even if you used your credit card, the way paypal does things is designed to make it very difficult to do charge backs through your credit card, and paypal does not offer anywhere near that level of service.

Reply to
Doug McLaren

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It only takes around two weeks for the orders to get here from Hong Kong. Part of that time is the time needed for them to get around to packing the order and prepping for shipment.

Before this problem came to my attention, I bought two of their ignition systems. The modules were $25 and the Hall Effect sensor was $8. Not bad for just a basic ignition to mess around with converting glow engines to spark.

The latter mentioned stuff is the reason that I buy from them. Although, I did buy a C&H ignition system from Brillelli a while back for well under $100 with sensor. I'll use the C&H for projects that need the higher quality (an assumption) and save the Chinese ignitions for something like a Saito four-stroke or an old Fox .60 Eagle.

There is a lesson to be learned here. I'll figure it out eventually...

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger

So you are saying everything is OK and this turned out to be a non-issue?

Reply to
fubar1

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Essentially, yes. The staff at United Hobby really needs to improve their communications between themselves and their customers. Perhaps it is just a cultural thing, but when someone has my money (or I think they have my money) and I have no way to contact them that works, well, I, and many others, I'm sure, become very nervous.

We Americans are accustomed to nearly instantaneous communications with our vendors. They need to adopt this behavior, even if it runs counter to their culture.

My inability to access my financial records in a timely manner contributed greatly to the problem also, so I'll share 50% of the blame for the problem.

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger

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