ChrisAttebery
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FWIW: I made an order with HobbyLinc yesterday. I just got a shipping confirmation less than 24 hours later.
Make sure you read the fine print about availablity and ship times for motors
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JPVegh
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You have either intentionally misrepresented the two out of three 'rule' to fit your argument or you don't understand it. Customer service is not mentioned anywhere in that 'rule'. Rule number one of retail is customer service, rule number two of retail is customer service, rule number three of retail is see rules one and two. If I had an employee spouting to a customer that they could have two out of three of price, quality or service that employee would be looking for a new job pretty quick. You may indeed have to give up either price, quality or SPEED but you should never have to sacrifice good customer service.
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There not? Non-sequitur.
As for RAH, they are treating their (oops, there) customers badly by refusing to let them know when their (there) orders are being delayed by something being out of stock.
By law, they are required to.
By good business practice #1, #2, and #3, they ought to.
So, every time there (their?) is an order that is being delayed and they do not tell the customer, then that is treating the customer badly.
The customers who had no idea this could happen (it's NOT common, and it IS illegal), get ticked off and many of them won't order again. Those are the ones this is about. Other people who know what the deal is and order, fine. Good for you.
But stop excusing a terrible (and illegal) business practice that keeps screwing over other customers time after time.
- George Gassaway
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And let's not forget what Red Arrow Hobbies themselves posted on their own Facebook page in December of last year:
Very ironic!!
Very ironic!!
Emails don't write themselves. Time spent spent on such tasks costs money and can translate to higher prices. (Vendors should be letting customers know if things are out of stock and back ordered.)
A good ecommerce site would automatically email the customer if something is backordered, but it would require the website to know the amount in inventory. If the website knew how much is in inventory then the customer should know before ordering if the item is in stock or not. Some websites won't even allow an item to be ordered if out of stock, but that wouldn't work well in the rocketry business where many items don't sell enough to be kept in inventory.
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Mightyrocketman
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So what have we learned from all of this? The best form of communication is to call on the phone. If you are going to order something needed in a certain time frame call for availability. This applies to all vendors I order from.
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So why does RAH use a website that takes order by computer? They could list the stuff and prices but rather than have a shopping cart system, just tell customers to call to make an order..... truly 1990's website style
Why do they want your e-mail address, if they are NOT going to contact you about your order? What's the point?
How ridiculous is it to use an automated website for ordering, then expect the CUSTOMER to somehow know to suspect things may be wrong so to call the dealer to see if they will actually do what the dealer's website says they will do? 1-2 weeks for delivery, 2-5 for Hazmat. Or the dealer will contact them in case of a problem, as REQUIRED by LAW?
And back to the key thing that the excuse-makers keep ignoring, how are customers supposed to know that RAH is operating in this way (refusing to contact customers about a delay), unlike nearly all the other dealers and despite the law? Those customers won't know until it is too late, literally.
- George Gassaway
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Can you tell me which law requires sellers to contact a customer in case of a problem with an order? I'm not doubting there is one, but I'm not aware of any such law.
The only law I vaguely recall says that a seller must contact a customer if an item doesn't ship 30 days after an order. I don't think too many rocketry sellers are in danger of violating this 30 day law. Wildman will sometimes take orders for motors that may not ship for several months, but he is very clear about that up front.
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It is the "FTC’s Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Trade Regulation Rule" - not a law per se, but, with the same effect as law.
Here's a nice summary from the FTC:
https://www.business.ftc.gov/docume...ide-mail-and-telephone-order-merchandise-rule
-- Roger
Unlike what George keeps insisting over and over I don't think the vendor here in question is violating the FTC rule. Only if the seller promises a specific ship time do they have to contact the buyer if they can't meet that date. The rule does have a clause that if a specific time frame is not given a customer must be contacted if the item does not ship within 30 days.
Not exactly. The text from the FTC is: "If you make no shipment statement, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days." So, presuming no specific ship timeframe is quoted, the customer would have to be notified if at any time it appears the item won't ship within thirty days of the order. This would include if the vendor knew outright the next order in from distributor wasn't due for six weeks. Or, if the product was due in 2 weeks but a complication happened that would likely push the date out, the customer should be notified immediately to get consent.
It very much does not say the vendor can wait until 30 days after the order before notifying the customer.
Marc
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More of the excuse-making. The 30 days is a default if the seller does not list a date as you admit to, but RAH DOES list a date on their website for delivery (1-2 weeks, or 2-5 days with hazmat), so the 30 days default does not apply.
If you want to argue semantics of ship time vs delivery time..... Red Arrow lists a DELIVERY time, so obviously a ship time (time before they ship it) is much shorter than that unless they are doing same-day delivery (which does not apply here)
Here is the relevant part from a message I posted in the "An order to Red Arrow hobbies" thread:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?63797-An-order-from-Red-Arrow-Hobbies
So, there is a law. The FTC requires the seller to contact the buyer when the seller knows they can't make the timeframe they claimed. RAH routinely breaks this law.
- George Gassaway
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Where does RAH list delivery or ship times on their website? I looked as many places as I could on their website and even added something to my cart and took my order as far I could without actually placing an order and didn't see ship times or delivery times quoted anywhere? Is it in an email you get after an order?
I think what RAH is doing is bad business practice, but I don't think it is illegal unless I am missing where they list the expected shipping/delivery times. I believe this would be more of a federal regulation anyhow. The FTC would need to take the business to court and the business can be fined and/or given a cease and desist order. I suspect the FTC would merely tell a business to follow the rules and if they continued to to violate the rule then take them to court.
George, why don't you order something from RAH and then contact the FTC if it doesn't arrive in time? I doubt much will come of it. I have only ordered from RAH once back around 2004/2005 and I don't remember how long it took the order to arrive.
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Here's one example:
https://www.redarrowhobbies.com/aerotech_su_rocket_engines.htm
"Please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery by mail or 2 -5 days with a Hazmat fee."
BTW ... I feel it's important to note that I've ordered from Red Arrow probably a dozen times and haven't had any problems. My most recent order was just a couple of weeks ago.
-- Roger
A guy I work with told me he tried to order motors online last week and on the web site the motor was listed as 29mm but during checkout his shopping cart listed it as 24mm. So he was going to call them at lunch that day to verify which it was before ordering. He told me it was from Red Arrow Hobbies.
He'd heard about my frustrations with them in the past so when I told him about this thread he was confident calling would avoid issues. So he called, they confirmed the size and he was told they were in stock. So he ordered them from online about a half hour later and the database (or whatever) had been updated because both matched this time.
A week later he hasn't gotten his motors yet. He calls today and is told they're out of stock and it might be next week before they're shipped!!!
My advice to him was to cancel the order, get them from somewhere more reliable, and never order from Red Arrow Hobbies again.
He'd heard about my frustrations with them in the past so when I told him about this thread he was confident calling would avoid issues. So he called, they confirmed the size and he was told they were in stock. So he ordered them from online about a half hour later and the database (or whatever) had been updated because both matched this time.
A week later he hasn't gotten his motors yet. He calls today and is told they're out of stock and it might be next week before they're shipped!!!
My advice to him was to cancel the order, get them from somewhere more reliable, and never order from Red Arrow Hobbies again.
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