HobbyKingReviews 208

I read about hobby king horror stories before I place a small $10 trial run order with them that consisted of a aluminum folding prop spinner, and some control surface horns. It took 3 months for my order to arrive because of some snafu with customs. I spent hours trying to contact hobby king to resolve my order with zero help from their mmiserable customer service. I told them to cancel the order, and refund my money which they wouldn't do either. That was my first, and last order with them.

Had 38 orders for HobbyKing, every time they ship through Singapore I get weeks of delays and that is using EMS and paying extra to get it in time, now I cannot tell where the hell is my order which was made on the 25 Nov.
Initially they said it was shipped. And I need to contact my post office!
Well I contacted Australia post and Singapore post to find out the order were not shipped yet.
Went back to HobbyKing and as usual they give you the rounds, at the moment they are doing an "investigation" with their warehouse, really the worst customer service ever and that for a customer how order 38 orders with them, they cannot give me my money back or my order. An absolute nightmare, always delaying replay, spent hours just trying to get an update on my case
Will never go back to the international warehouse ever, they have lost my business.
Sal

I have placed 16 orders without any problems however one of the orders that there was a problem with turned out to be a nightmare for me that has yet to be resolved.
I order watermelon - hobbyking ships me a grape. Hobbyking says "ship back grape we ship you watermelon". I say "grape not worth shipping, I do hobbyking favor and agree to buy grape and have hobbyking give me back watermelon money".
Hobbyking keeps watermelon money and gives me grape money and closes claim.
So I now have grape that cost as much as a watermelon. I dont even like grapes.

Garbage. Ordered motor and battery from USA warehouse. Arrived in a timely manner except they were faulty. Battery was swollen and unsafe for use, and the motor seized on a bench test before install. They asked me to make a video proving the motor didn't function and I objected, claiming my esc would be damaged by running a seized motor with it. They told me the claim would be closed if I failed to comply. I obliged. I burned out my esc. Now I am getting emails telling me to make more videos in different configurations and that the battery will not be covered at all! Really?!? They want me to hook it up to another esc as well. No thanks. I'll keep my working equipment working. Oh and they want me now to mail the items back at more than the original purchase price so they may be inspected again, because apparently all the photos and video did nothing, even though great care was taken to thoroughly document the problems. Order from the US companies boys and girls. It's slightly more money, but you'll have items faster and have support when you need it. Hobbyking is the worst company in the industry.

I have to agree with you all, mail after mail and no results ordered a €80 battery moths ago and asked for refund. Now they are saying it is the postal company that they are using (why do I have to suffer for that) do not order from this company!

Received a refund after I posted a review on HK Facebook page

I bought an item from Hobbyking last month and until now It did not come. I ask customer support and they said there is one item back order. Took them days to respond. They should have inform me days after I placed the order. So I cancel the back order and they can not refund the excess payment, store credit instead. So I waited for another couple week they said item was shipped. I track it, there was no information. Its very difficult to communicate with their CS. They dont have 1800 number. After almost a month of waiting, I dispute my payment, Now they are communicate with me every few hours. The way I look at it, and sorry to say, they are bunch of liar. From the company to the customer service. Even though how cheap their items, I will never buy from them ever and I will not recommend my friends to buy from them.

I ordered Li-Po battery on 1. 8. 2013 and battery never came. Tracking number say that order is returned to sender but hobbyking say that package returned as "unclaimed" that doesn't make any sense. Before that they promised that battery will be sent again without any addition costs. And now they just offer bonus points to make me happy. That is not what they promised. Shame on them... very unprofessional. As I can see not only me is scammed but many other people.

I placed an order, but it never showed as paid and it was still pending days after I purchased it. Several trouble tickets later and it was clear that Hobby King had NO intentions replying to me. As a result, I lodged a dispute with PayPal. Hobby King's response? Resolve the dispute? Contact me? No, they cancelled the order immediately! After several attempts and after finally contacting customer support on the live chat (I was hung up on once) Hobby King refused to resolve this unless I closed the dispute. DOING THIS WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME NO RECOURSE IF THEY DID NOT SHIP as a closed dispute cannot be reopened. I was repeatedly told that PayPal would have to resolve this. They refused to deal with this through PayPal, a step that would have protected me. Again and again I was told that I had to close the dispute before we could proceed. Looks like I'll have no choice but to escalate this.
I've never seen such poor service in many, many years of dealing with online companies. Other posts refer to Hobby King as a fraudulent company. I cannot help but agree.
And as for you, Dan C. From Hobby King, don't even bother giving me the line about how 'sorry' you are and how you're opening up a US call center... yada yada yada...
Tell me how this will be resolved NOW. You can feed me all the bull you want about how things are GOING TO improve, but if you don't follow through and fix all of the CURRENT problems it's all just a bunch of generic crap without having to back any of it up with action.
Notice how we all want ACTION in RESOLVING Hobby King's fraudulent actions on behalf of us, their customers.
Well, in this case I'm a former customer. I will NEVER be dealing with you again, nor will anyone who I speak to from this moment forward.

I am going to call this COMPANY the #^()^#() that it is... BUY LOCAL and spend an extra couple of dollars. I placed and order on an item in stock and a week later they FINALLY decided to ship it. I contacted them 2 days into the order to find out what was taking so long and they stated it was to late to cancel my order. I hate this company and would recommend "Banana Hobby, Tower Hobbies even Value Hobbies is quicker than that sorry company... Listen and take my advice while your ahead...

Stay away from this website. Pay extra and purchase locally. I placed an order for 2 lipos for an ultra micro airplane and I've been waiting almost 6 weeks for my batteries. According to them, customs has blocked shipment of lipos so they have been returned to warehouse. IF YOU MADE A PURCHASE USING PAYPAL FILE AN ITEM NOT RECEIVED CLAIM AND DON'T CANCEL IT! I opened a claim and HK is trying to convince me to close it to eliminate confusion. Yeah right. I've told them multiple times to refund my purchase and I'll close the claim. Anyway, time is running out. They have until Oct 17th to respond through Paypal. Instead, they just keep emailing through their incompetent claims dept.

Hobbyking has come a long way since I started using it a few years ago.
You get a lot more than you pay for, and remember, most of the stuff you are buying is a small fraction of the stuff you would get at a local hobby shop. There are plenty of examples of people getting DOA merchandise, but if you can buy 5 for the price of a name brand item that is one of the risks you are taking!

Things to remember are:
1) If any of the items in your order are out of stock, the entire order will be held until it is restocked.
2) Read the customer reviews! This is where they have really grown. Most of their items have tons of reviews, tips, user manuals, videos, or useful discussions.
3) It is going to take a week or more to get your items, even if you order from the warehouse in your country. Just another one of the things you get with the discount pricing.

Their support is awful. I contacted them twice and both times i was not satisfied. The first time i wanted to verify that i had received the genuine brand and not a fake which they were not able to do. The second time i discovered a fault with the product and we farted around for 3 weeks until they asked me to send the product back at my expense. That is unreasonable. The whole experience was a waste of time. In hindsite i would have been more happy spending less for a fake elsewhere.

I advise anyone to avoid these charlatans.
Their prices are only decent if you don't run into issues. Good luck with that.

The really take you for idiot! STAY AWAY! They never shipped the products I paid for 2 months ago. Already claimed to PayPal! The story is as following: I placed 4 orders of more than 500$. The main one with the RC plane was for 40 days not shipped and waiting to be in stock. They say "it takes no more than 2 weeks" but it took almost 6! They told me many times all items are reserved for you and of course paid 60 days ago. Now is in stock for more than 20 days but they say me the silliest and biggest lie "... shipping in GREECE is suspended". I tripled checked it with DHL, FEDEX, UPS and greek post, They were laughing at me with my "silly" question. The last 5 days they are telling me via livechat (oh god the service there is terrible) that the suspension is for LIPO batteries. But my damned order has NO battery at all! More than 5 live chats (one lasted 3 1/2 hours!), 5 relative email answers where they were telling me all the times about the restriction with LIPO batteries... Suddenly this morning they admitted (because I was very aggressive to my last mail) that now another item of my order is out of stock (2 mini servos) and asked me to cancel the order! They are so idiots! STAY AWAY!