Must be something wrong with me. Consider...

Placed an order with Eflightpower in November. Well Shawn's gone, so's my $43.

Bought a JETI battery discharger from Hobby-Lobby in December. Didn't work, had to return it

Bought a new T33 fuse from Tower. Tower's description indicates the fuse is supplied with all the little bits and pieces needed. Fuse arrived, cracked in three places, no bits and pieces.

Called Tower, in their usual good manner of service they sent out a new T33 fuse. Guess what? This fuse is cracked in only one place, but still no bits and pieces. They did, however, include a prepaid postage label for the first fuse.

I think I'll stop buying off the 'net, just doesn't seem to be worth the hassle. Fortunately I have a decent LHS near by from which I can order anything. Might take a little longer (Remember Shawn?) but at least I can look at the parts befor I pay for them.

Just venting...

Well it seems that you have had bad experiences with probably to two worst places to do business with.. ..hardly surprising.
Web shopping is no worse than any 'mail order' buying.. you don't really know what yer getting till it arrives, in sometimes poor condition, then there's the exorbitant 'shipping' charge bull****.. some vendors extract double their profit on this alone.. a surprisingly large percentage of which are US vendors....if that helps any:-)
After a few of these adventures your reaction is predictable and understandable.. best advice is to ask around on every single long distance purchase.. mebe eventually the greedy fools will go out of business.

Well it seems that you have had bad experiences with probably the two worst places to do business with.. ..hardly surprising.
Web shopping is no worse than any 'mail order' buying.. you don't really know what yer getting till it arrives, in sometimes poor condition, then there's the exorbitant 'shipping' charge bull****.. some vendors extract double their profit on this alone.. a surprisingly large percentage of which are US vendors....if that helps any:-)
After a few of these adventures your reaction is predictable and understandable.. best advice is to ask around on every single long distance purchase.. mebe eventually the greedy fools will go out of business.

I don't find Tower "the worst place to do business." I've never had a problem with them. Also, why do you blame them for something that was damaged in shipping?

Originally posted by Larry Dudeck
Must be something wrong with me. Consider...

Placed an order with Eflightpower in November. Well Shawn's gone, so's my $43.

I just don't understand what happened to Shawn/eflightpower.I had placed several battery orders with him a few months back and all deals went well. He answered all my e-mail questions and phone calls, even called back a couple of times. I even posted on ezone that it’s a nice place to deal with.
Now he has several people waiting on some answers/action.
My past experiences with people that intend to wrong you don't go to the trouble to establish an A+ reputation first. Something drastic must have happened.
I hope it gets worked out to the satisfaction of all.

I can't speak to eFlightPower, as i've never ordered from them.

I have, however, ordered repeatedly from both Hobby Lobby and Tower without incident. I have had a few slightly damaged boxes, but I can attribute that to our postal system

I have never had a bad mail order or internet order experience out of probably twenty thousand dollars or two thousand dollars purchace per year average (probaly more I dont count)due to one simple factor I have always purchaced at a LHS period

Every week at clubs I meet various victims of mail order or Internet so my logic tells me there is a catch

When I went to purchase my 8 channel graupner MC 16/20 and I did my reaserch on the net ok Maybe the LHS was slightly more expensive but he alowwed me to put the money in to the rc in pieces and he offered me the rc at 70% payment (didnt take him up perfer to pay in full before collecting) and as he is a good LHS he ordered all the extras in and charged me for all the extras at the same rate as if I bought the rrc with extras on day one

Simple math shows if I had purchased the rc and later bought the extras with the excess post costs he came out cheaper as one thing he was able to steer me clear of unnessary extras

Am presently puchacing the graupner MC22 mostly there (three months to go) as now my MC 16/20 is three years old and twenty memorys are all used up and its nice to go into the LHS and take a look at it every time I add money to it
The LHS offered me a trade in and various club members have made tempting offers but I have refused all offers which do not equal the new price simple it mine and if you want it thats the price and and as I intend to do larger models with twin rc and twin channels and twin pilots I need two top rc units

funny thing I have never sold anything again it wore out broke or i may not use it for months and then I need it again so no I dont sell to nobody

Again simple maths shows that if one purchace in mail order goes wrong per year that is product gets dammaged or need to send it back for varios reasons or get plain ripped off then all potensal saving are lost and personnally for purchaces of less than twenty thousand dollars its rarely an interesting exersize to spend vast amounts of time hunting to save the last cent plus waiting and going bonkers where is that order dissappered to etc

Having spent the over ten years in mainland Europe and having to change countries every year I can say that in most european countrys that they do seem to have good LHS in most large towns and when they get to know you are a real buying costomer then they will offer all the better saving schemes and these freqently save 10 per cent of the normal prices

HUNT down a good LHS and when you establise a good trading situation with him her over time you will end up making more saving than are immeadiatly apperant from the prices written on the shelves

If you live in a LHS defincent zone one year I had this problem hunt down the phyical address of the mail order place and go there to see what they really has on the shelve s and boy o boy will you get an eye opener out of ten I visited in france was I glad I didnt order of nine of them they didnt have ten percent of the stuff they claimed to have but one was good very good but my LHS here in Ireland has everything to match him so in fainess if I got tranfered to some stange part of the planet with no LHS then If I had to mail order then I know where its safer to send my money(fingers crossed it dont happen)

Life to short and bottom dollar I want the stuff now

Fly low and fast and buzz the bystanders waiting for the mythical mail order( I fregently do)

David in Ireland

I want to say that I bought many items from Tower and Hobby Lobby when I was into glow 15 years ago and found them both to be top notch.
Now that I've been doing electric since last spring I was happy to find them both to still be top notch. I've had several items damaged in shipment, but they've sorted things out to my satisfaction.

As to the Shawn situation, I'm of course only guessing, but here's my take. He has a one or two person operation. I hear there's a woman who answers the phone and he has the packs made in FL. Maybe he got tired of doing it. I know I go from one thing to another and would never start something like that in the first place.

His problems actually started in late Summer/early Fall. There were many complaints before the ezone crash and those messages were lost. Now we only see the later complaints. The proper thing to do would have been to stop taking orders, clear up the outstanding ones and then quit. Now it seems that he's kind of "quit by default."

When I placed my order in late Summer I found him to be very personable and helpful. The problem I had was that when my order arrived that contained everything but the batteries he immediately said that the batteries had been lost in the mail and would send some more. If he truly thought they'd been lost in the mail, why would he offer to reship them immediately. Things do get delayed and packages separated. From the messages I've read there must be a USPS black hole in TX. I've never heard of so many packages being lost in the mail from one vendor. If they all were truly lost in the mail, no wonder he's out of business since he's had to resend 1/3 of his shipments. That doesn't leave much room for profit.


RB