To The Community,

My name is Toby and I work for HobbyKing.com. I'm writing to you to hopefully address some of the concerns raised on RCG over various threads in the past few days. The concerns relate to the website refresh that we are currently working on.

The Goal
We are working to bring you a better website. We're trying to launch a website that is not only much faster, but also has functionality that you can use on your mobile/cell phone and tablet.

The Current Issues
One of the major new functions that we're trying to launch is a predictive function that makes it easier to order from multiple warehouses in one easy checkout experience. It's a custom function that isn't available out-of-the-box and as such involves some extremely complex logic. As I'm sure you can tell it isn't working and because our website is built around this function, it is having some flow-on effects to other functions. To give you an idea of the complexity we face, we have over 25,000 products spread across seven warehouses running on a live website that is running on many servers all around the world with tens of thousands of customers browsing at any one time. This isn't an excuse but hopefully it gives an idea of the challenges we face.

How Did It Happen?
We have used four different vendors as well as our substantial internal IT team over the past three years to develop this new website. As it turns out, one of the vendors made a mistake that wasn't picked up on our testing environment. It didn't rear it's ugly head under load tests nor during any of the other (literally) thousands of tests.

What's Happening Now?
We are working day and night to rectify the issue. Our vendors (some of which are the best in the world) are helping to troubleshoot and fix the issue. We are certainly not taking this sitting down. We are a community driven company and truly value each and every customer that has ever supported us. We know that it is frustrating watching us go through this but we thank each and every one of you that has left constructive feedback on our social media walls, website forums, customer service tickets and RCG threads. Rob and I personally read everything and if there is something that will help us, we pass it onto the relevant programmer as soon as we can.

What Lies Ahead?
We hope to have this fixed by Friday (or sooner). Until then you can still place orders although doing so is a little trickier than usual. What you need to do is find the product and add it to your cart. Then select the correct warehouse that you want it to come from while it's in your cart. I know this is annoying but please bear with us. Please know that we are sincere and won't rest until we have this fixed.

What Can You Do To Help?
Feel free to leave messages both positive and negative below. We'll use the positive messages to improve our services and we'll take the negative ones on the chin because we probably deserve them.

If you really want to help then please hang in there. We genuinely are a community driven company. We started with the ethos of building a company for the "everyman" whereby we attempt to make this hobby accessible to all. Our focus has always been on volume and in doing so allows economies of scale that allow us to pass on huge savings to the community. We strive to have the best range at the best price. Over the past few years you might have noticed a considerable improvement in our service levels and products too. Our new website is just an extension of that and exemplifies our commitment to continued improvement and serving the community better.

If you have any questions please post them below. I will attempt to answer as many as I can and give you an idea of what's going on from the inside. I'm sure you understand that all of our resources are trying to iron out the aforementioned bugs, as such I might be a little slow in my replies but I promise that I will reply.

In conclusion, we at HobbyKing thank you for your past, present and future support. We are part of a movement driven by you and will continue to work hard and improve.

Originally Posted by Toby_Osmond

The Current Issues
One of the major new functions that we're trying to launch is a predictive function that makes it easier to order from multiple warehouses in one easy checkout experience. It's a custom function that isn't available out-of-the-box and as such involves some extremely complex logic. As I'm sure you can tell it isn't working and because our website is built around this function, it is having some flow-on effects to other functions. To give you an idea of the complexity we face, we have over 25,000 products spread across seven warehouses running on a live website that is running on many servers all around the world with tens of thousands of customers browsing at any one time. This isn't an excuse but hopefully it gives an idea of the challenges we face.

Which customers did you survey for this? I can't think of anything worse than combining orders from different warehouses.

Allow us to choose how products are sorted by warehouse, new items by warehouse, new arrivals by warehouse, batteries by cell number.

All functions that worked perfectly fine before.

We have used four different vendors as well as our substantial internal IT team over the past three years to develop this new website. As it turns out, one of the vendors made a mistake that wasn't picked up on our testing environment. It didn't rear it's ugly head under load tests nor during any of the other (literally) thousands of tests.

Wow, 3 years for this? You need a refund and return to what worked!

We are working day and night to rectify the issue. Our vendors (some of which are the best in the world) are helping to troubleshoot and fix the issue. We are certainly not taking this sitting down. We are a community driven company and truly value each and every customer that has ever supported us. We know that it is frustrating watching us go through this but we thank each and every one of you that has left constructive feedback on our social media walls, website forums, customer service tickets and RCG threads. Rob and I personally read everything and if there is something that will help us, we pass it onto the relevant programmer as soon as we can.

You have been offered free help to fix this issues, read the threads and see the offers for free help.

We hope to have this fixed by Friday (or sooner). Until then you can still place orders although doing so is a little trickier than usual. What you need to do is find the product and add it to your cart. Then select the correct warehouse that you want it to come from while it's in your cart. I know this is annoying but please bear with us. Please know that we are sincere and won't rest until we have this fixed.

see above



Separate warehouses!

Please forum members, excuse my bad english, I am a german customer.

Really one of the very very best online shop-sites did get a very expensive downgrade. Anybody out there that can tell me reason why a distributer should do so?

Letīs get a summery of what is my experience:

1. all warehouse-items mixed, no possibility to filter it to one warehouse only.

2. No possibilty to filter batteries by cell number

3. New arrivals only be shown, when language is selected to english, once you check for german language and select "arrivals", the page is empty.
This is very helpfull for all non english speaking customers.

4. Items in orders are not longer "linked" If you want to write a review, you have to search and select the item another time.

5. PGS button is not there further more ( that is in my honest opinion not the most important change )

6. Downgrade of customer. I had been member of elite club, now "only" platinum. :-((

7. No more buddy codes in orders, and existing buddy codes from other websites ( you know them ) no more usable. :-((

8. No information about how can I build up store credit.

9. Former bonus points, now reward points have a short lifetime until they are worthless. :-((( It is 3 month as far as I remember.

10. Showing arrivals and new items in a big list, not in the thumbnail-similar-way that they have been shown before, what gave a much quicker and better overview. For me, this is one of the biggest down-points.

11. New orders on website are not marked by the 4 green arrows, what has been very helpfull in some cases. It is not showing paid. Sometimes this was a checkout failure that could be saved by zendesk. Very helpfull in that cases.

12. New orders do not reach the status "completed", They just reach "processing" and do not show the tracking number.
A new order in the EU - Warehouse ist still processing, but arrived yesterday at my home.
NO TRACKING information before, and still it is in "processing" status now.

13. I wrote a review on the new website. Nothing happens. On the old website, the review was shown, and you got a bonus point ore two for that.
Now? nothing.

13. Reviews had been written by nickname. Now the nickname is your surname.

14. On old website my orders had been able to be coloured by me, what I used as a marking for packed, shipped and arrived.
Once I looked in my orders I could see, which one is on its way or not, what allready had arrived or not. As I order once or more times a week, this was helpfull for me.

15. In your adressbook you find your Forum name, but it is no more possible to enter the forum because it is closed. That makes sence.

16. It is not possible to see, in which warehouse the item is stored. You first have to click on one coutry-sign banner, and then the other available signs appear. That does not make sence at all.

17. The possibility to order in two warehouses with one checkout is more or less useless, as it was possible to open tabs and set two orders for that in a very short time.
It is as more useless, as we have to leave all other mentioned lost functions behind us for that.

I have an idea how HK could solve all the problems with the new site.
It is very easy, just switch back, and make thousands over thousands customers happy.
If you want to do more for your customers, start a cyber week, BUT PLEASE after switching back to the roods.

YOU, HK. had one of the best sites, WHY this graet step back in a chaos.

Originally Posted by skyfox60

... I have an idea how HK could solve all the problems with the new site.
It is very easy, just switch back, and make thousands over thousands customers happy.
If you want to do more for your customers, start a cyber week, BUT PLEASE after switching back to the roods.

YOU, HK. had one of the best sites, WHY this graet step back in a chaos.

That is the obvious solution until the new site has been fixed and tested. But I have a sneaking suspicion something has gone wrong and that cannot happen.

I have spent an hour or two over the past days looking over the site and I can see where they are coming from with this 'multiple' choice of warehouses. But I too have to say it is absolutely not something I would ever recommend. I wonder how many 'customers' actually wanted this?
From the various posts made over the years on the HK forums whenever the odd one asked for it, I estimate at least twenty replies said no to that!

The way it is done now just complicates the process, as effectively although it is classed as one order, one is actually dealing with tow separate orders and one then has to get shipping estimates, update the cart and so on and so forth. Now that is a VERY POOR way to do that.

Hi Toby,

I summed up my thoughts on the new site as it went live a couple of days back in the RC coffee chat below.

Tobey, I fully appreciate the mammoth data migration task that you must have had which must have taken months, but the site when launched wasn't even "alpha" ready, let alone worthy of a "beta" test.

Yesterday I tried ordering a collection of parts & got told there was no shipping available for the UK. Which granted was rectified later that day, but it was too late as I had bought similar parts elsewhere.

RC Coffee Chat #32 - The New HobbyKing Webshite (25 min 36 sec)

I tried to keep the overview to a basic level, as I do know a "little bit" about Magento (around 500 video tutorials worth LOL), things like layered navigation, shunting out of stock products to the bottom of the search and numerous other things were completely overlooked.

That must have been one expensive revamp, both before and now in what it's costing as I know the chaps I chat to, none of them have put in an order since the update.

With Black Friday coming up, I was intending to buy a collection of models (as I've heard the HK deals are great), but right now that's looking 20/80!

Toby, I hope you appreciate the honest thoughts on the new site, anything I or anyone else says is purely because they care about the HobbyKing Site

Matt

Hobby king your New website is BAD end of story you have made a bad mistake I could not be bothered anymore.

Originally Posted by skyfox60

I have an idea how HK could solve all the problems with the new site.
It is very easy, just switch back, and make thousands over thousands customers happy.

Originally Posted by Surreal2

That is the obvious solution until the new site has been fixed and tested. But I have a sneaking suspicion something has gone wrong and that cannot happen..

Toby, please can you address this issue?

My question is very simple:

Will the ability to search for products by warehouse return?

If the answer to this is "No" then I won't be returning either.

I just tried this morning and the LiPo finder has not been updated to include warehouse.

That is such a simple bug fix I really don't understand why it is taking so long - just look at the old code.

Originally Posted by unseen

My question is very simple:

Will the ability to search for products by warehouse return?

If the answer to this is "No" then I won't be returning either.

A quote from HK "We hope to have this fixed by Friday".

Hobbyking......

why..... your old site wasn't broken, .... why fix something that worked.

Soooooo frustrating, and a great way to loose customers

Originally Posted by RC Man

A quote from HK "We hope to have this fixed by Friday".

I don't see any language there that defines what "this" is.

The last thing I'm going to do is jump through hoops adding stuff to my cart to only find out when I try to select the local warehouse that the items are not in stock at that warehouse. This is utterly the wrong way to do things. I want to see what's at the warehouse and then add the items I want to the cart and check out. Doing it the other way around is just plain stupid.

Hello SKU: 9192000289-0 files tab below : I can not download any of the files ...
516078769X600367X35.pdf file
https://hobbyking.com/media/file/516...X600367X35.pdf
I need this manual
"We are sorry, but the page you are looking for cannot be found. If you typed the URL directly, please make sure the spelling is correct. If you clicked on a link to get here, we must have moved the content. Please try our store search box above to search for an item. If you are not sure how you got here, go back to the previous page or return to our store homepage."

and this error on many other sku for example SKU: 9171000915-0

When you guys get this all figured out, how about a nice big sale for us loyal customers who experienced the pain of this upgrade? Now THAT would be a nice gesture!

Tracking has been made much more difficult depending on where you are ordering from.

It used to be simple from the Netherlands as I could see the tracking number easily- either in the e-mail sent or in the order page visible directly after log in. To get the same info now I have to login, go to the order, click tracking, select the courier and then get the message they have no data.
Fortunately I can recognise a tracking number on the tracking page (Hint - make it clear this is the tracking number) and then go direct to the courier tracking website and find out my parcel has already been delivered.

Contrast that when I used the opportunity to order from the UK warehouse yesterday and the tracking number was in the e-mail sent to me. Simple.

Please make the tracking simpler - I don't want to go three or four levels deep to find out this info when it should be available directly on the order page. Even the order summary page is now more clicks away than it was!

Just fix it - it wasn't broken