My recent purchase shipping review.

[Doozer]

Hey guys,
I placed four orders within an hour of each other early Friday morning. I ordered from RC-Bearings, Esprit Model, Heli Direct, and Tower Hobbies. The first three went without a hitch. I used the free USPS shipping on orders over $100 with Esprit; paid for shipping from RC-Bearings. the order was $117, but the state tax, which would have been more than the shipping, must have been included in the price ; I only ordered small from HD, $40 dollars but paid shipping; lastly I ordered from Tower... order was $5.50, shipping was $5.00.

All of the first three packages are waiting in the Phoenix post office to be delivered to me tomorrow morning. Tower's order has not left their warehouse. What gets me is that I paid almost as much for the shipping as I did for the product. They could have put my fuel tubing in an envelope and mailed it for less than two dollars. Keep in mind that Tower is a lot closer to Phoenix than Esprit or Heli-Direct. While on Towers site, I was annoyed by pop-ups, and redirected to sales gimmick pages while trying to complete my order. They wanted me to pay $10 so I could join a club, to get free shipping on orders over $150. LOL.

Unless I need something from Tower that I can't get from ebay or Amazon, I wont be ordering from them again. They are part of that huge conglomerate of the hobby industry that resides in Champaign Il, and in the past. Nobody likes spam, or pop-ups, or being redirected, and I got all three from Tower. I felt like I was shopping for a used car on a "Buy Here, Pay Here" lot.

[akent]

Yeah, Tower needs to update their website. I have a good popup blocker so I'm not bothered with that, but it is very annoying if you don't have that.

Tower has a lot of stuff for builders at reasonable prices, though. They are also Futaba only, so that kind of sucks, too.

What I find funny is that after you make an order, you are bombarded with emails that have discount codes for a month or so. Odd. Then they stop.

I have had fast shipping from them, but I make sure to order enough to get their free shipping, or equivalent discount. A friend of mine orders from them all the time, so I get his discount codes...
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I have always had great service from Heli Direct, too. I don't know about the others you ordered from.
Kent

[Doozer]

Jul 17, 2011 20:46:33 GMT -6 akent said:

Yeah, Tower needs to update their website. I have a good pop-up blocker so I'm not bothered with that, but it is very annoying if you don't have that...

I'm using I.E. until Firefox 5.0 is compatible with Norton Tool-bar. So... but my feeling is, as a customer I shouldn't be subjected to that. That's the first hobby site in a while that I've gone to that does that. Reminds me of a Viagra pop up. Just saying..... ;D