"I have now bought 30 orders worth of stuff from HobbyKing, both from China, and also the local distributor in Australia. I have had one item which was missing a servo, and the process of getting a simple $3 replacement was excruciatingly slow and convoluted; their complaint resolution is very poor, but eventually satisfying (on a time scale best used for growing things rather than buying them).
That's the bad news, but it's a minor indignity compared to the impressive range of cheap and more than passable goods they stock. Between OrangeRx receivers (at around 10% the price of Spektrum, and perfectly capable), micro servos, esc's, small outrunners and very good LiPos, plus great planes in their mini-stick, bonsai and spitfire, I have been really pleased with the value.
Seeing I am a scratch builder and long time model maker, I can work around any minor imperfections in kits. And for building my own, the price of carbon fibre, cyanoacrylate, fiberglass and epoxies is ridiculously cheap for products easily as good as locally sourced, at a fraction of the price. Other stuff, like a watt meter, digital calipers, anemometer and tachometer were around 50% of local price, and obviously exactly the same products rebadged. Postage to Australia from China is cheap, and for small items, within a week generally.
If you want speedy delivery on larger orders, don't bother. But if you want absolute great price and can live with the anticipation of eventual delivery (sometimes more eventual than others), then you can snag endless bargains.
Funny how so many people diss them in review, and even other modellers locally - some of whom have never actually shopped with them. For my experience, I have gained what would locally amount to several thousands of $ worth of goods way under that total, and overall the failure rate has been miniscule - I can cope with such odds on poor replacement service because the trade off is way in my favour on overall savings to write them off.
To all the unhappy Americans used to excellence of service in their own country - buy local and be prepared to pay for the privilege. To anyone who recognises you get the service you pay for: buy cheap and take your chances. The win: lose ratio is very large, and over all if you are experienced enough to do your research, and can handle your hobby from basics rather than being spoon fed, HobbyKing is worth a punt.
Not sure I'd buy a single item worth hundreds, but I have very successfully bought dozens of items worth well over $1k in total. Caveat emptor !"
"I've placed several orders with HobbyKing, and after seeing all the negative reviews, thought I'd chime in. While their packaging isn't always the best, I've thus far been happy with all my orders. I've purchased 5 foamie RC planes and have been pleased with the quality for the price paid. A tweak here or there on a plane or two were were necessary, but nothing major. "
"i ordered an esc and a brushless motor(sk3) which were both faulty. Managed to fix the motor myself as saw no point in sending it back to hongkong so hobbyking can give it to someone else and the esc is lying ther, even after a clear video showing it doesn't work they want the esc in china. whats more whenever i go to my hobbyking account it tells me i have $-30.60 in my credit area???."
"What a scam! They sent me two LiFePO4 packs that would not balance, probably because they were so discharged that one or more cells was damaged. I had never dealt with them before so I sent only one pack back, just to test drive their return/exchange procedure.
I have delivery confirmation that the item was delivered a week ago, but they insist they never received it. And all they have to say is "Since we haven't received the item, we can't offer any suggestions." Hmmmm....
This is my opinion. They take items that are not insured or require signature upon receipt of delivery and turn around and resell them to the next dupe. They claim to check their products before shipping, but the voltage of two of my packs was so low that there's no way they checked them before shipping them. Or they would have tossed them in the trash. Instead, they sent them to me.
And these came from the U.S. warehouse. I still have a battery supposedly coming from the China warehouse, but honestly, I'd be surprised if it ever showed up. I paid for "airmail" and then, after paying, they told me it may take up to 6 weeks to receive. 6 weeks? For airmail?
What a load of crap. These people will take your money and run."
"First time customer. I ordered a couple of ESCs and motors. Order placed on Sunday, asked for UPS 3 day. Even after the $44 shipping charge, I am still way way ahead since HK prices are like half of US prices. They shipped the order exactly after 48 hours and UPS got it here (San Diego) by Thursday evening. This is better service than Tower!!! Wired it up per instructions (well written in Chinglish) and installed it on my SCT within 1 hour and was smoking my tires in the drive way.
One very happy customer!! Just wanted to share it -- seems like only the negative gets posted.....people need to realize that there is US Customs involved and stuff can get stuck along the way in...BTW, I'm not connected to this seller."
"Wow, so many bad reviews. I think peoples expectations are way too high and their attention to detail way too low. I've ordered many things from HK over the past 3 years and not had a single issue with ordering or shipping or customer service via e-mail. I ordered a heli from Hong Kong and it showed up in less than a week. This year, I've placed at least a half dozen orders from the USA warehouse for batteries and planes and only had two issues. A lipo had a bad cell. I sent it back USPS for $2 and my account was credited within a week. I promptly ordered two more of the same and they're working great. The second was the brushless motor package with a Piaget foamy. It was way undersized and burned up after 30 secs of operation. I bought a replacement correctly sized from another dealer. The kit was $34 bucks which was much less than any other flat foam of this size and class without a motor. I wrote a review on HK's site to let others know that the kit motor was way undersized which just about every review mentioned. IOW, I knew what I was getting. Why would I take the time or energy to contact them about the faulty motor. The thing doesn't cost 5 bucks and isn't worth the shipping. Plus the only thing they'd replace it with would be the same under-sized motor. Big hairy deal. You buy cheap you get cheap. Live with it. The website has improved drastically this year and shopping for USA warehouse items is easier than ever. People, pay attention, read all the words when you check out. I'm extremely happy with my HobbyKing experience and will continue to order from them. For a follow up, I placed an order Wed. morning for 2 lipos. I have them in my hand on Friday. That's Tacoma, WA to Richmond, VA in 2 days. I used USPS priority for $6.82. All I can say is wow!"
"Cancelled before it was even picked out of their stock and yet 20 days later still no refund, have to go through pay pal to get my cash back, disgusting company."
"Very poor customer service!
Paid for express 3-day delivery. 5 days later they hadn't even shipped the goods, and hadn't bothered to provide any communication. When I finally got through to them they make excuses instead of getting my order shipped. Not a happy customer!"
"Hobby King will steal your money. They charged me 63.66 shipping. I made the purchase June 5, 2012. Today is the 23rd of June and my item has not been delivered. Their customer service is a joke. They take from eight hours to never even answering your question and/or complaint. I'm an idiot too for not even knowing my shipment was coming from China. I assumed they would deliver from their USA warehouse."
"Welp, im an hour now, waiting for customer service to pick up a phone...come on the live chat, or respond to an email. I placed an order for parts without realizing that damn near everything in the USA warehouse is backordered and not in stock, however it still let me order it anyway. Talk about false advertising and terrible customer service.
Follow Up: A few hours later the order was canceled with no contact from customer service, I continued to try to contact customer service and was unable to reach anyone via phone or live chat support or support ticket until 9pm EST. Which I finally got in touch with a customer support rep via the online chat service, to which I was greeted by someone who had a hard time understanding english. I explained to the rep that the order was backordered, it was then canceled, and I would like to know the status of the refund to my paypal account. To which she replied that my order had shipped out in may and she was sorry for the mistake...to which I replied, what are you talking about, i just placed the order today, and she was incredibly confused. I then received a response to my support ticket telling me that payment had been refunded to paypal and any further problems take it up with paypal themselves, of course, no refund had been sent so I replied to the rep that I was opening a paypal dispute for item not received. Her response was to tell me she could not provide me with a refund until I closed the paypal dispute. That is now where I sit, no parts, no order, no money, waiting to open an escalation claim with paypal directly in one week if the money does not get refunded."
"Companys a scam dont do it dont .....they will steal your money!!! sure you might get it back from the CC company or paypal but it will take a month or two of aggravation"
"I cleary have a faulty turnigy transmitter after sending hobbyking my video of the problem after weeks of comtacting them and weeks to get the items they want me to send the junk back at my expense which will cost more than the item so i may as well just throw it in the garbage.i will never buy from them again."
"No costumer service at all no help on my order I guess I'll never see my batts STAY AWAY trust me spend more it's not worth falling for there scam. "
"Their support is basically non existing.They sent me a defective item and now are simply ignoring my support requests. On top of that i had to wait about 21 days before getting my order shipped out of Hong Kong which is way too much time for a kid to wait for a plane. Overall very unacceptable. Will never order anything from there again and will cancel my creditcard payment."
"I had placed several orders with Hobby King. Everything arrived as promised and I was happy. I was looking at several different planes as Hobby King has a good selection and reasonable prices. My most recent order was missing an important part. I opened a ticket and was told that I needed to take pictures of all the parts I received, the packing slip, the shipping box, and all of the packaging materials. Needless to say I had already built the item except for the missing part, and had already thrown out all of the packing materials and the box. I told them this but took pictures of everything and posted them as they told me to. I have still not heard anything from them. I checked the reviews and now I realize that I probably won't have my problem resolved to my satisfaction. This isn't a difficult problem to solve. But it has been days and I still have not heard from them. It seems to me that it isn't worth patronizing a business that has such poor customer service. I will not be making any more orders from Hobby King unless they resolve my situation to my satisfaction immediately. It is NOT worth ordering from Hobby King because while they have great prices, the frustration of dealing with their customer service makes it not at all worth going through. I'd gladly pay more money to somebody else to be treated with respect and to have good customer service."