I have noticed that most of the hobby shops and model railroad companies that I send an e-mail to regard a product usually will not reply until I have sent multiple e-mails. This is espicially puzzling when the have the product I asked about. Then there is one hobby shop that everytime I sent them an e-mail about something and they had it, I ordered it but still it is difficult to get a reply. I guess their motto should be “The customer is always an annoyance”.
About the only companies that I received a reply the first time from are Athearn, Walthers, and Microscale. I cannot recall a hobby shop that falls in this catagory.
I’ve only emailed one hobby shop & they did get back to me in a couple of days.
I guess it depends on what you are after as I only wanted directions on how ot get to the shop
You might try First Hobbies or 1st Place Hobbies (different stores, similar names) Both responded to me within 1 day, and both provided great shipping times. I will use them again.
Good luck.
From having managed a hobby shop I can tell you that unless they are already working on a problem for you, e-mail is not the way to go. You would be amazed at how many " you got a mojo-56 made by jimmijonga in stock and can I buy it for 65% off the regular price" inqiries you get from someone in Outerwest Quhala who has never been near your shop and will never be a customer. Cut’em some slack!
I’ve noticed this with manufacturers - as jsoderq says hobby shops are usually pretty busy, often they don’t have a dedicated email person. Manufacturers don’t have this excuse to my mind - especially the larger ones. In recent months I’ve had to email Bachmann UK (who were excellent - reply with 2 days with all the info I needed), LGB (who were also very prompt, though the retailer they advised me to contact seem to be tricky to get hold of), and Fleischmann UK (who were hopeless - no response 3 weeks later, after the first week I gave up and was lucky enough to find the part numbers I needed on their main website along with exploded diagrams which were very useful).
I find that emails are not responded to very quickly no matter which source I’ve tried. I also find that calling them on the phone is the very best…unless you need some paperwork via an email trail to cover your butt[:-,]
If any business and/or store offers email as a way of contacting them, then they had better be prepared to monitor and promptly respond to this form of communication.
In other words, if a hobby shop is too busy to “sit at a computer” and monitor email, or is unwilling to answer email inquires from people they think will never order from them anyway, then they should never have offered email as a way to communicate with them.
A tragic consequence of the spam plague, is that many small businesses (and most LHS fit in this category) have gotten out of online business COMPLETELY. If it wasn’t for spam, they wouldn’t NEED a full-time person to spend hours at the computer sifting thru the email in-box to find legitimate messages.
The hobby shop that I deal with in California (I’m in Missouri) is a one man operation. He doesn’t have time to sit in front of the computer, so it usually take a couple of days for him to get back to me.
I don’t have a problem with that … if it is urgent, I’ll give him a call.
I agree. The other thing that happens is the spam filters sometimes block legitimate messages. Also, some ISP’s limit the amount of space you can have for email, if that is filled up no more gets through - you may or may not get a message back on it.
Enjoy
Paul
Paul brings up a good point. Spam filters have reached the level that they are almost as bad as what it is they are supposed to eliminate. Some filters will send a message back to the sender saying they were blocked out, others nothing at all. Equally frustrating are the spam filters that do not tell you that an email was blocked so that you can decide whether or not to read it. Many coroporate IT types are just blocking all emails from certain providers - wife’s IT guy blocks all mail from yahoo, unless you specifically ask for an address to be allowed.
Best customer service I have had, model railroading or otherwise, is Digitrax. I have emailed their tech support a few pre-sale questions that were a little too esoteric for the web site information, and they have always gotten back to me within an hour or two.
Atlas has generally been pretty good at answering email, too.
Other than ordering something by phone, I haven’t had too much need to call or email a real hobby shop. Watching how the one nearest me works, I can see the phone would probably be viewed as a nuisance because they really focus on live, face-to-face customers. Guess I can live with that, because I don’t ever remember calling them, certainly haven’t emailed them, but I do walk in once a month or so.
After the third e-mail, and no asking for a discount, I think that would be noticeable. Also, if they do not want to use e-mail, they should not put an e-mail address on their websites.
I took this from the Atlas web site, on the “Contact Us” page …
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When sending emails to Atlas it may be helpful to keep several factors in mind. We have in excess of 100,000 emails sent our way in a typical week - and only about one percent of them are legitimate. To combat this incredible level of activity, we employ several types of software. If you have sent us an email and have not received a reply within a few days, perhaps your email was intercepted by one of our email protection products. Please read on to find out more.
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1% out of over 100,000 emails each week are legit?!