I like Walthers, nice company, nice people, good customer service sometimes it’s the best quickest place to get that “thing I need right now”. But I’m afraid they are getting too big. At least big enough so the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.
On another thread I found out Walthers had the CMX track cleaning machine on sale. I was wanting to get one so I went online and ordered it. While I was at it I decided to get two packs of additional pads. The HO scale CMX machine was out of stock but due in 8 November. When I got an e-mail regarding the order it showed the pads but not machine. I then noticed the due date was changed to TBA.
However, my credit card was charged for the pads ($10) and the “mail order fee” (shipping). I thought, Shirley, (she is responsible for so much stuff) they won’t send just the pads. But Shirley, I was wrong.
Yesterday I got a box and what a box! The box was 9 inches by 12 inches by about 4 inches deep. In it was the monthly catalog, layinf flat, and invoice and the two packs of pads. Now these pads, banded together, are about 3 inches long by 1 inchwide and 1 inch high. There was also a strip of air cushion wrap…the pads still banged around.
So, now I have pads with no machine to put them on and Walthers will be sending the heavy CMX machine without further charge for postage and handling because it’s a back order. It’s kind of funny, in a way, that doesn’t make any sense (or cents). Great customer service though.
Anybody else have this happen to them? Or is this just an Oops, nobody read the order thing.
I didn’t need to hear this. I just placed my first order with them. I ordered 10 detail items from them. Their web site showed all items in stock. The woman on the phone said all items were in stock. I checked their site two days after I placed the order and 6 of the 10 items were out of stock. Some of them weren’t due back in stock for months. I sure hope it was MY order that took them off the shelf.[sigh]
The woman on the phone REALLY tried to up-sell me too! Kept asking if I needed this or that or if I had my new catalog yet…
That’s part of her job. The more she can get you to buy means more money coming in and makes her look good to upper management who may decide to move her to a better paying position.
The funny thing is, I asked her about stock on a few other items. She said they had plenty of them but I better buy them now. (couldn’t afford to) The next day I got what looked like a standard Walthers sale E-mail, but it only featured the items I asked about.[:P] That’s a little scary since I didn’t give her my E-mail address. Guess it’s time to put the tin foil hat back on!
If it’s from Walthers, I send an e-mail to my LHS and order it from them.
Good: No shipping charge, since it’s part of his standard weekly shipment from Walthers. If it’s a sale item at Walthers, I get the sale price. If it’s not a sale item, I get my usual “regulars” discount. It’s usually there in a few days, and I go over to pick it up.
I also can order from Walther’s through my not so local hobby shop. The good thing is that there’s no shipping charge, as you said. The bad thing is Walther’s won’t send anything until the shops order reaches a certain amount. Sometimes it can take up to six months for an order to come in. If the item is something I want NOW I order from Walther’s directly, pay the shipping and I have the item within three days.
How to say this in a diplomatic way without sounding like an advertisement? hmmm…
On other threads I have seen folks mention about the amount of time it takes for a shop to “get an order up” with Walthers.
I’ve heard folks come into my place from other towns mentioning the same thing. That so-and-so shop takes three months to get an order in because of “Walthers minimum order policy.”
Not to criticize the shop Jeffrey visits (and thankfully supports)… but as Mister Beasley pointed out about his LHS that gets items in right away on a weekly order…
Walthers does have a minimum amount for ordering, but it is very very low. I mean, it takes nothing to meet that minimum order… don’t wanna tell other shops how to do their business, but I wonder about these shops that make their customer wait months for a special order to be placed.
Not trying to pat myself on the back here either, but I do want people, especially any new hobbyists, to know that not all LHS’s wait “until they have a large enough order” with Walthers.
Perhaps if they were pressed to explain Tilden’s experience, and without any further prompting or qualifiers to the question, they might have the presence to state that this has been their policy because so many customers complain after they have received their parcel at a cost at least as great as the item shipped, when it would have cost about the same to ship some forgotten items or overlooked ones. IOW, we do this as a service to you because we know you are as careful about your expenditures as we are. If we ask, we often find that the customer really needs one or two other items that will easily fit in the box and cost no more to send. Efficiency. [:D] Now, I have no idea if that is their purpose, in addition to upselling you…could be…
I have placed MANY orders with Walthers. Out of all of them over the past ten years I have had one error…and Walthers fixed that one to my benefit so I can’t complain. Errors do happen at times but they have been great to me.
I was just wondering if anyone else has had a mail order company go haywire on overpacking or shipping a part before the main item. It just seems to me, in this case at least, there was no reason to ship the pads alone, they could have waited to be shipped with the unit itself. Save some trouble, effort and shipping.
Sometimes it is more trouble and effort to set the ordered and in stock items aside to wait for the out of stock items to arrive. And you would have to set the in stock items aside or risk them being out of stock when the out of stock item shows up.
As for oversized boxes… that is often simple a matter of standard box sizes. The packer sees the packing list, grabs a box and unfolds it to be a “box” (instead of the flat unstructured box to be)they believe will hold all the items and tapes up the bottom; then finds many of the items are not in stock and need to be backordered, but the in-stock items are already in the box so it is easier and cheaper to just send the oversized box with lots of packing. You don’t want the clutter of already structured boxes laying around waiting for an order that will fit in it.
But then, I have gotten an order of a single paper item in big corregated cardboard box with peanut packing around it and then gotten small delicate bulky parts in a barely padded envelope. Go fig. Edit… I should point out that this was NOT from Walthers.
I do believe they have an option when ordering off the web to hold till all backorders are in. But they usually will always ship all they have in stock immediately. I order from them constantly because they have always been good to me. [:)]
I’ve done a lot of orders from Walthers to Sweden.
Never had any problems with them. One time a package got lost but Walthers promptly gave me my money back and sent out new stuff. The thing with them is to order while they are in stock, otherwise I won’t do it. If it is a sales item you have to be quick, I got 14 Super chief cars. I ordered them at once the sale started and sure enough, a few days later the observation car was gone from stock.
They send out there stuff very fast and they package it good. They also replace lost orders without a fuss. The missing one for me was for about 1300$ and they fixed it with a minimum of fuss.
Well I’ve never ordered anything from Walthers , always bought it at my LHS, which is now gone.
I’ve always been pleased with the quality of Walthers products.
I have ordered in the past from IHC, and only got part of my order, with a sheet of paper with the parts that were on backorder.After waiting for 6 months, I gave up, even after calling them twice during that time.3 years later, I got a a box via UPS I believe, and there was a few more items of my items that had been on backorder, along with a list of those items that were still on backorder, AFTER 3 years!
When I went on their website, they were still advertising those items as in stock and still on sale, even though I only got part of my order after three years.
Go figure that one!!!
On another note, I tried for a long time to get a Pennsy 2-10-2 HO steamer from them.Only after numerous attempts and visits to their website, I keep seeing “not available” or they were awaiting their arrival.A few days later, I go on Ebay, and there is some guy with about a dozen new IHC 2-10-2’s in various liverys including the Pennsy I wanted, but he had them all marked up about 40 to 50 dollars above IHC’s prices.They were in IHC boxes, so where did he get them?
He must have had a special order in with IHC and they sold him everything they had, then he marks them up and sells them on Ebay.I have no use for people like him!
Yep, got my Micro-Mark catalog in the mail a few days ago, nice Holiday 2007 issue too!
Now, back to the main topic here;
As long as I have Train Buddy LHS to buy my supplies from I will never order directly from Walthers again. I get the 20% discount that the LHS splits from the 40% markup MSRP price that Walther’s catalog and online shop lists. Also, unless the item is out of stock or is a future offering item I typically get my orders in within a week. Kim at Train Buddy places regular orders with Walther’s and must meet the minimum req. purchase often, because in the handful of times I have ordered stuff through him it is always never more than a week for the in stock items to arrive. And as some of you stated, I have not had to pay shipping charges either, just local tax.