Hobby 1 Japan

[Fisseha Aranda]

Sohobby link Japan had free shipping on orders placed before midnight of sep 28th. I placed an order on sep. 28th. I was supposed to know that it was actually the 27th (because Japan is one day ahead) but they did not make that clear on the site, it just said the 28th. I was told after I placed my order that I did not qualify for free shipping. I explaned my side, and asked that they cancel my order or honor the free shipping an they refused. I informed paypal and got my money back. I sent them a nice e-mail saying I am sorry for the misunderstanding and thank you for the refund.

that was a week ago

So I check my e-mail and I have been charged AGAIN. I file an unauthorized charge and paypal took my side and i got my money back. DO NOT USE PAYPAL on HLJ!!! They trick you into signing up to a billing agreement that says they can charge you whenever they want. So after all of this I get this very PROFESSIONAL e-mail from them-

Hello

I have refunded the payment and canceled the order. Your account is now blacklisted. Please seek elsewhere for your hobby supplies; we can no longer accept any orders from you. It doesn't matter where you are shopping, if you PLACE an order, and select an automatic billing function such as PayPal's Billing Agreement, you are giving that company permission to process that order. YOU placed the order. YOU selected a Billing Agreement.

Before I got this I already said I was never going to buy from them again...now they black list me anyway? Wow too bad, I really wanted to do business with them again (sarcasm)

Anyway stick to Hobby Search, they are always nice and professional. This is just a warning to fellow collectors out there, if you must buy from them use a credit card NOT PAYPAL.

Originally posted at 6:47PM, 6 October 2009 PDT(permalink)

chelseacandy edited this topic ages ago.

I'm sorry this happened to you! In defense of HobbyLink Japan, I have been using them for about 5 years now, always paying by PayPal, and I've never had such a problem with them. I don't have my account set up to automatically bill PayPal, though -- I don't know how that got set up for you. They simply let me know by email when I have something ready to be paid for, and I log into PayPal and complete the transaction myself, on my own schedule. I will probably always use them as long as there is Re-Ment to buy.

I'm sure that no matter what online or retail store you talk about, you will find someone who's had good experiences and someone who's had bad ones. It's good that you have another source where you can get your Re-Ment.

ages ago(permalink)

I have to agree with Renatte_R2 as well. Although i haven't shopped with HLJ for a long time now, I have always had positive experiences. I am sure that out of thousands of shoppers there are bond to be some negative transactions. I too only pay when they send me an invoice. Never got auto charged.

ages ago(permalink)

The automatic charging -billing agreement- is a new thing. I got lured by the free EMS shipping and placed an order as well. I had bought from them before, so I trusted them.

My order went through fine, though. I just got a shipping notice from them.

Now, regarding the tone of the email they sent you, I think it was unnecessarily rude.

I understand there was a misunderstanding about the deadline because of international time differences, but still.. *and this is just my humble opinion* HLJ could have handled it better..

I actually emailed them because I was confused by this new system I agreed to, it said "you don't have to do anything else" but 3 days after I placed my order I still didn't get a shipping notice, and I started wondering if it had something to do with the fact that I had an open order for some re-ment that will be available in November..

So I emailed them asking about that, and I got a reply saying they received a huge amount of orders because of the promotion, and that their packers were working as fast as they can. And asked me to please be patient. I felt a little embarrassed as I didn't mean to hurry them...so I just left it alone.

So what I'm trying to say is.. I think HLJ staff was overwhelmed by the amount of orders received. I bet they had a lot other issues like yours.. and a lot other people emailing them "hey, where's my order's tracking number?" and who knows what other cr*p they had to deal with. I am not trying to justify their rudeness, I am only trying to make sense.. like I said, I have bought from them before and they were always correct and respectful.

The right thing to do would have been to apologize for the misunderstanding and offer you free shipping. They should at least agreed to cancel your order, considering the circumstances.

I'm sorry things ended up like this for you.

ages ago(permalink)

As with most companies most people will have positive experiences, I am just saying what happened to me as a potential warning that these people blackmail their customers. I just feel really bad about what happened and how I was treated. I am not asking anyone to agree with me, I just wanted support and to feel better.

It says on the bottom of their page www.hlj.com/overview/hlj_policies.html

"that-we vigorously contest any credit card "chargebacks" (refusals to pay) filed by customers or complaints with PayPal, but such customers may be blacklisted from using our service, meaning we will accept no further orders from them, ever. We also share information about blacklisted customers with other online merchants offering similar merchandise."

ages ago(permalink)

@Suedehead

I guess we posted at the exact same time so I just read your message. I have been buying from them for years and have not had any problems until now. And I wish they did just honor my free shipping as a courtesy,was it worth it to them to loose a customer over 30$ shipping? You are definitely right, they were probably overwhelmed with all those orders and I am thinking (not sure) they might have charged me twice on accident, (giving them the benefit of the doubt even though they never said it was an accident) to which I filed the payapal claim. Thank you so much for your message, it made me feel a lot better

Maybe there's also another explanation. Paypal policy is quite strong, I am a merchant too and once I had a similar situation. When a merchant gets a "chargeback" has to pay a fee to paypal (you can't avoid it) and chargebacks are recorded. So if a merchant gets a lot of chargebacks (with good reason or not) he may loose the paypal contract. So maybe you can understand the rude tone. I know this wasn't your case but sometime people simply change mind about the order and use chargeback to get back money.

BTW the blacklist is really rude!

ages ago(permalink)

@ natlasmine

I have a ebay sore and sell a lot of stuff online so I understand the frustration of paypal claims. However I never got the product and I asked them three separate times to either cancel my order or give me free shipping as advertised. They refused so that was my last resort after being charges a second time a week later without my consent. I would have liked to not file a claim, but it was very easy for them to avoid the situation and prevent this from happening. (If they had any kind of customer service) Thanks for your support!

I love HLJ and have, over many years of hobby buying, heard 95% good things about them. Where they always seem to fall down tho, for those 5% unlucky, is in customer communications. They aren't very good at it. So basically I kind of order from them with the expectation that I hope I never need to talk to them. Which is not to say they are always difficult - I have read a lot of people say they had an easy time straightening orders out. It just seems that is their one weakness.

I am a little leery of this automatic paypal billing tho. I let myself get suckered into signing up for it to get the free shipping, but now I really need to figure out how to disable it again. I actually used to have my account set up this way in the past. It was very convenient! But it turned out it was also very dangerous, since I do a lot of pre-ordering and you don't know how much shipping will cost. Let us just say this is how I unintentionally became the owner of a re-ment room box... ^^;

ages ago(permalink)

I've also had 99% great experiences with HLJ, the only issue I've ever had was when the release of a pre-ordered item was delayed a couple of moths, and they did not even post the information on their site... So a lot of people were left wondering what on earth was going on.

The automatic charging sounds really fishy, though, at least to me... And the customer should really be able to disable it easily, without having to contact the company and/or Paypal to do it, or to ask how.

ages ago(permalink)

I am so sorry this has to have happened to you, I know how you feel concerning being charged again when it clearly was not your fault, very unlucky indeed. I didn't have any problems with them, but do be very aware of Angolz, it's been 5 months and I have not gotten a refund nor my items, and they ignore any e-mails I send to them now.

did you get your package? I sure did yesterday. I hope that they know not to use the billing agreement to their advantage because they will get bad reps, as far as I'm concerned, it went perfectly well. When I purchased my items, they didn't charge me for shipping, and I thought it was weird Because you mentioned that you were charged, then refunded.

ages ago(permalink)

not yet.. but it should be here any moment now :)

I was also surprised to find they never charged me the shipping cost as they said they would...

I have to admit I was not aware the automatic payment was an already existing option.. I thought HLJ was just introducing this feature, hence the free EMS promotion ...

I didn't check if such billing agreement was something easy to disable in the future.. I am that irresponsible sometimes :

So, I just wanted to add.. that in the Blythe community HLJ has become increasingly unpopular .. basically regarding their preorder system. It's become a persistent issue that HLJ is taking more preorders for Blythe dolls that they can actually fulfill. The first time it happened, people were very confused as they got their preorders cancelled (or reduced to "1 per customer") and later the doll was suddenly "in stock" again. Turned out to be a fail in the system, and all orders placed the second time were canceled too. You can imagine the frustration..

Subsequent Blythe releases went through the same issues.. and people started to get really disappointed at HLJ :/

ages ago(permalink)

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