Ordering/shipping

[britishcolum]

I hope someone from the appropriate department sees this...

I just cancelled all my pre-orders, because as things become available, I don't want to risk forgetting and then having to pay overseas shipping for single wagons etc individually.

Please fix this, so that multiple items can be combined into a single shipment!

[Ray Gavin]

Indeed. Or add an option to 'hold all items' until they can be shipped together if you don't mind waiting?

[sxbiker]

I agree that there needs to be clarity here. I just recently had a shipment of 5 items that I had pre-ordered at the same time. Each item was £44.99. There was 5 separate invoices each with £5.95 shipping. For each invoice there was a separate payment taken.

Upon receipt of a single package containing all 5 items, I rung Customer Services. Within a few days I received 5 separate refunds of £5.95

Now the moral here is that Hornby will acknowledge this happening and rectify it.

However I would imagine that the amount of staff hours to correct things is costing Hornby dear. This situation has been occurring for at least the last 2 years as it has happened to me before.

Surely it makes sense to put this situation right and save money overall.

[HornbyKiwi]

I just cancelled all my pre-orders, because as things become available, I don't want to risk forgetting and then having to pay overseas shipping for single wagons etc individually.

 

 

I thought this was the purpose of the temporary free shipping on orders, and that Hornby were working on their software to prevent a situation as you describe from happening?

Perhaps the mods can shed some light on where Hornby are at with that? I believe shipping is now being added to newly-placed orders again, so a solution may have been arrived at to prevent needless multiple shipping charges for items that could be collated into a single package.

 

 

HK

[TT-Man]

The availability of temporary free shipping finished at the end of November. I placed some extra orders at the beginning of December and they all had individual shipping charges added. In my case being overseas that was an extra £25 per pre-order. So they were proposing to charge me £300 for shipping 12 wagons. Needless to say I cancelled the lot.

Customer Care seem to be clueless about the temporary free shipping offer. I have had them deny it's existence three times in emails. The most recent was received yesterday when it was stated that anyone who mentioned such an offer in this forum was mistaken! Perhaps it is a State Secret!!!

[Rallymatt]

Oh dear

[BritInVanCA]

I'm concerned about this as well. I want to create an order for Canada that will hit the 250 pounds threshold for free shipping to Canada but I can't at the moment as everything I want it pre-order and will probably come in separately. At the moment I'm going to wait until items are in stock so I can order everything at once. I know it could be a long wait

[HornbyKiwi]

Customer Care seem to be clueless about the temporary free shipping offer. I have had them deny it's existence three times in emails. The most recent was received yesterday when it was stated that anyone who mentioned such an offer in this forum was mistaken! Perhaps it is a State Secret!!!

 

 

Interesting. I guess I'm wondering if anybody has taken delivery of items who had free shipping applied when they pre-ordered. The Scotsman set delivered to a distant overseas location would probably be the one I'm most curious to hear about.

I think all of the forum members who have mentioned receiving the set are UK-based and would meet the threshold for free delivery to their location anyway. We need a Brit with a pre-ordered item over 20 quid in value but under 50. Or a North American or Kiwi who pre-ordered the Scotsman set.

 

 

HK

[TT-Man]

I have 7 buildings that were pre-ordered before the end of November. I have an EU address for which the normal free shipping threshold is £100. All the buildings come in at less than £100 each. All my pre-orders were given separate order numbers and both the entries under the My Account/Orders section of the website and the emails confirming the pre-orders all indicated a shipping charge of £0. On the 12th and 16th December my bank account was charged with 7 separate amounts all of which relate to the item prices with no shipping. Yesterday I received 3 separate notifications from the courier that 3 of the items had been collected from Hornby (EDIT I have now received a 4th notification). So it would seem that no shipping has been charged even though wastefully they are intending to make 7 separate shipments.

Items I pre-ordered in early December had shipping added at £25 per item and this was shown on both the My Account/Orders section of the website and the emails I received. Once I realised I was going to be charged £300 shipping for 12 separately sent items I cancelled all those orders. Going forward on all sub £100 items I will not be placing any pre-orders. I shall have to rely on getting in stock items that I can group into a single £100 plus order. This is very annoying as I am sure there will be instances of things being entirely allocated to pre-orders with no surplus stock left for live orders.

Hornby's shipping policy seems to be very wasteful and incompetently organised. As things stand it looks as though I will be getting 26 separate shipments, which could actually be compressed into a fraction of that number. I would not be very impressed if I was a Hornby shareholder.

[Hobby11]

I believe it's the deal they have with the delivery company that allows this, it's supposedly not costing them any more to send individually as it is to send "combined". I'm sure if it was costing them a great deal extra as you've said it could be they'd have done combined shipments.

It's still using a lot extra packing material which isn't good, but plastic and cardboard packing have been the way of model railways since the beginning and it hasn't got any better, in fact modern MR packaging seems to be even worse than it was when I was a kid in the 60s when the only plastic was the glazing on the front!

[TT-Man]

@Hobby

It could be as you say, that they have a deal whereby several items sent on the same day to the same address only gets charged a single fee. But if so why are they profiteering off the customer by charging multiples of the shipping cost? They wanted to charge me £300 for 12 very small items.

I know others have retrospectively complained about this and been refunded. But I didn't want to have £300 hanging in the wind and being dependant on Hornby being 'reasonable', to resolve it after the fact.

[LTSR_NSE]

@TT-Man - if Hornby are profiting from the order/delivery system then that obviously is indefensible, however they appear to simply have no control over it.

They have outsourced both their website and warehousing (including deliveries) to two separate companies (where or who controls their ordering system is yet another matter entirely).

Therefore this situation is more about lacking control/oversight/competence rather than deliberate profiteering.