HeliPal

I live in the US and I have shopped on HeliPal for close to a year now with no problems. In fact, many US sites buy from there and resell in the US.

However, I recently purchased my first scale from the site and it has been a nightmare. After researching the boards, I discovered I was not the first to suffer from this issue and finally contacted technical support. After 3 or so emails back and forth, their spokesman, Jacky told me it sounded as though the heli receiver was bad and I needed to return the heli for them to confirm. No return information was ever provided. After several weeks of my emails going unanswered, they finally contacted me once I involved PayPay. The company claimed they had lost contact and just recently found all my missing emails.

I wish I could say the issue is resolved, however it is not.

Bottom line, although expensive for shipping, HeliPal is the place to shop. However, buyer beware, if you need support of any kind, you are on your own. Hence my 3 star rating.

Bought a storm 6 from them and was amazed at how crappy their customer service was after my credit card went through.
First, they shipped the wrong hardware and I couldn't complete the out of box build. I contacted them and they said they would send it right out, but then I noticed the charger they sent me was incorrect. I contacted them the very next day and noticed my credit card went through and lo and behold I haven't heard from them AT ALL. Nothing from *******@gmail.com, nothing from *******@helipal.com, and nothing "Janet" who was the first rep who said she'd send the hardware to me.
DO NOT ORDER FROM HELIPAL UNLESS YOU'RE INTERESTED IN BEING SCREWED

They state on your invoice to contact and tell them if your order takes longer than the time they quote for shipping. Which is ridiculous in how it is quoted to begin with. Shipping options from their site depend on what item you are ordering (not just batteries either), I logged in and put a single motor in my cart, these are the mailing Options; Option 1 is 8-16 days for $5.50 for a single 1106 Micro Brush-less motor 3400KV (Shipping weight is. 135 Kg). Option 2 is 3 - 4 days for $21.49 (LOL). I have ordered several times from this company, shipping is ALWAYS painfully slow. My orders always seem to be delivered on the last day of the week - month range stated by Helipal or the day after the last day in the range. They rarely (almost never) provide a tracking number. The shipping options they provide are inconsistent. I am waiting on an order that was shipped on the 19th of June according to my invoice. Today is the 2nd of July. 12 days. The item was to be delivered 7-15 BUSINESS days, non-work days don't count, (FIRST GOTCHA). It's been 12 days but only 9 business days. If it arrives in 15 business days it will actually have been 22 days (that's a whole extra week they are covering their $#*! with). If you need a part and its not on E-bay, not available in any other country or from any other supplier or the manufacturer, and you cant cobble it together with sticks and glue, but Helipal has it then either you pay extra for express shipping (which is also always late by the way) or you wait for the slow boat.

I'm done with them. I have lost weeks of flying cause they cant seem to find the DHL truck or a reliable shipping process.

This appeared to be a well organised web site with well thought out details of their products and spares. Placing an order was easy, but contacting them since has become difficult. Upon attempting to send an email, it was subjected to a security code, which was impossible to copy. Hence an email could not be sent. I placed an order on 02 April 2010, which should have arrived by special postal delivery within 3 / 4 days. I am still waiting for the order to arrive.

I wanted to put in my two cents - I also purchased an SRD370 from them - with extras it came out to ~ $1300 US. My NAZA2 GPS module was also defective as someone else had claimed in another review. I cannot fault Helipal for that, as they do not make the product, DJI does. I received fairly good troubleshooting information from them and quick email response times (within 1 day accounting for the HK and US EST time difference). All said, everything took about 1 week to resolve due to shipping transit times but they sent me a replacement once they narrowed down the issue - at first they thought it may have been the main control board so I had sent that back first.

In my opinion, for the breadth of products, competitive pricing, and selection that Helipal offers on their site, the transit time and shipping costs from HK to the Eastern US is a manageable trade-off for me.

I ordered the ninja 250.
None of the bolts were locktited. Arm came apart in first 5 mins of flight causing bad crash.
Escs stopped working after three flights.
Unwrapped escs to find soldering not connected. Had to resolder
Flying in any mode that will let you flip or roll is a bad idea.
The quad rolls like 6 times and slams into the ground.
The body is basically useless and does absolutely nothing to protect the electronics in a crash as it literally explodes upon impact. The remote has sticky throttle. The camera is extremely glitchy. Ive spent more time repairing this quad than actually flying it. I really am beyond dissapointed. It was quite a bit of money to spend on something i could have built three of them with extremely better quality. This product was a complete and total letdown. They dont do refunds which is understandable but i have built more than a handful of quads and flown for a very long time now. It is not pilot error. After reinstalling allnew bolts... having to reflash the flight controller and resolder the escs and flying with no body i seriously should have built my own. Also... one of the motors died on the 5th flight. Very very dissapointed.

I bought a storm srd 280 v3. Looked great. They say they are tested. When armed this one would instantly want to flip. When that had been sorted. Reflash of fc i kept crashing it and blaming myself. Turns out it wasn't me not on any ocassion. It just falls out of the air like a Rock.
I took it apart and found 2 crushed wires. That wasn't the problem.
Turns out it is probably a sync issue. Ii was trying to solder ground wires to the escs because apparently they should be there. Problem is solder won't stick to the ground pads. Not on any of them. Weird is that.
I have also purchased a s rew kit. The are 2 piece screws that break under normal tightening. They charged me 36 dollars for that kit and it's rubbish.
I also had to order numerous arms because of its fall from the sky problem. The original arms bent. The ones I had to order snap. So a difference in carbon quality.
I initially emailed them and they said send it back at my expense. 100 dollars plus.
I emailed thier tech support and recieved no answer. Yet they say they have answered all emails... no they haven't.
This rtf package cost me 700 dollars and 0ver 300 in parts to replace all the broken bits.
Perhaps I got a lemon. Bit that don't explain he dodgy screws... who makes 2 piece alloy screws... it doesn't explain the unsolderable ground pad on the escs ot the shoddy carbon arms that snap. Totally unlike the original arms.

I needed a specific frame and saw that HeliPal had it in stock. After contacting the company, they kindly let me know that their website was incorrect and they did not have the item in stock. This was okay, and we moved on.

A few weeks went by, and I had to make another purchase of a different frame item. As we needed it quickly, the item was purchased with the 'Expedited Shipping' option, adding $75 to the $400+ item cost. A day later, and I received an email from HeliPal support that their website was again wrong, and they did not have that item in stock, and would not have it for at least another week.

I requested a refund for my expedited shipping cost, and the representative, Yannis, told me "Sorry about that we cannot to waive the shipping cost and the expected restock date is around one week".

I immediately asked to cancel my order, and heard nothing back for three days. I ended up disputing the fraudulent charge in PayPal. A few hours later and Yannis again sent me an email telling me to cancel the PayPal dispute in order to send my refund.

DO NOT CLOSE A PAYPAL DISPUTE. If you do this, there is no way to open another dispute if HeliPal does not give your money back. Instead, you are supposed to wait for them to process the refund, and the dispute will be closed automatically.

As of now, I am still waiting for my refund.

Overall, I experienced:
1) Incorrect stock on the website
2) Non refund for 4 day shipping for an item which would not even be in stock for another week
3) Vendor ignored my request for a refund and to cancel the order until prompted by a PayPal dispute
4) Vendor not understanding the way PayPal operates, or was trying to trick me into canceling my dispute

Outcome and Takeaway:
There are many different websites to purchase the items that HeliPal has. Do yourself a favor, do not shop at HeliPal.

I purchased a Syma So331G helicopter from helipal.com in early December. Noting, that when I first opened the package the box seemed to be "re-taped" and something was "lose" inside the box. I put it back in the shipping box and wrapped it for my son for Christmas. The website seemed safe and well put together and even the reviews I checked only said good things about helipal.com

The problem, when my son opened his heli on Christmas, we noticed several things.
1: The heli was scratched in several places.
2. There was no manual
3. The helicopter and other parts were not secured in the box.
4: the bracket holding up the battery was broken
5. The charger shipped with the heli does not power this certain helicopter.

On December 27th, I contacted customer service for helipal.com for the first time.
I have gone back and forth now w/Janet Chow with their Customer Service for 3 weeks now. They are denying any fault on their company and there there must be some mistake because they would never send out a used or returned item to a customer. They are basically calling their customer a LIAR. In order to write a review of their site/and my purchase I have to go through their customer service email, and I know what I have to say will not be posted.

After 3 weeks, I have no resolution to this matter and no working helicopter. And,
I am currently still out over $77(usd).
I would not recommend this site to other users.

I just ordered a storm srd127 drone rtf, like anything u buy u go through and tighten all the bolts up, they where all loose for one for two I ran 1 3s 450 mah through the drone with no problem, and then I ran the 2nd battery 2 minutes into the flight and it dropped out of the sky, it turns out the 15a ESC and maybe the control board went up in smoke, so it say on there website you have 3 day from the day u purchase it to contact them if there has bin any problems with my purchase via email, i tried 3 time yesterday the day I received it, and today several time email and paypal filed a claim so maybe now I, ll hear something, all I want is them to fix it or replace it, seeing how I really enjoy the SRD127 I think its great, they would be a much better company if they had a way different customer service, love the drones but hate the people that work for them, all I want is a working drone, seeinf how I have stage 4 colon rectal cancer and all I, m trying to do is enjoy and have fun with the time I have left on this earth...