Tower Hobbies

I've used Tower Hobbies since the early 80's. I've spent thousands of dollars but no more! I always regarded Tower/zHorion with the best in customer support! Real people that flew the planes actually answered the phone and assisted people. You can't even call in a order anymore! MOTION RC still has customer support and answers the phone! Bye bye Tower/Horizon. If you want to take a chance you won't need support use them otherwise run run!

Purchased a Tekin ESC on 10/27/23. Waited 5 days and the ESC had not shipped. It said ESC was in stock. Contacted CS. Received an email mid day asking for name order# where it purchased how it was paid for. I sent them a screen shot of the transaction. One day later no response I contact again live chat and was told the item is not in stock and won't be until the end of the month. Horrible FAIL Tower Hobbies!

I paid almost five dollars on a small item you could have put in an envelope with a stamp. You think that would be fast shipping but you would be wrong. They take 4 or 5 days just to put it in the mail and then it is economy. There easy return policy is bulls**t also. If you opened it and seen it was wrong you will get hassled. I will never buy from this company again

I will never use this company again. Box arrived 4 weeks late and also damaged. When contacting the customer service team the response I had was extremely unprofessional, unhelpful and quite frankly rude (a lady called Karen was who dealt with me).

I used to enjoy shopping at TH. Now if you place an order you will be dealing with a heartless computer program and customer service will be extremely hard to come by. The human element is gone, this is just a business investment for someone who probably does not even have a hobby. Like others, my trust and support of this business has reached its end

Not very happy with the customer service and the way they deal with their returns and service policies there's no way you can talk to a real person everything is online and you wait forever for response not happy at all

I wanted to leave an update on the horrible customer service at Tower hobbies. It's been now over three weeks and I have not gotten one response from Tower hobbies customer service. I had a defective item I did the procedure. Three different times and nothings come of it. They are supposed to respond an email in 48 hours and there's been no service at all. So the only thing I can say is if you got a problem you might want to actually call your credit card company and put a dispute in on the bill. It might be the only way to get service because there is no customer service at tower hobbies
If I could give them a negative score, I would, because there is no customer service at Tower hobbies, but this website only allows a one star review for the worst case scenario
Good luck, my fellow hobby enthusiast
Anthony

I place an order on April 4th. Part of the order was shipped. I understand the rest of the order was a pre-order for new Tamiya release. Now that Tower Hobbies was bought by Horizon Hobbies, Tower hobbies Award winning customer service is gone. You have to do this, live online chat. I tried contacting them through email and I never received a response. I did get a Case number sent to my email stating that they would look into it and I never heard back. Returning to the order Tower Hobbies does not update you on status. So placing my $1000 order in April, we are now at the end of August And I had to jump through hoops just to get some answers. I will never order from tower hobbies again. Tower hobbies used to be the best But this is clearly past tense. Do not order from tower hobbies do not order from horizon hobbies find someone else. Here's a tip Amain Hobbies has a phone number on the top right corner of the website. If you Google customer service for tower hobbies, they give you this phone number that is just a message, and then it hangs up on you. I added some photos of the stupid live chat.

I've had a great experience using Tower Hobbies over the past few months, I've been making the majority of my orders through them and received them all within a week. Anytime I have questions about parts compatibility etc. they are always super helpful and knowledgeable. I'd HIGHLY recommend Tower Hobbies to anyone into RC. I'll be continuing to use Tower Hobbies for all future online orders.

Tower was the only place I used for years until Horizon bought them and absolutely ruined them. Avoid them at all costs.

Back in the early '90s Tower Hobbies was the place to buy from, ever since Horizon hobby took over its been a real mess with stuff only 10 year old children would enjoy that i wouldn't be caught dead owning. Shame on you both Tower Hobbies and Horizon hobby for helping to destroy a hobby that yas been around longer than both of you.

I used to shop at Tower Hobbies all the time and bought many cars, boats and planes from them. My last order they shipped FedEx which has been ridiculously slow. They shipped from their Ontario Warehouse, it took 7days to final ship it to FedEx Chino location about 5 miles away, saying it would be another 3 days to ship it to LA. I tried to contact FedEx and received the royal run around on their computerized voice telephone customer service and e message customer service. I blame this all on Tower for using a totally terrible shipping service with an unusable customer service. Never again Tower.

Bought an arf have some damage sent 6 emails to TH no answer
Cant not get a live person to answer phone.
The plane i bought was 700.00 total they will not answer
If you dont want to get screwed over from TH dont buy.
My account is under my name

Tower Hobbies used to be my go to place for RC airplanes and things. I have used them for decades. My recent experience with them has been a major turn off. I know they have been bought out by Horizon Hobbies and I am not sure how that will ultimately play out for them.
I got an email that said sign up for the Super Saver Club and get a 20% off coupon. No restrictions. I used to be a member of the club because they offered shipping on lower dollar value orders and paid back better points so I thought, "Why not?" 20% off is a good offer and I can get the cost of the membership back easily.
I signed up for the Super Saver Club and it says you should receive your coupon within 24 hours via email.
After almost a week of never getting a coupon I reached out via their contact us page to find out about my coupon. I got the email that said they usually respond within 24 hours.
Almost a week later I get an email from a customer service representative and he apologizes and provided a coupon code. That evening I sat down to put an order in. When I put the coupon code in it said it was unable to apply the coupon. I replied to the email and asked what to do since the coupon was not working. The representative replied that the coupon had expired and to have a nice day.
I responded and questioned why a coupon code I was given that morning had already expired. His last response was he would check with his "super" and get back to me. I still haven't heard anything.
It is very frustrating. The only reason I signed up for the Club was for the coupon. If they are going to advertise an offer I would expect them to stand behind it. Apparently that is not the case with them anymore.
Sad because they used to be a great company to work with.
Several days after joining the club I got the email asking for feedback. I have been waiting to see how they resolve the issue before responding to that request. I figure at this point it is time to finally respond to their request for feedback.

I have requested multiple times and multiple ways for upper management/ director level contact information but I was unable to receive them from Tower Hobbies so I am posting this information here and other places online.

Tower Hobbies was my go to Hobby Shop for decades. It will be no more. I pre-ordered quite a few AFX slot cars (4 GT40 Mk IIb, 2 Corvette LT1,4 GT 40 Mk 4, and a single 70 Chevelle and single 71 Chevelle) way back on May 19 just as soon as they posted them on their site. The initial ship date on their site said July 15. After countless shipping delays, we fast forward to first week of September and they finally receive them. These slot cars immediately began hitting Ebay and other stores around the country. I was excited to finally get my slot cars after waiting for FOUR months and being one of the very first to pre-order from Tower Hobbies. So I waited for shipping confirmation for several days (again after seeing other stores post them as available and seeing them appear on Ebay. One small vendor in NY sold 26 of the MK 2b's) But no word from my very, very pre-order from Tower Hobbies. So I sent a message requesting info through their online "customer service" form. Someone replied saying that I would only be getting one car, the 71 Chevelle! After several rounds of emails, the customer service person "Sam R" said they were only able to ship 12% of the outstanding orders because that was all the product they were shipped. I could understand that IF I had just pre-ordered a few weeks or month or two ago. But I pre-ordered as soon as they listed these available back in May 19, FOUR months prior. There is ZERO chance that all 12% of these fulfilled orders were placed before May 19. Zero chance. So the question is, who at Tower Hobbies placed later orders before legitimate early pre-orders and why?

The why is easy. These slot cars are hot ticket items and were already selling at 2-4X markups on Ebay within hours after their release. So PROFIT is the why. The question is who did this. I believe there needs to be an audit. Again, there is NO WAY orders were shipped in the order received as Tower Hobbies promises. Otherwise, I would have received all the GT40 Mk IIb's and Corvettes I pre-ordered.

Tower Hobbies is no longer my go to Hobby Store. And I will NEVER pre-order from them again as there are games being played somewhere along the line.

I'm not even able to call them and ask a question about my order, it's all online, very unhelpful,

Purchased an item for 500 dollars. Recevied the item. Did not work. Tower Hobbies would not replace the item. Told me to contact the manufactor in China, which i did. Phone number for Kyosho is out of order. Customer service at Tower Hobbies is horrable.

I race RC cars competitively and used to order quite a lot of kits and parts for this hobby from Towerhobbies. I started using Tower back in the early 2010's,... I have used Tower less and less over the years as they seem to carry less and less and never seem to have anything in stock. Fast forward to 2019, there are many other online retailers that are much better in terms of product selection, availability, ease of use of their website and customer service. Tower went downhill, I wouldn't really recommend it anymore (like I used to). I notice their online "search" function on their website is really bad too.

Bad service... price matching sucks, customer service doesn't know their own policies when you ask them about it. Their answer was... if its cheaper at Hobby People then go buy it there. Really sad advice after all the money Ive spent with tower hobbies

The plane I purchased had a defective engine cowl. I was referred to the manufacturer for replacement. Manufacturer sent me another cowl but because they didn't state it was a warranty replacement, I was responsible for paying the dues owed though FEDEX. Manufacturer would not return any of my emails that I sent to them letting them know what happened so they could correct this. I informed Tower Hobbies of what was going on, they refunded me 50% of the cost of the plane! What an amazing gesture! More than what I was expecting!

Bought a brand new jato. Broke the tiny knubs it comes with so I upgraded to jato specified bandito street tires from duratrax. The back axle is hex and front is circular bearings so the hex rear bandito tires fit perfectly then I tried to fit the front but the circular bearing upfront did not like the bandito hex. So I trade the 2 new banditos for bearing fitting ones and find out the center hole on the tires are to large for even the nut to hold. I try to research if maybe it's a bearing size problem but no luck. I call tower services and they tell me it should have had hex fitting on all four corners of the car, after trading in the two hex I had in the first place. Another advice they had was to get a hex conversion kit for the front and get the hex wheels back. The big deal is that there is no information at all to come with the jato on the specified duraTrax wheels after spending a fortune to get the parts and car for christmas. Converting to all for hex when they should have been that way in the first place is a big waste of money. Doing one thing needs three things to do.

I placed an order with Easy Pay and another order as a gift. I returned the gift order for a full refund but they only refunded me one of my Easy Pay payments and not refund the full gift order. I asked for them to please change it as I kept the Easy Pay purchase and need my full refund for the other purchase I returned but they were not willing to help and said sorry we can't make any changes now because it's already been done. I even returned it with the original invoice. Which means they were not interested in putting any effort into making this right and as long as they have your money they are like "F-YOU"

Pros: very serious and good customer service, they answer quickly.
Cons: a bit more expensive than other webs. They sent me twice some glues whose expired date was too close.