Tower Hobbies

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 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 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.

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.

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.