Hornby announce TT:120

[J-Lewis]

20 minutes ago, gc4946 said:

Hornby hasn't yet invoiced me for my three preordered Total TTAs, I'm hoping they'll arrive next week or so

Might be worth checking your bank statement , I haven’t received any e-mails from Hornby but they have taken payment and the orders are showing as ‘processing’ on my Hornby TT account summary so the preorder seems to be going through.

[jonnyuk]

Given the number of retailers now selling tt stuff, surprised not see them listed else where,  not even pre-order.

 

[Porfuera]

1 hour ago, gc4946 said:

Hornby hasn't yet invoiced me for my three preordered Total TTAs, I'm hoping they'll arrive next week or so

 

Me either - I'm also checking the order status of my three TTA orders (one of each so three separate orders) and mine all say 'Pending'.

 

Chris from the "Peachy TT:120" YouTube channel posted on Facebook to say that payment for his TTAs had been declined by his card provider because his card had been reissued since he placed his TTA order and therefore the original card details were no longer valid.

 

I'm in the same situation so I'll be giving Hornby a call on Monday. They seem to store card details on the website but I don't know whether existing pre-orders are updated if new card details are used or perhaps they simply take payment from the most recent card. However going by the above it would seem that they still try to use the original card details.

[moawkwrd]

1 hour ago, jonnyuk said:

Given the number of retailers now selling tt stuff, surprised not see them listed else where,  not even pre-order.

 

What do you mean? Rails, Gaugemaster and TMC have all 3 for preorder. I’m sure others do too.

Edited January 21 by moawkwrd

[PeterStiles]

1 minute ago, Porfuera said:

They seem to store card details on the website but I don't know whether existing pre-orders are updated if new card detail

Hornby's website's dealings with Card Expiry are excreble. My card expired last March, and, upon checking the website on how to update details on my pre-orders I was unpleasantly surprised to find it was not possible.

 

On calling Customer Support they said each (pre-)order will need to be dealt with as and when they try the old card and it is declined; they have no way of updating orders, and so every few weeks I've had a "we can't dispatch your order because your card has been declined" email. Luckily they've made it easy to deal with the issue so you don't have to keep ringing customer services up, but it is still a right royal...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Single One of my

[Mike Harvey]

There seems to be a gap between the practice and the Hornby FAQ theory.

 

 

[jonnyuk]

1 hour ago, moawkwrd said:

What do you mean? Rails, Gaugemaster and TMC have all 3 for preorder. I’m sure others do too.

I’d checked rails yesterday, admittedly I only looked under the tt section, did not search for product codes. I’ll take another look

[Steamport Southport]

4 hours ago, Mike Harvey said:

There seems to be a gap between the practice and the Hornby FAQ theory.

 

 

 

That worked perfectly for me. Updated mine a few weeks ago no problem.

 

 

Jason

[Porfuera]

8 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

That worked perfectly for me. Updated mine a few weeks ago no problem.

 

Jason

 

Hi Jason,

 

So how do you do it? How did you change the payment instructions (credit card details or whatever) on an existing pre-order?

 

If I go My Account -> Orders the only link I can see on my pre-orders is a red button marked "Cancel" and I'm not about to press that! I can't see any other links on the pre-orders - unlike the 'Despatched' orders that have links to 'View Order' and 'Download Invoice (PDF)'.

 

I can't see any other useful links on that page - did Hornby send you an email with a link as in the FAQs or something else? This is the bit of the FAQs that I'm trying to work out:

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Neil.

 

Edited January 22 by Porfuera

[J-Lewis]

Esso wagons back in stock.  About 40 of them available when I checked just now.

[gc4946]

19 hours ago, gc4946 said:

Hornby hasn't yet invoiced me for my three preordered Total TTAs, I'm hoping they'll arrive next week or so

This morning I received an email from Hornby asking me to update my card in order that the purchase be processed, which I've now done. 

Hornby's subsequent email stated my order "will shortly be prepared for despatch"

[Steamport Southport]

4 hours ago, Porfuera said:

 

Hi Jason,

 

So how do you do it? How did you change the payment instructions (credit card details or whatever) on an existing pre-order?

 

If I go My Account -> Orders the only link I can see on my pre-orders is a red button marked "Cancel" and I'm not about to press that! I can't see any other links on the pre-orders - unlike the 'Despatched' orders that have links to 'View Order' and 'Download Invoice (PDF)'.

 

I can't see any other useful links on that page - did Hornby send you an email with a link as in the FAQs or something else? This is the bit of the FAQs that I'm trying to work out:

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Neil.

 

 

 

On each individual order it had a section for "payment details" I just changed the card number.

 

I've not got any current orders so can't check properly, but it worked fine when I got the BR 2MT a few weeks ago.

 

 

Jason

 

[Porfuera]

29 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

On each individual order it had a section for "payment details" I just changed the card number.

 

I've not got any current orders so can't check properly, but it worked fine when I got the BR 2MT a few weeks ago.

 

Jason

 

Hi Jason,

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

That is interesting because I don't see "payment details" on any of my pre-orders - I only get a big red "Cancel" in the bottom left of each pre-order. That is both on my Android tablet and on my Windows desktop. All I get is this - it is the same for all of them:

 

 

Very strange!

 

Cheers, Neil.

 

Edited January 22 by Porfuera

[teletougos]

I drew my own conclusions about Hornby's website (and their general abilities in that area) a while ago.  Once my 66 has arrived, I'll close my account & stick to shops, shows and swapmeets. 

[J-Lewis]

7 minutes ago, teletougos said:

I drew my own conclusions about Hornby's website (and their general abilities in that area) a while ago.  Once my 66 has arrived, I'll close my account & stick to shops, shows and swapmeets. 

I’ve ordered a few different models and sets direct from Hornby, it’s worked smoothly for me.  What’s your bad experience with it?

[Porfuera]

1 hour ago, J-Lewis said:

I’ve ordered a few different models and sets direct from Hornby, it’s worked smoothly for me.  What’s your bad experience with it?

 

After placing my pre-order for TTAs last February my credit card was renewed (due to SWMBO leaving hers at the till at Tesco!) and so the original credit card details were no longer valid. So I knew that when Hornby were going to take payment for the TTAs it would be declined.

 

The FAQs (screenshot somewhere above) say that you can update individual orders with new payment details but I don't have any link on my pre-orders to allow me to do that.

 

Hornby have since sent me emails asking for a new payment method for my TTAs (also as per the FAQs), which has worked perfectly well - although seeing as that was the first time that this has happened to me I wasn't sure what the process would be or whether it would work, but everything was fine.

 

I'd prefer to be proactive and to change the payment details before having to be asked but their current method of emailing you if your original payment method is declined seems to work well enough.

 

I might investigate using Clearpay(? or whatever their other payment option is called) - I don't have any experience of that but if it is something like PayPal then that might avoid this situation in future when there are long lead times and there is a chance of credit cards getting changed in the interim.

 

Edited January 22 by Porfuera

[jonnyuk]

the tankers are back in stock (i had set a notification for when back in stock but got none), just happen to be browsing.

 

I've never had a bad experience with ordering on the Hornby site, nor there customer services, almost always straight through to someone. I also use clearpay (AS also use it so set an account up some time ago) or paypal

[Baz657]

I used to use Clearpay and it worked great. They recently stopped allowing Amex cards - the 1% Cashback was a small bonus - so I just use whatever portal is there. 
 

I had 3 TTAs on pre-order which are now being processed individually. Which means three lots of post & packing. I called CS and was told that as long as they all arrive together (the werehouse will endeavour to try to send them together), I can call and get my P&P costs refunded.

 

Once my club membership has expired I won’t be looking on their website for future purchases. At least all the other retailers I’ve dealt with are working in this century.

[britishcolumbian]

It's mindboggling that they can't use a shopping cart system to combine everything in to  a single shipment... other online retailers will even hold a shipment until everything you've ordered can go in a single package, if you want. But imagine three tank cars, each in its own shipment, to Canada each one is going to cost more in shipping than the car itself...

[Les1952]

2 hours ago, britishcolumbian said:

It's mindboggling that they can't use a shopping cart system to combine everything in to  a single shipment... other online retailers will even hold a shipment until everything you've ordered can go in a single package, if you want. But imagine three tank cars, each in its own shipment, to Canada each one is going to cost more in shipping than the car itself...

 

I suspect the answer to that is hidden in the depths of the contract they have with the website provider- how many years ago, what length of contract and what flexibility there is in that contract to add in a shopping cart.   Also most management teams aren't that computer literate so may not understand the need for it.

 

Think bad systems- think Horizon.  There are plenty of other sub standard systems out there that were bought because those purchasing at the time didn't have adequate IT knowledge- if any knowledge at all.....

 

Les

[ruggedpeak]

I think Hornby's online ordering system was put in by the previous management or the one previous to that, and I suspect the cost/hassle/risk of trying to replace isn't worth it at the moment. They are clearly selling stuff, but agree not being able to batch things is annoying.

 

However others have I believe have reported on here getting postage refunds via Customer Services when they have had items sent separately from the same order.

[J-Lewis]

6 hours ago, britishcolumbian said:

But imagine three tank cars, each in its own shipment, to Canada each one is going to cost more in shipping than the car itself...

Sounds like you need a friendly UK based helper to combine everything into one package for shipping.

[Porfuera]

It also seems a bit odd to me how the individual TTA liveries seem to keep coming into and then going out of stock. And I'm sure that this has happened previously as well.

 

I don't know anything about importing goods and distributing them - and I hope someone will be able to correct the bits I get wrong here - but I would have thought you would start off by finding out how many of each livery you have in your warehouse (and surely this is something you would know even before they arrive, although I guess there could be some losses/damage in transit) and then you work through your pre-orders from that point.

 

What it looks like to me is that they are in such a hurry to get these things out the door that they (maybe) go to one pallet, unwrap that and then deal with whatever orders they can from that one until it runs out and then move on to the next pallet and repeat the process until they run out of pallets. Or maybe the pallets arrive over several days - obviously I'm guessing and I don't even know how many pallets of these things they will receive.

 

It is just that it seems a bit disorganised to keep having these things going in and out of stock and maybe that it also connected to the reason why people receive their pre-orders of different liveries in different packages. I guess that part of the problem is also that each separate item has its own order number and orders that all go to the same address aren't co-ordinated together by the system but appear to be dealt with individually.

 

And I remember hearing that, in the early days of TT:120, Sam of Sam's Trains ordered track and reportedly each piece (or box or pieces?) came in a separate package - and at that time the track was already sitting on the warehouse waiting for Hornby to give the nod to send out the orders. That seems even more chaotic when the stock is already sitting there waiting.

 

Edited January 23 by Porfuera

[Porfuera]

26 minutes ago, J-Lewis said:

Sounds like you need a friendly UK based helper to combine everything into one package for shipping.

 

There are companies that do that. I don't know the details but I think I read about them on the imports/exports thread and maybe here as well. The orders are sent to them (even from different sources) and they hold them until you release them and they send them to you in a single shipment.

 

EDIT: Here's one example - probably of many on this thread:

 

 

Edited January 23 by Porfuera

[britishcolumbian]

3 hours ago, Porfuera said:

 

There are companies that do that. I don't know the details but I think I read about them on the imports/exports thread and maybe here as well. The orders are sent to them (even from different sources) and they hold them until you release them and they send them to you in a single shipment.

 

EDIT: Here's one example - probably of many on this thread:

 

 

Yeah I know of such companies in Japan, that I've used when buying Japanese trains from Japanese auction sites... I'll look around for something in the UK.