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I'm not sure if anyone else took advantage of their Black Friday special, but I did. I ordered a 3 sprue sets(a Demolisher, and 2 Chimeras), and assortment of bits. That was done on the 28th(sprues), and 29th(bits) of November. I waited a week and a half and when I hadn't seen anything I got concerned. All of the other things I had ordered online that day had arrived, including some things from out of country, so something from within the US not being here was kind of a surprise. I went and checked my account and saw the orders were pending, not processing or shipped, just pending. Over a week later? I fired off an email inquiring what was going on, and without a reply I suddenly get a notice that they'd changed to processing. Another few days goes by and the bits finally change to "shipped" and I get a notice that I received a refund due to out of stock items being sold, okay great, progress, but it didn't list WHAT was out of stock. A few more days pass and the bits arrive, finally, and I'm able to figure out what was out of stock. Then I finally get a reply to the original email saying that they're waiting on something from their suppliers that they didn't have in stock. I pull up their allegedly fixed website and see that both of the sprue sets I ordered are in listed as having more than 1 in stock. On Monday of this week I finally get an email saying my order status changed again, I go look it up and they've shipped priority mail. It's Friday now, mail's come, and I haven't seen boo.

Long story short. Avoid the company. I've had 2 Warstore orders(3rd expected to be delivered Monday), and an order with Macpac on EBay all arrive in the meantime. This was my first dealing with the company, and my last. It's just not worth the hassle and the wait. I'd rather pay more for bits from Warstore, or compete with others for them from reputable sellers on Ebay.

Bitzbarn is amazing!

Or maybe I did post it in the right section. Weird... Thanks if someone moved it.

No, I've had issues with them in the past as well. A chimera I ordered for a tournament took a whole month to arrive, forcing me to change my list.

I just did a minor order with them and had no issues. It took maybe half a week longer than I expected, but it is the holiday season.

I have had several orders from them with no issues. I believe they had a data base meltdown according to their site and things still are not quite right on the website.

So it sounds like its 50/50 chance if you deal with them... I'd rather not play those odds I guess.

i have never had a problem with any orders from them. and Robert has always been very quick to respond to me and very friendly to boot. sorry to hear about the problems you've had. have you tried to contact them again, asking for answers? it couldn't hurt.

All the problems I had got resolved eventually... but it was a major hassle. Macpac (an ebayer) has always been really good for US buyers, and that is my usual retailer, but he didn't have any chimeras at the time so I thought I would try the Bitzbarn. I was not happy when I planned on 2-3 weeks for shipping and it took 5 in reality. That is just an absurd amount of time.

If you are thinking "Shipping has nothing to do with the retailer" then you are totally right. The problem I had with it was that he marked it as "Shipped" on my account page a full week before the postage stamp indicated it was actually shipped. The weeks preceding that were marked only by the mysterious "Pending" status, which is funny because I used a paypal account that both a credit card and bank account are linked to.


I'm not hating on the guy, I had a previous order from him arrive with no hiccups. I am just saying that he is not the most consistent retailer out there, and to beware if you are on a time crunch of any kind.

alarmingrick wrote:i have never had a problem with any orders from them. and Robert has always been very quick to respond to me and very friendly to boot. sorry to hear about the problems you've had. have you tried to contact them again, asking for answers? it couldn't hurt.

I'm giving it til Monday to see if it arrives. If after that I have nothing, I'll email once more to give them a chance to clear it up. It took them 4 days to get back to me just to tell me they were waiting on their supplier, so I imagine I won't see a reply til after Christmas at the earliest. It's been a terrible experience overall in dealing with them, and like I said, I wouldn't do it again. Three weeks plus, is a very bad turnaround, and I honestly don't buy that the holiday season has any effect on them getting their orders shipped in a timely manner. The "priority" shipping option that they supposedly used according to the latest entry on my order summary is quick, even at this time of the year. I dispatched something last Thursday and it was at it's destination on Monday. This kind of service really does make me wish I'd just spent the extra 6 bucks or so and went with Thewarstore.

Derek,

This is Robert The Owner of Bitzbarn. I am sorry that you had a Bad experience. You are correct that 3 weeks is bad turnaround. There is no excuse. But let me try to explain.
We have had the perfect storm of issues in the past couple weeks. Between and protracted fight with Paypal to a complete lose of the database during the holiday seasons and then to top it off packages getting returned for insufficient shipping and then having to repackage and buy new postage.

Pending is the status that all order go into once they have been paid for when they go to processing we are pulling the order to get ready to ship. Then we change the status to Dispatched.

That has NOTHING to do with your situation. You are right and there is no excuse for long shipping and I have been working hard to restore the product selection and deal with orders sometimes some of the orders have slipped. I am sorry and I will refund any shipping charges you charged and Please let me know if I can do anything to try to make it right. Please feel free to PM me or discuss here. Let me know your order number or name so I can track down your payment and refund those charges.

Thank you

Robert

P.S. Fox Phoenix the same applies to you.

Thanks

Kudos for stepping up and stating the issues Bitzbarn.

TheBitzBarn wrote:Derek,

This is Robert The Owner of Bitzbarn. I am sorry that you had a Bad experience. You are correct that 3 weeks is bad turnaround. There is no excuse. But let me try to explain.
We have had the perfect storm of issues in the past couple weeks. Between and protracted fight with Paypal to a complete lose of the database during the holiday seasons and then to top it off packages getting returned for insufficient shipping and then having to repackage and buy new postage.

Thank you

Robert

P.S. Fox Phoenix the same applies to you.

Thanks

Thank you for the reply. As an update things finally arrived today. The postman did charge me the 87 cents for insufficient shipping. I'll be sending you a PM with details, I appreciate you stepping up and owning the problems, as well as the apology.

Derek

MeanGreenStompa wrote:Kudos for stepping up and stating the issues Bitzbarn.

Seconded. I appreciate that you are trying, and I have no hard feelings. In fact, when I go looking for bits you are still my #1 supplier. Thanks for taking the time to reply to us personally!