Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I don't know about anybody else, but I am starting to get exasperated. 5 emails, 4 days, and I have yet to make any sort of headway with this "Nate" who supposedly owns it. I live in alaska, and he expects me to call (long distance mind you) to get a simple answer to a simple question about my order. It has been 3 business days since I have placed an order, and it is still marked "pending", despite paypal having already extracted the money from my bank account (and furthermore, I am a verified user).

Anybody having experience with this guy's poor customer service?

Wish I could help but I havent ordered from them before. Mainly due to the fact everytime I go to try and use them everything is listed as out of stock.

His customer service is just as you've rated it....poor.

I've ordered from BitKingdom about 3 times over the past few years, with my last order being my 'last' order. I've had issues with all of my orders, ranging from LONG wait times and no communication unless I initiate it.

Sadly, you do have to call to get anything taken care of. Email just won't work. I say this from experience. Even when you call, it's possible that the answer given may be different from the truth.

His prices are good, and can easily lure you away from some of the larger online stores. The extra price savings, for me, doesn't equal the amount of time and frustration it takes to receive your product. He does deliver, I don't want people to assume that he screws customers over. It can easily take 3-4 weeks for your order to arrive though, which is far too long for an online seller in my opinion.

You really hit it on the head, Arander. I was hoping it was just a one-time deal, but it looks like it isn't. This was my first order, and likely my last from Bit Kingdom. I wish Dakka would only accept advertisements from companies that are known to have good customer service, but I realize that is just not possible (or plausible from Dakka's view).

I would ask him what he has in stock vs what you're ordering. I also wouldn't go off of what's available from the website postings.

If he's got it in, he get's it out.

Uriels_Flame wrote:I would ask him what he has in stock vs what you're ordering. I also wouldn't go off of what's available from the website postings.

If he's got it in, he get's it out.

The problem with this, at least from my experience, is that he stocks a very small amount of inventory. Even ordering basic marine items that I would assume every store would stock (tac boxes, scout boxes, devestator boxes) he stated the need to order them direct from GW. Now I know order from GW don't take that long. From what I've been told, an order placed on Monday will almost always arrive the next Thursday-Friday of that same week. So why does an order through BitKingdom take 3 weeks to arrive at his store, and another week to ship out? You tell me.

FoxPhoenix I hope your order isn't time-sensitive. If you need it by a specific date that isn't too far off, I'd consider getting a refund and ordering someplace else. The fact that he's long-distance for you is a problem, but does a cell-phone with nationwide long distance work from Alaska to the lower 48? If so, find someone with a phone and call him all you like. Also, I think he has a skype account/phone number that may allow you to call him through Skype for free (or possibly cheaper than paying long-distance charges) I'd look into that.

While I can't comment on the service of the vendor, anyone griping about long distance charges in these days of cell phones and magic jacks is living under a rock.

I'm not sure what the deal is with cell phones up there, but a magic jack works anywhere with a broadband internet connection, and it costs a whopping $20 a year.

Also, and again I know little to nothing of Alaska's economic state, Wal Mart launched a new line of no contract phones with rates that no major brand can compete with. $45 unlimited call text and internet or $30 1000 call 1000 text and 16Mb internet. Verizons unlimited plan is $70 and requires contracting for 2 years.

So please don't gripe about long distance charges when there ARE methods of dirt cheap phone service out there.

But not up here, so kindly, please don't post things like that when you have no idea of what you are talking about.

I'm saying I shouldn't have to pay 15 cents per minute to call a vendor to check up on him. He should be reliable without me having to put a fire to his feet.

I did business with Bitkingdom once. I received my stuff reasonably quick, but that was early, when he just opened.

I won't order anything from there via I have details that make me nervous.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:But not up here, so kindly, please don't post things like that when you have no idea of what you are talking about.

I'm saying I shouldn't have to pay 15 cents per minute to call a vendor to check up on him. He should be reliable without me having to put a fire to his feet.

All of Alaska doesn't have broadband internet or a Wal Mart? If you have a phone line it stands to reason that you can likely get dsl.

And if you are posting here from a dial up connection then I feel for you, and will "rib" you no longer. No one should have to endure 56k.

EDIT: Anchorage has 2 Wal Marts, so a cheap cell phone plan is well within grasp.

Why should I pay for that because of one lousy vendor? I have made do without one for 12 years of living up here. It is utter stupidity to buy a 40 dollar phone to use long distance on, when I have a phone that works locally just fine, just to talk to one vendor who isn't doing his job.

Furthermore, Anchorage is a 3 hour drive from my house. There is a wal-mart an hour's drive away, but that is a further 20 bucks in gas that I would be spending, making it even more stupid to use that as a solution.

Point is: Internet vendor should reply to his emails. Otherwise, he shouldn't be an internet vendor.

Whilst I have not dealt with that vendor, I've dealt with

Bitzbox
Bits and Kits
Model Bits

and all three have proven very good.

And this is why Neal continues to do good business in the US.

Yup, guess I learned my lesson, huh? Warstore FTW.

I place an obscene amount of bits orders and I've ordered from most. Bit Kingdom is BY FAR the worst when it comes to time. Nate is a nice enough guy and I've been on the phone with him an ungodly amount over the past few months just for one order, but it really is NOT acceptable.

I placed an order in September, and I did not receive all of it until a week into January. It postponed my project by quite a lot and ceased my business with him. Free shipping and extremely good prices are what stopped me from freaking out at him, five months is ridiculous to wait to complete something like that.

War Store is always fast and reliable, though their bits prices have increased to an uncomfortable level within the past couple months. I still order from them though as no one beats Neal in speed. If you need something fast, you pay the extra 10-20% and get it in a timely manner. The guy has massive stock.

Just ordered with Bitz Barn, Robert was very good about not selling me stuff he wouldn't be able to get within a 2 week period (I may have tried ordering 30 AoBR terminators ). He even got me a sprue he didn't have listed on his site that I needed to patch up the top of my landraider. Nothing but praise.

Matt from Model Bits in the UK has the best prices right now, and considering how well the CAD is and how bad the GBP is, it's quite awesome. I placed a fairly large bits order but I was informed that parts of it would take three weeks to get in and I found that acceptable. I think he sent out half of it last week and it's going to be another week and a half until the rest comes in but he's very friendly and plays email tag very well. Probably sent a good 20 emails and everything has been answered quickly.

Most likely going to order all my boxes from Bitz Barn now, my bits from Model Bits, and anything I need within a week and a half from Neal at the Warstore.

I live in Canada if that makes any difference for you guys.

I finally had to call him today (Up to 6 emails that went unanswered) and told him to refund me. He "couldn't understand what went wrong to make me cancel my entire order" but he was "very sorry". (This was after he told me he no longer had the armytransport bag I ordered, and he wouldn't be able to get another until next week.)

He claims that it will take until friday to refund me. I think that is hilarious, it should take mere minutes, but let's see if he holds to his word this time. I'm going to be pretty livid if I have to call him a SECOND time via long distance to get this straightened out. This sets me back even farther, which is irritating.

Bottom line: Bits Kingdom = bad vendor. Don't order from him, because apparently he is too busy with his "day job" of selling insurance to have good customer service.

JohnHwangDD wrote:And this is why Neal continues to do good business in the US.

Aaarrggg! His is my favorite Bitz service, with EXCELLENT customer service, so it infuriates me that he's not going to bitz out of the new Ravener box that has some parts I want. Not to mention he's no longer going to bitz out the Carnifex anymore since he can't get it in the battle box now.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:I finally had to call him today (Up to 6 emails that went unanswered) and told him to refund me. He "couldn't understand what went wrong to make me cancel my entire order" but he was "very sorry". (This was after he told me he no longer had the armytransport bag I ordered, and he wouldn't be able to get another until next week.)

He claims that it will take until friday to refund me. I think that is hilarious, it should take mere minutes, but let's see if he holds to his word this time. I'm going to be pretty livid if I have to call him a SECOND time via long distance to get this straightened out. This sets me back even farther, which is irritating.

Bottom line: Bits Kingdom = bad vendor. Don't order from him, because apparently he is too busy with his "day job" of selling insurance to have good customer service.

I probably should have done the same thing, but I had received half the order at one point and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Oh well, the only thing I can do about it now is inform people of my 5 month order so they know what they're getting themselves into.

I have no relavent information about the vendor, but I do know that Paypal removes funds from your account as soon as you set up an order, regardless of if its pending or on backorder, or whatever the situation is.
If after about 30 days the vendor cannot prove that they have shipped out the package Paypal should refund you the price. This refund will frequently not be put back in your bank or on your credit card, but rather be stuck in your paypal account.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:

He claims that it will take until friday to refund me. I think that is hilarious, it should take mere minutes, but let's see if he holds to his word this time. I'm going to be pretty livid if I have to call him a SECOND time via long distance to get this straightened out. This sets me back even farther, which is irritating.

.

This was by far my biggest problem. I had to get him to refund me the price of a dreadnought that he couldn't deliver in a reasonable timeframe (Yes, a regular, new in the box space marine dreadnought)

Why can't I get an immediate refund? I don't understand it. When I asked about it, he said some stuff about cash flow and other mumbo jumbo. How a business that has been around for a couple of years now, doesn't have the cash on hand to offer simple refunds when required, is honestly beyond me.

So should I believe him when he says he'll have my refund by Friday? My current plan is to launch a Paypal dispute if I don't see something Friday morning in my Inbox. Should I be preemptive and open the dispute immediately, so that he is encouraged to do it quicker?

I'm a person of vast reserves of patience. If he says he'll have it by Friday, I'd open the dispute the following Monday.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:So should I believe him when he says he'll have my refund by Friday? My current plan is to launch a Paypal dispute if I don't see something Friday morning in my Inbox. Should I be preemptive and open the dispute immediately, so that he is encouraged to do it quicker?

I'd at least give him until mid-day friday, after that, definitely open up a Paypal dispute.

Paypal disputes can take a long time, especially if the other party doesn't respond, because they give them 3 weeks or something. When someone tried to scam me on ebay, I finally got my money back 2 months later.

So, if he's said Friday, I'd take Aduro's advice and wait until Monday.

Paypal is exceedingly slow at reversals. It is a shame that you had a bad experience with a vendor.

Thank goodness for this thread. I know I'm not contributing but I was thinking of buying some bitz off them for my necromunda gang. Fortunately I didn't purchase.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I hate to think how long it would have taken to ship to China!

I ordered once from him for around $60USD in bits.

After about a week after the order went through, I sent him a email asking about status as his web store does not issue any order confirmations, nor any tracking numbers. A few days later I got a reply. Nothing had shipped yet, and he appologized for the lack of confirmation. He said he'd throw in a random sprue for my trouble. While 2 days to reply isn't great, it wasn't terrible either. YMMV.

Since I live in Canada, things shipped here from the US normally take WEEKS to get delivered as opposed to days shipped within the US as they have a tendency to spend a week at customs, and then a further week at the postal distribution outlet and then possibly another half a week to get shipped to my backwoods part of the country - as such, I was already braced for a long delivery time, so a week of tardyness on Bit Kingdom's part didn't even register on my radar.

I did get my package 2 weeks later, and it contained an extra 1/2 squad of tactical marines.

Just weighing in here - my 3 experiences with BK were very good (and very cheap).

During that ENTIRE YEAR (supposed to be one month) around when he moved his store his service lost a lot of legitimacy because he mismanaged the transition, but I'd go back at this point.

I did finally get my refund today, after calling him again to remind him about it. I was just going to open the dispute and let paypal deal with it, but I decided to be a nice guy and try to talk to him first.

He did the refund while I was on the phone with him. It does beg the question why he couldn't have done it 2 days ago when I called, and would he have given me the refund if I didn't call to remind him? Just food for thought.

He doesn't seem like a bad guy, I just think that he needs to provide a bit better customer service if he is going to try to run a legitimate company.

So... he still hasn't learned how to run a business.

Long story short...
I ordered some stuff
Took forever to get it.
I Had to call several times.
He sent my stuff to me with a BUNCH of extra sprues.

I did get a great deal, however I had to work way too much for it. Not sure how he makes any money.

GG