Curious about the vendor Hogtrainz

[elfan]

  I opened an account and ordered from Hogtrainz for the first time on Friday, paying with PayPal. I received an auto generated email confirming my order and payment. As of this afternoon, not receiving a shipping notice, I decided to call to add a few items to my order. The call went to voicemail and the mailbox was full. The full mailbox raises a yellow flag. It could any number of issues, but since I’ve never done business with them, I don’t have any good experiences to fall back on. I also sent an email, in which they proclaim on their webpage will be answered in 24 hrs…hoping so. I checked my order status on their website and it just says “shipping pending”.  I’ve seen them mentioned now and then on various message boards, I’m curious about their reliability. I’m not so much concerned about a monetary issue as I used PayPal, but if my order might not get filled I’d like to move on to another vendor as in this day of limited run models, sometimes waiting means missing.

     Tom. 

[jonklein611]

They respond to emails pretty quickly. I've had decent luck with them but some Rapido preorders have not been fulfilled (Hogtrainz blamed their distributor). If they have something in stock, it ships in a reasonable amount of time.

Try reaching Paul directly @ hogtrainz1 A T gmail (I won't give a full link to prevent spambot scrubbing).

[wmcbride]

I have used them for years without any problems.

I placed an order about 7 days ago and nothing heard. Then I received an email yesterday from Paul (the owner) apologizing for the delay. He said they were training a new employee and that had delayed things. I took that to mean mistakes were made. I received my shipping notice about 4 hours after the apology email.

Bill McBride

[drsvelte]

I have used Hogtrainz more than a few times with satisfactory results.  I don't think there are any problems with reliability but communication is not his forte.  The website used to be terrible, but it seems to have been upgraded.

[oldmuley]

I've ordered from them on a few occasions and have never had an issue.

[ed]

I've ordered from them from time to time. No issues.

[valenciajim]

Over the past decade or so, I purchased thousands of dollars of merchandise from Paul. (Well over $5,000 since 2014 which is how far back my Quicken file goes--I purchased much more before that.) For many years, he was my go to online store. Paul always returned my emails, but not always in 24 hours. I was generally pleased with his service over those many years.

However, I experienced unacceptable service when I ordered the Rapido Ski Train locomotives and passenger cars. I never received some of the items I ordered. When I asked about it, Paul blamed Rapido claiming that not all of the merchandise he ordered was shipped to him. He told me that he had some of the items available on his eBay shop and I was welcome to purchase those on eBay at a higher price. In other words, he refused to honor my order because he could sell them on eBay for a higher price. I then sent him a copy of the email confirming my order. Paul responded by saying that that he thought I cancelled my order-which, of course, I never did. When I asked him to send me a copy of my email cancelling the order, he never responded. I really got the feeling that he was peeing on my leg and telling me that it was raining.

At about the same time, I also ordered an Atlas HO Scale item. when the item was available, he shipped the item in N scale by mistake. (He admitted his mistake and said he was sorry.) He told me to return it and he would issue a credit for the return postage. I had to email a receipt for the postage to get the refund. I had to obtain a new package since it could not be returned in the original package. I asked Paul to reimburse me for my cost of the package. He ignored my requests. The N scale item was the same price as the HO item, and although my credit card had been charged for the N scale item, it took weeks for the HO Scale item to arrive. Ostensibly this was because Atlas delivered the N scale item before the HO scale item.

I was a satisfied customer for several years but was very disappointed in how he treated me in those two instances which happened at about the same time, so I am now a former customer. There are plenty of other online merchants with comparable pricing and better service.

I wish you better success in dealing with him than I had.

[riogrande]

That would really tick me off if he had items to sell on Ebay that should have been part of an order that was shorted. That there would have made me part ways. He had the merchandise but refused to sell it to you at the price listed that you ordered at.