"Hotz Mats - Anyone else having problems" Topic

Hi

I purchased 2 Gladiator arena and 1 Trench line terrain mats. I paid for them on 21 December 2011, received a refund for overpaid postage on 23 December and since then nothing. I sent 2 emails in February neither of which were acknowledged or answered. Has anyone heard of problems or have things gone kaput and I am out my hard earned dollars.

Paul

This kind of thread pops up every couple of weeks. It always ends with the original customer posting that he has gotten his ordered mats after a couple of weeks.

Rest assured that Hotz will deliver, but it might take a while.

Seems this is the norm for Hotz, you will most likely never get a reply, and in another month or so your mat will show up.

Give him time. Your mat will arrive and it will be of great quality. I've got 5 Mats and they are worth the wait.

I have tried to order some custom maps and am not getting my emails answered. So I am thinking of calling by phone.

Anyone else have this experience?

Is it better to just stick to the standard product?

Thanks
Mike

I just orderd a enhanced space mat 2 weeks ago he said to wait 3 weeks though last time I ordered a mat it took 2months

I ordered a Mars Red mat a week or two ago; Eric was very responsive at that point. He gave a 5 week lead time, which is fine by me, and I won't be getting worried until then.

Cheers,
Colin

Same experience as Colin, I ordered a couple from Eric (really looking forward to that earth brown with scatter rock pattern!) at the end of this January and he also mentioned a 5 week wait time. Prior to that my correspondence with him has been smooth and I never had to wait more than 24 hours for a reply.

I have tried to order some custom maps and am not getting my emails answered. So I am thinking of calling by phone.

Anyone else have this experience?

Is it better to just stick to the standard product?

I had the same experience, a total lack of response multiple times (email & phone) for custom product over a few months. I settled for an in-stock product that was not exactly right. After 3 months and no communication from Hotz Mats, it arrived.

I first contacted Hotz 5 months before the convention. It arrived after the convention. I am comfortable with long turn around times but not lack of communication.

I don't patronize businesses with this level of service and plan to hand craft future gaming mats like we did in the 1980's.

A few years ago I tried to order 3 mats from him. After six months of waiting and a few emails he refunded my money and then said that since I had to wait so long that he was going to send me them anyways. Well it has been a few years and I still have not received anything. So I took my money and bought some mats at theterrainguy.com . Within a week or two I had received my order and had numerous emails as to shipping and tracking of my order. I have always have had good service from The Terrain Guy. It still amazes me that people will still try to order from Hotz Matz as there seems like there is still issues with his service and he has not tried to rectify any of these issues.

My 2 cents: I have been thinking about ordering some Hotz mats recently. This post really has made me re-think that. I do not understand, nor have patience for businesses, no matter how small they may be, that are uncommunicative and have inordinately long turn around times.

I have made two orders – one before Christmas & the other this month – recently and both mats arrived a week after a wpayment. Really impressed with the shipping time from the US to the UK.

Admittedly, I did order his bargain mats, so they were ready to be shipped.

It's definitely hit or miss. I ordered two 6x4 mats a few years ago and they arrived one or two weeks later (I'm in Germany, btw.).

He has some of the worst service I've seen, yet people still buy from him.
Like Black Tree Design.

Except that Black Tree has changed a lot, apparently, but you keep posting bad comments about them. Can a business not fix past mistakes?

For myself I had a fairly long wait for my Hotz mats, but he was in communication with me throughout. One reason people tend to put up with his slow service is that the mats are better than any others out there. And they are luxuries, not essentials like food or water-- I know we all want what we want NOW, but some perspective would be nice…

My experience was similar to many above. I had good communication from him when ordering, but after payment was sent, he stopped replying in a timely manner. The mat took a little bit longer than expected, but I was prepared for the delivery time, so that wasn't really an issue.

Unfortunately, I don't think the quality of the final product lives up to the hype.

I have every mat I ordered from Eric Hotz. I count 10 mats. This includes the first one which I got after paypal refunded my money because the product hadn't shown up. He's slow, but worth the wait.

"Unfortunately, I don't think the quality of the final product lives up to the hype."

Absolutely. When I received my mat I was pretty disappointed that there wasn't much to it; It was a nice piece of felt, but nothing I couldn't have bought from the fabric store for a third of the price.

"Except that Black Tree has changed a lot, apparently, but you keep posting bad comments about them. Can a business not fix past mistakes?"

A business can fix past mistakes. Uniformology, for example, seems to have overcome the hurdle of poor business practices in the past.
You don't make up for 10 years of taking peoples' money and not sending them products in the span of 3 or 4 positive posts.
It's still largely a gamble and people who have been waiting, in some cases for years, have not posted that the company has made it up to them. That's where it would really count, wouldn't it?

Well

That received more responses than I expected but thanks to everyone.

However while it may be possible I will say in 2 weeks time that I received my mats that would make 10 to 11 weeks from the purchase date whereas his website says 5 weeks. A little bit of false advertising really and something that other potential purchasers should be aware.

I am sure I will be happy with the product as I have seen a number of his mats being used by gamers here (the whole reason I ordered).

Thank you
Paul

I ordered a set of the new roads in Jan. I emailed last week to inquire about it and sent me an email that night explaining that they are on the way.

Joe

I ordered a set of rivers in early Jan. Hopefully they are on their way too.