"Hotz fields" Topic

Ordered 4 June, delivered today (UK) 16 June. Really nice – I went for all four field colours in the smaller scale and they look excellent. Just what I wanted to break up my cloths. Highly recomended, and Eric's communication was first rate.

Beautiful stuff and great service.

Glad you got what you paid for in a fantastic fast delivery.

Hotz is a very poorly run company. There are so many complaints about their customer service here on TMP that I am surprised anyone does business with them.

And yet some of us get amazing customer service. The last order I placed arrived in the UK in less than ten days.

And some of us get no response after repeated emails and no product after years of waiting…

The evidently vary variable service is puzzling but I'm in the UK and had two orders for fields turned around very quickly. Possibly I have just been lucky but can only speak from personal experience, which was positive.

However, one other thought occurs and I mention it for what it may be worth. There was once a UK manufacturer of a high quality wargames product who never answered the telephone and could be notoriously difficult to deal with if you managed to track him down. I gained the impression that those who pestered him went to the back of the queue and possibly stayed there for a long time. I wonder whether the delays some others have experienced when ordering from Hotz may have the same root cause, reflecting the vendor's informal way of dealing with customers perceived as "awkward".

Before anyone takes offence at that, we should also remember that a lot of the manufacturers we rely on for our toys are creative types without a background in business. Yes, some of them can be frustrating to deal with but they should not be judged by the same customer service standards as much larger organisations (although in my experience many large businesses give appalling levels of service) and the hobby as a whole would certainly be much poorer without them.

All that said, if money has actually changed hands, the customer is entitled to expect either urgent action to rectify the problem or at least a prompt refund. In other words, tolerance of creative types must have some limits.

I have seen the complaints, I've order twice and did a double check at the estimated ship date but despite that both mats came pretty quickly, so I've not had a problem with them.

I ordered several months ago and don't have my mats yet. I sent an email yesterday and got a prompt response. Apparently they moved buildings and that caused problems. I will update when my mats arrive.

I'm in the UK – I ordered some a couple of years ago and they arrived no later than I would have expected from a US based company – a few weeks, I think. They are very good.