I am sorry to hear that there has been some bad experience with us.
I am Colin, the third member of PodiumRC (the web master and accountant, so no one really sees me!). I have to thank ConceptRacing, as what is said there is very true. I do not know the set up of ConceptRacing, but we are lucky to have 3 of us to spread the long days between. Again like ConceptRacing the running of an RC shop does not pay all of us.
I will explain the background as to how we came about, which will give you an idea as to how we operate.
Anyone who knows Dave will be aware that he has been in to RC cars for a fair while. While racing the Xray T1 he was frustrated by such a good car having a lack of spares. As spares were so bad he thought he could do better and came to me to ask about a web site. We bought Xray parts through an RC Shop at a discount and sold them at RRP. This worked and we had a good stock of Xray parts, until the shop we were dealing with ceased trading. This left us in a where we had to make a decision between opening our own shop or finding another RC shop to supply us (Centrepoint the Xray distributors at the time would not supply on line only shops). There was no way we could sustain a shop with just Xray, so had to find a way of breaking in to a crowded online market to support the shop. We looked at the competition and saw they were they were selling what they had in stock, and so saw a gap.
We have tried to be as upfront as possible and say that we do not hold everything in stock. We do hold a large amount of Xray, but also Hudy, Losi, AE, Hong Nor, Parkzone, Hangar 9 and more. This has been built up for the track side sales and what has been popular on line. The listing of everything has the benefit that should someone be looking for an obscure part, they stand a chance of finding at least a price from ourselves. We have been commented on for being the only web site to have some items listed. There are also a great number of items that we have only ever shipped one, making it prohibitive from keeping these items in stock.
The downside is, we are very much at the mercy of our suppliers for these items not held in stock and also current products. Distributors give us lists of current products, that can have items that are not yet in production, or have gone out of production some time ago, but the distributor still has them listed. Distributors are a business and look at their stocks with a ‘just in time’ supply idea. Also they are not going to sit with stock that they are very unlikely to sell much of.
I will look at what has been said here, and I will be looking at anything that specifies delivery time scales.
The Aug 2007 upgrade has been done. We do have a system for showing what is in stock. This is only available to members logged in to our Xray web site. We are looking at it for the PodiumRC web site and have it in place ready to be switched on. The problem is, trackside sales make a mess of our stock control. The stock levels are out of date after every weekend racing and the web site shows items in stock when they are not. Think how much more disappointed you would be if we said we had items in stock, that we did not. The only current solution we have is to give up selling track side, which will leave a lot of disappointed people on a Sunday. We will continue to work on this, as I do see it as a major benefit to our customers and would see an increase in our sales, IF IT WAS RELIABLE.
We do not take money from people who pay by credit/debit card until we are ready to ship. We do not have any choice with PayPal, so will make a refund without any quibble if we have not shipped (provided you have given us a few days to ship).
I will take part of the hit for communications problems. Having received nearly 2000 e-mails per day, mostly spam, we have been trying to find a good spam filter. This has had mixed results and has been the cause of some e-mails getting deleted as spam by the filters. Lisa also prioritises sending parts out and will attend to e-mails when she can.
The ordering of items that are out of stock with the distributor (like CML, HH, Ripmax, HPI, RCDisco, etc.) does cause a dilemma. Bear in mind if nobody orders the part from the distributor, then the distributor will not order the part from the manufacturer. So if you sit waiting to find when the distributor will get an obscure part in, then you are going to be waiting until someone else orders the part. If it is a popular part, then it will just be a case of waiting. The only way round rare or obscure parts, is to look for someone who does have it in stock, or bite the bullet and order it with the expectation of waiting. I know it sounds hard and I would like to offer a better solution, but there is no other option.
We do not currently stock KYOSHO and have not for a long time. We do have Kyosho hot ups from other manufacturers. So take this as a case of mistaken identity, unless proven wrong. We do intend to start Kyosho, orion and sirio in order to sell sirio track side.
I do hope that we are seen as genuine. Dave is an out an out racer and a very active member of our local RC Club.
PodiumRC was set up as Dave was frustrated with the supply of parts and thought we could do better. Something which I do believe we have been very successful with Xray and have made great steps forward with other manufacturers. This does not mean we have not been disappointed with our performance else where.
As it has been pointed out by other shop owners and reps, this is not an easy business, but still it has to be run as a business.
Comments are welcome if there are other areas that you feel we could improve. We will be continuing to work on those areas mentioned above.
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