Genuinely The Worst Experience I've Ever Had With Any Store
I don't normally write negative reviews, but my experience with Horizon Europe has been so bad, I feel like people need to be warned. I made an order for an SCX24 on the 3rd March and upon receiving it, the seal on the box was broken, there was fingerprints all over the model and the back left tail light was missing on the car. Which leads me to believe I was sent a return unit. I spoke with a representitive called Sven who I raised the issue with. After sending through evidence in the form of images my request to return it and be sent out a new one was granted. Up to that point, the experience had been really good. After tracking the return, seeing it had been sucessfully delivered back to their headquarters/ warehouse, and waiting about a week, I reached out to Sven and asked if there was an update on my return and when the new unit would be sent out. He replied stating it was awaiting evaluation which was a bit annoying but completely fair. 4 days had passed and there was still no update, so I emailed Sven once again asking if any progress had been made on processing my return unit and explained I was a bit dissatisfied with having to wait for such a long time without a difinitive update. Just note I did this in a kind and respectful manner. Sven replied once more, starting off the email with "please have more patience" and that he'd have an update soon. The absolute last thing someone who's been kept in the dark for a prolonged period of time wants to hear from a customer service representitive is to have more patience. As someone who's worked in customer service, if I said this to a customer I would have been in a significant amount of trouble, if not fired. At this point, I was upset with the service and how I'd been treated and just wanted a refund which I requested to Sven. Long story short, my request was ignored and about a week or so later, a new unit just showed up at my door unannounced. No communication from Sven (or anyone for that matter) about it being shipped. After unboxing it, the battery was once again not installed in the truck and came in a seperate sealed plastic package. So I'm 90% sure I was just sent out the exact same unit again but they fixed the tail light and cleaned off the fingerprints. While I was eventually going to keep it as I didn't want to deal with with the hassle of exchanging emails with Sven again, it turns out the unit was faulty anyway. Skipping ahead, I sent the last unit back on the 10th April, Horizon's warehouse received the return on the 29th April and it's now the 11th May and I still haven't received a refund. It's now been over 2 months since I originally ordered the truck. It's bad enough receiving what I still believe is a return unit twice, but to deal with an unpleasant and dismissive customer service representitive on top of extremely long wait periods is what lead me to writing a review. I genuinely encourage everyone to avoid Horizon Europe at all costs and look at alternative sites or even better, support your local hobby shop. EDIT: Regarding Horizon Hobby’s reply, they mentioned the battery on several occasions within said reply but didn’t bother to acknowledge the finger prints and missing tail light from the unit. I still don’t believe that’s a normal and acceptable experience and it still doesn’t excuse the rude customer service and terrible wait times for any request to be actioned.