AikiWeb Aikido Forums - Problems with the new Bujin....

Is anyone else having problems with the new Bujin distributor? I have ordered from Aikido24 3 times and 2 of the experiences have been a bit fraught. The first two times were around Christmas last year. I ordered a Bujin tanto as a gift for my gf. It showed up quickly and fine.

Next, my gf ordered a hakama for me in very early November, and the website showed a 6 week lag time. Pretty reasonable. But she got NO communication from them for weeks. No order confirmation, and no response to 3-4 emails. I emailed Aikido24 about her order and got a response, more than a month after the order was placed. They were very apologetic, said that hakamas were really more like 8-10 weeks out from the order date, and since her order would miss Christmas, they'd throw in free name embroidery. Nice of them, but better, faster communication would have been more appropriate. 10 weeks went by (mid January), no hakama. It arrived on Valentines Day. Fourteen weeks. Long time, when the website claimed six weeks. We can cover the differences between the new Bujin hak and the old one in another thread....

Now, I ordered a new gi for gf. Everything was listed as in stock (although the gi top showed only 2 on hand) and ready to go. I placed my order on August 14. I got an email confirmation for the order that day. Things are looking up. Good. Dont need the gi soon, but I'd love for her to have it when Takeguchi sensei is in town mid-September. On the 16th, I get a form email (with automatic fields that dont fill in correctly, apparently) saying "Dear ###FIRSTNAME###"... some boilerplate purchase info and that I would shortly get another email with tracking info. Stoked....

....Nada. On the 27th, eleven days after I was told to look for an email, almost 2 weeks after I placed my order, I emailed the company asking about the order, can I get a shipping update, a tracking number, something? To Aikido24's credit, I got an email reply the next day (today, actually), complete with tracking number. Alright. So I go check out the tracking number. Two weeks after placing an order for items listed as in stock, Fedex shows that they have a shipment initiated, but they haven't got the package in hand. Now, when I refresh, they do have the package. Great. Here's hoping Fedex is its usual excellent self.

So, the upshot seems to be that Aikido24's communication and actual shipment of products is slow, slow, slow, and is driven primarily by customers prompting the company to fill their orders. I get that hakamas are going to be slow, semi-custom made, etc., etc., but I think 2 weeks is a long time to turn around an order for off the shelf goods. And it is suspicious to me that the ball only really started rolling after I waited almost two weeks to give it a kick. If there is a slow down, communicate. If there's a problem in the stock, communicate. If you say you'll send tracking information, communicate.....