hobbysearch question, please

ok guys, so you know ive used hobbysearch in the past. theres one thing i cant work out yet.

i have 3 items on pre-order, all of which are now sold out. i want to buy a connector cable for the tomix track, which is in stock and able to be bought. however, it seems because the pre-orders are sold out, it wont let me proceed to checkout just with the cable.

is there a way to do this? i dont want to cancel the pre-orders, and the cable would be shipped seperately anyway as it says you cant ship in stock and pre-orders together [goodness knows why...]

if anyone can tell me how to do this, i would be most appreciative.

[Super]

Sorry I can't help Sun as I haven't come across that problem yet. What I am curious about is how can a "Pre-Order" be "Sold Out"? I was under the impression that they have "X" number of items to be in stock and that is the number of "Pre-Orders" they take so when the stock arrives the pre-orders are filled. Now I have seen it where they mark the items as "Sold Out" only after the pre-orders are filled.

Did you go though the check out process when you had the pre-orders in your basket? You have to do that to complete the pre-order process. Once you do that they sit in a sort of back-order state the idea being they will email you when they have them and you have to pay.

Then if you go buy something else the only thing in your basket will be the new item (i.e. the cable) as the other items are sitting in this pre-order queue. If however you added the pre-orders into your basket but didn't check out they probably are not actually pre-ordered if that makes sense?

You may still get away with it if you check out and then after buy the cable...

Of course if i got the above wrong in your instance Sun then forgive me, but its the only scenario that makes sense to me as I've got some pre-order items ordered and i've bought stuff since

i dont think i did go through the check out, nigels. it never prompted me to do that. they have been appearing on the left as pre-ordered ever since i did, so figured they were secure. i did that with all the previous pre-orders too. i think i only went through check out with one when i bought some track, but it wasnt listed as sold out.

and ive actually just had the computer crash, and when i went to hobbysearch i had to re-log in, and the 3 trains and the cable that were in my cart last night have vanished. so it looks like ive dipped out on those pre-orders.

i tried the check out again last night, and it kept bringing me back to that same page saying they were sold out.

just a tad peeved, but obviously cant do anything about it. just messaged them on facebook since i cant find an email address for them on the website. hopefully they can reapply them to my account some how.

You'll probably find that the stuff in your shopping cart is stored in a 'cookie', quite often if you crash and/or clear down temporary files you will lose your cookies which means the cart would then appear empty

Sorry, I work in IT so I can be a bit of a geek at times

so i cant get them back, then? dangit. fingers crossed they can help on their end, but its not looking good.

i dont mind geek talk, so long as its in words i can understand. lol.

[ripley802]

I can tell you I did a pre-order for the nemo and dory train as well as the Thomas station, and it went through the whole check out process. When you place the order there should be an option to ship as the items come in or to hold them all until the order is complete. Also there is an option to "re-combined" the orders. I would agre with Nigel, you likely had a temp cookie that was cleared when the browser closed. Hopefully they come back in stock for you. I was on the waiting list for the new Disney train, but found it on eBay so I am not too worried about that one anymore, but haven't heard anything more on it.

ok, thanks ripley. i must have missed that. it brought them up along the side as reserved/pre-ordered but no prompt to check out.

looks like i would missed them anyway, so all i can do now is wait.