It took me a while to sort through old memories:
Tony Engelhart is the man behind AEF Designs
but I think AEF Designs closed down some years ago.
Interesting subjects but the resin casting and the instructions were not quite up to average. Rather the opposite in some cases ....


I have seen a lot worse though: I-Corps Models.
I managed to buy his AVLB conversion and when I unpacked it one of the bridge beams had a lump of resin, as big as two peanuts obliterating some details. When I had unpacked the whole kit I found the cause of the resin blob: A large piece of the silicone mould was stuck straight through another of the beams .....
/ Robin

I have dealt with Internethobbies and can truthfully say they are felons. Not sure if they’ve been convicted, but slander is my game.

These yahoos need to be run out of business ASAP. Only the credit card companies appear to have sway with them. They lie, cheat and steal. Genuinely bad people.

They will take your order, charge your card and then hold the order for as long as possible to make the charge irreversible. Then they might ship a partial order to avoid outright mail fraud. They are scum, and it hurts me to slander scum like that.

Avoid them like the plague.

If you see one of the on the street in PA. Kick them in the jimmies for me. I’ll give you a nice kit for free.

Kip

Thank you for the notice! I've also had terrible experiences with Internethobbies way back - things were always back-ordered and customer service was almost non-existent. Yes, definitely stick to the reputable dealers like lotsofmodels, spruebrothers, hlj, hobbysearch Japan, hobbyeasy, luckymodel, etc. Even Evil bay is better.

On the subject of site notice, watch out for this one. Got me for around 20 bucks. Ordered some Friulmodel items. Ordered in June(2018) and so far no reply and no delivery

https://www.crepshop.top/models-kits-c-1_118/

Cheers and beware

I think they left the second "e" out of their name.

That looks like a scam website. There was another scammer website that I found that darn nearly tempted me into buying a cyber hobby vorpanzer.

https://www.opencomely.top/dragon-wwii-135-pzkpfw-iv-ausfd-vorpanzer-cyberhobby-6512-model-kit-new-p-11036.html

Your are right - it does look very familiar. If I get the time, I might dig up who is hosting their website and see if it points to the same (or similar) principles. When I poked around at the creps site that got me, it pointed to someone/thing in China that was using a VPN/Web hosting site(not sure they are from China), I guess to help get past the great (fire)wall of China or hide their tracks.

Cheers

Lol. The store of my city, Montreal (btw, I believe that other Montrealers here would agree), has their website look just like those scam sites. They never update a damn thing about their stock, for many years, the only thing they change on their site is the schedule. One of the employer even vaguely affirmed that the online purchasing service is outdated and doesn't work properly therefore recommend to contract them or go to the store itself.

At least, they still answer phone and emails..

Once upon a nightmare there were only AEF and Verlinden doing resin aftermarket. I usually got his stuff at the LHS so I could inspect it.

And someone mentioned Ridgefield Hobbies. I've been dealing with them at shows and online for decades. At shows it's great because you can look at everything that's in an open box. Most of my vintage aircraft models are from there. But sealed resales from collections? Trust no one. I want to see it. Very least to see if the decals are salvageable.

All those years in retail. I know the shenanigans that go on.

I did mail order trades and sales starting in high school nearly 40 years ago when it was all letters in magazines. Has it really been that long? So much easier to be cheated in this age of email and Ebay.

Actually, I wasn't aware that items showed an in stock/out of stock status until you mentioned it, since none of the ten items I'd ordered had any indication one way or another. Then I discovered by examining some items that he'd be very likely to have that he lists stuff as "In Stock" if it's in stock, but lists no stock status otherwise.

So I guess he's waiting on all of my items to come in. That's not a problem for me, as he's one of only two places I've found that stock a large range of Komkplkt Zip stuff, and the other vendor didn't even list a set I needed to order two of. I'd ordinarily have gone with the other vendor (Hobbyeasy) as they've never let me down, but I needed those two sets, and it made sense to pay just one shipping fee.

I've no problems waiting for out of stock - the indications I've gotten from others in responses are that he's a good vendor, and so I'm fine with waiting - fortunately, since it's all the one brand, I've presumably just got to wait for a single restock.

I do think it might be better if he actively listed items as in stock/not in stock, rather than the current "it's not in stock unless it's says it is" system. I might have noticed if I'd ordered items from a number of manufacturers, but everything had the same status, so I wasn't aware of the way he listed stock status.

If there is a terms and conditions, it's well hidden, though - the site's "How to order" link returns a blank page, while "About Us" returns a "Write about your company here" template page. I ordered simply because I knew he'd been in business a long time, couldn't find any negative reviews, and I've dealt with quite a few former Eastern Bloc vendors and I'm aware that their shipping times reflect, perhaps, a customer base who were used to having to wait a long time for good things.

I freely admit I've become spoiler when I can order a brand new kit from a reliable Chinese vendor on eBay for about 30% less *with* shipping than I'd pay anywhere else *before* shipping, get a "shipped" notification the same day, and have the item in the mailbox inside of ten days. I won't contact Soga about my order unless I reach the end of *next* month and there's still been no movement.

I think some of my frustration was that the bits I was ordering, while technically what would be considered "AMS" stuff, were part of a plan to ease myself back into the habit of modeling by tackling two or three simpler kits, the modern equivalent of what an Airfix series 2 was to me as a kid, which means that while the stash is vast, I'm stalled waiting on resin sets to fix up kits that were intended to be 1-2 week builds. Oh well, I can use the time waiting to research the subjects better.