Seawatch Books

[bartley]

Does anybody know if this Company is still in business?  I ordered a book from them on 26th January and it has not arrived.  My six emails on the subject have remained unanswered.  Are they a normally reliable? are they even syill trading?

 

John

[amateur]

2 minutes ago, bartley said:

Does anybody know if this Company is still in business?  I ordered a book from them on 26th January and it has not arrived.  My six emails on the subject have remained unanswered.  Are they a normally reliable? are they even syill trading?

 

John

I never ordered directly at seawatch, but as far as I heard, they are both in business and reliable.

Some MSW-members publish quite some work through seawatch. I never heard them complain, nor their customers....

 

Jan

[trippwj]

Seawatch is a fairly small company, and usually quite responsive.  The owner can frequentky be found on this forum as well. 

[ccoyle]

Bob Friedman, the owner of Seawatch, is on the forum as BobF. Can't imagine that he would deliberately let an order languish for six months -- I'd wager it's some form of miscommunication.

[druxey]

Or the book gone astray in the mail. 

[Jaager]

I just placed and received a five book order.  The web site did not

provide me with an confirmation and I did not receive an email.

I saw that my credit card had paid the bill - so I wanted to see if the order had gotten thru.

I can't use any website's  " contact us " link - it starts an endless loop of new tabs - hundreds of them if I let it.

I sent an email  to the address from a Google lookup:   gmail   = seawatchbooks@

no  reply so a couple of days later I found an address from an old order

  seawatchbooks.com     = customer_service@

 

I got a return message saying that the order was shipped  and since that was yesterday and

it was here today - my email was not involved.  The curious part was that the reply was from a gmail account.

Try both email addresses - I can't say which worked for me.

 

[michaelpsutton2]

I have always gotten what I ordered and been well pleased. Now I have ordered books not yet published and waited months, but I knew that in advance. So it was not of any concern. I intend to order the next book from Grant Walker the instant they announce a publication date.

[BobF]

Chris:

 

I'm sorry, but I'm not Bob Friedman. I just happen to have the same initials.

 

BobF

[ccoyle]

Oops! How'd that happen?  Bob Friedman's username is actually bobcat. Sorry!

[MartinB]

And still, no book. Service is seriously lacking.

 

Martin

Edited July 19, 2018 by MartinB

[Neill]

I live in the UK, and just ordered 4 books from them.  They arrived exactly two weeks from date of order so no complaints from me.  Shipping was eye watering it is true, but that is not their fault.  As for the books, well hats off to David Antscherl, Ed Tosti and Allan Yedlinsky, great inspiring work.

[MEDDO]

I have ordered many books from them and have had a few minor issues with the electronic orders.  I do not get a conformation email just after ordering.  The first time this happened I ended up calling them and the order was processing correctly just not giving me a confirmation email.  Since then I order and wait and it always shows up pretty quickly.  It is weird not getting any confirmation but it seems to work and I always need to work on my patience.

 

I also received a double order once and called and got it straightened out easy enough to get the extra books returned.

 

It was easy to call them they were very nice on the phone.  (Not sure how that would apply to overseas calls)  I have not emailed them before so don't know how well that way works.

 

Overall I am very appreciative that we have such a great publisher available for our hobby.

[mtaylor]

Here in the States (I can't say for certain anywhere else) the ISP's do a lot of filtering and some businesses sending confirmations, etc. inadvertently get dumped into the ISP's spam bucket.  Not much we as users can do though. For a long time, emails for notifications went there.  

[Mike Y]

Ordered though them, no problems. They have a really good reputation, sounds like some unfortunate miscommunication. Have you tried to contact bobcat here on MSW?

[Jack12477]

I've purchased four books on four different occasions from Bob and had absolutely no problems and the books arrived in a very short time.   I agree, contact Bobcat here on MSW.   Also double check your credit card's monthly statement and see if it was actually charged for the order, it could be the order never went thru properly.

Edited July 28, 2018 by Jack12477

[bobcat]

I appreciate the voices of support for SeaWatchBooks. As a lot of you know I am a one man band; sort of leader of the band. I have processed thousands of your orders over the years along with managing authors, editors, designers, computer graphics experts, fulfillment service people and my print management crew. Somewhere in this semi controlled confusion something goes wrong. We try and fix it with various degrees of success. 

But as long as there is a good supply of duct tape and a hank of bailing wire I think we will be able to keep most of you happy.

Thanks for your patience

 

Bob Friedman

[michaelpsutton2]

I won't be completely happy until I am sitting by the fire with a shot or two (or three) of Jack Daniels single barrel and my new copy of the 2nd volume form the Henry Huddleston collection, presumably 3rs & 4th rates. Although I am not sure Bob is in control of that.

[bobcat]

Soon, patience, soon. Book two will be on third rates.

 

Bob Friedman

[MEDDO]

11 hours ago, bobcat said:

Soon, patience, soon. Book two will be on third rates.

 

Bob Friedman

 

Can’t wait!!!!!

[hollowneck]

Eagerly awaiting....The Rogers Collection of Dockyard Models...Third rates, Volume Two.

Dilly. Dilly.

 

Ron

[DelF]

I live in the UK and received my book today just over a week after placing the order - excellent service.

 

Derek

[ir3]

Has anyone attempted to go to Seawatch Books website in the last few days. I get a warning from all of the browsers that I use that the site is unsafe to access.

[Jack12477]

Yea, I just got the same warning message myself a few minutes ago

[mtaylor]

There's been a campaign by Google and other browsers to push websites to clean up their sites.    Seawatch has an expired certificate listed as the problem.  I just went there with all my "shields" up and checked via 3 different browsers.  I found no other issues than the expired certificate.   As always, your mileage may vary.

[ir3]

Interesting that the messages I received did not speak of the certificate expired. Glad that's the only issue.

[Roger Pellett]

The times that I have ordered books from Seawarch I have phoned them.  Always a nice conversation with Bob Friedman about Northern Minnesota and very prompt courteous service.

 

Roger

[MEDDO]

 

Great company and great service.  I just received this today.  I had ordered the book (and received it) back when it was first available.

 

[skorolev]

Hello

 

Does anyone know if Bob still has an access to email? I've ordered the Hayling Hoy book in November, got a response to my email to confirm that order was received in November, but no any other feedback for the past two months.

Thanks
Serge

[ccoyle]

Serge, have you tried sending him a private message here? He checks in regularly.

[skorolev]

20 hours ago, ccoyle said:

Serge, have you tried sending him a private message here? He checks in regularly.

Nope. But, magically, I received the book today! If I've just waited one more day... -))

 

UPDATE. According to the tracking number on shipping label, the book was shipped very promptly but got "stuck" somewhere between the US and Italy for almost two months. Well, may happen. I've been worried only because I did not have this tracking number to start with and did not know if book was shipped already or not yet. But at the end, I am happy it all turned out well..

 

Thanks

Serge

Edited January 18, 2019 by skorolev