Puzzled

I'm not sure what the reason for this post was, aside perhaps a bit of venting (which I completely understand, having done it occasionally myself). 

Are you hoping the vendor will read this and somehow figure out who you are and get your order out the door? 

Have you tried this?

Contact your credit card and advise them to cancel the payment. If it's already processed/which I assume you've done, then advise them it's being debated/cancelled. Usually, the cc comp. will cooperate. i.e. I use only the one cc to purchase online, and Visa won that 'honor'!And write a letter to the company, addressing the 'owner' or 'president' or ? Send it registered, signed receipt requested. That usually gets their attention. I have done all the above at one time or another. It takes perseverance.

Why not...

Why not pick up the phone and call them? Other than EBAY I am sure if you called they can tell you.

Based on the statement you put on your post, I think that seller posts at the top of their site the date of orders being processed, meaning they can be up to a week backlogged before processing the order. Why they didn't reply to an email? Could be a number of things besides being overwhelmed with orders. Not defending the dealer....

Neal

@oldmanep Did you mean

@ oldmanep

Did you mean Caboose Hobbies in Denver?  I never visited them in person but was remote customer nearly 20 years and bought my first brass passenger car from them around 1989 and first brass caboose some years later; they usually had a good selection of brass as well as the latest plastic trains.  Unfortunately they lost their lease in 2016 and closed.

I don't know what vendor you ordered from recently but there are a lot of reputable ones such as modeltrainstuff, Lombard Hobbies and Spring Creek Hobbies, to name a few.

Puzzled?

Not necessarily venting but informing that the lack of "customer care", could be the first sign of going out of business.

Customer care - another casualty of Covid

Not for nothing, All retailers with an internet presence appear overwhelmed by the level of internet business brought on by those trying to avoid unnecessary human contact. 

On 12/2, my wife ordered a gift for my DIL from a Midwestern Sewing supply vendor. They immediately charged the CC. Today, 16 days later,  the wife called for status, and learned the product was out of stock...something they did not disclose...Wife cancelled the order, requested the order, and scrambled to find another gift from another vendor that could reach the DIL by Christmas. CS rep was totally indifferent...

The other side of this is that many businesses look at this pandemic as an opportunity to reduce labor costs, and raise prices, while going back to the old mail order standard of three to six weeks fulfillment time after the check (or CC) clears. They got the consumer by the b***s and both the vendor and the consumer know it.

Welcome to the Post-Pandemic world !

Credit card

That's why I mention credit cards. Give you a little more control. Once a check is cashed, it's hard to get that money back. But a credit card company can sometimes help. That's why I chose Visa. Not always successful, but a lot easier and surer than a check. I can't vouch for any credit card company, they are all subject to being either "helpful or not". But it always helps if you are a long time customer - with the credit card. I used to have trouble with Discover back when I was new. But over the years, they have proved to be helpful at times. It sure is annoying to have to deal with a business that fails to communicate. Especially when "Oh we're sorry, it's been delayed on back order". Tough! When it's a gift, and you don't want delays. Stand firm. Cancel and re-shop!

One thing about credit cards is that you can always go the fraud

route.  I always go to the vendor first when I see a questionable charge on a credit card.  If the vendor ignores me or refuses to try to solve the problem, I call the credit card 800# and request the fraud dept.  As far as I'm concerned, if they try to hold my money while an item is on back order with the idea of fulling the back order when they get in a shipment, but they don't tell me something is on back order up front, that is fraud.

I have had a number of instances where a clerk has copied my credit card # and tried to or succeeded in selling it to someone else.  So far, everytime it has happened the credit card company has caught it within 24 hours, twice within an hour of the crime. 

In one instance I gave a credit card to a waitress to pay for a meal in a restaraunt, and was called by my credit card company an hour later asking me if I had gotten from Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California  to a San Francisco restaraunt in less than an hour?!

I have at this time sent an

Bottom line is use a CC or PayPal so you have a way of recovering your money if the order is never completed.  But at present, things are taking longer.  MBK states on their website presently that orders aren't shipped until 10 days from the actual order date.  That's 10 days from placing order to entering the USPS system.

I order occasionall from Bob The Train Guy and sometimes his orders don't change from processing to shipped for 4 or 5 days.

But you should at least get an email response from the dealer if you make an inquiry.  All the dealers I do business with will answer emails usually within 24 hours, sometimes a couple days.

But if enough time goes by, say a couple weeks, and no status update or email replay, maybe you should open a dispute with the CC company or PayPal is you used them.

I have a hunch who this

I have a hunch who this vendor might be and if I'm correct I've noticed a massive slowdown in their service fulfilling orders and then a huge slowdown with the mail/shipping services as well. I attribute this in large part to the pandemic and have decided I just have to be patient.

We all have become spoiled. I'm old enough to remember sending a couple of quarters in the mail for a catalog and waiting weeks for it to come.

Things will sort themselves out

It may be a bumpy ride for a while, but eventually things will sort themselves out. Dealers that have poor service will either fix their problems or go out of business.

Locomotive and rolling stock manufacturers, on the other hand, will keep screwing people over with their idiotic pre-order system. 

No Joy

You have reached out to the dealer and have received "no joy".  As others have suggested, your credit card provides remedies.  Contact your credit card company.

DEW

act now

You have a certain amount of time after the charge appears on your card statement to dispute the charge. You definitely want to contact the card company before that timer runs out to preserve your options. You will tell them "I've emailed them x times and tried to contact them by phone y times and left messages and they don't respond". (And you should have done all those things prior to disputing the charge). 

A disputed charge does not require that you prove fraud or that fraud has occurred, you can dispute for non-delivery, or simply for a change of the terms of the deal (like the addition of bogus charges not disclosed prior to the purchase).