New Philly for my iwata stable, albeit with some problems.

So one of the few places I trust to buy iwata airbrushes and parts, is Coast Airbrush. I assume like me many of you use the same people for your parts, and whatnot. So I put in a $400+ order, a few needles, some frisket, and my new philly my iwata HP-TH, I also paid expedited shipping as I am starting a mural this week. Anyways, when my box arrives on Friday, it has all the stuff in there, but seems a hair light, so I go to open my new baby, and what do I find, an empty iwata box that just has the super lube, spanner wrench, and the round patterned air cap. I could't get ahold of Coast until that Saturday morning after. I told them what happened and to call back on Monday when the shipping people come in. Jennifer, who I talked to on Sat. said that the shipping weight looked off as well, and was sure it was a mistake on their end. What I want to know is who picked up that iwata box and thought it was remotely heavy enough to have a TH in their, which is not light. Anyways, after talking to them on Monday, they said that I will keep the box and other accessories while the expedite another out for me, which got here Wednesday. Now my question is that did Coast do enough to make up for this mistake? I mean it was supposed to be a Kustom HP-TH that I was expecting to receive in the metal boxes that my Microns came in, but no it is just one of the regular cheap cardboard cases. I mean I am glad that they did the right thing and took my word that the brush never showed up, but just sending out what was missing, and nothing more for my trouble, is a bit odd to me since I have been going to them for years, and have bought thousands of dollars worth of parts and brushes.

Here is a pic of her, she was late, but still oh so beautiful.

Oooh, a mystery... yes, it makes you wonder about people at times... Congratulations on your new acquisition, look forward to seeing the mural!

Sadly, I think you have to keep in mind that the people shipping out your order are probably some minimum wage flunkie, they have a million orders to pack and ship in a day, and yes unfortunately things slip through the cracks. Im not sure why they would be shipping out an open box?
I would have a bigger issue with not being sent the right brush. Did you indicate that to them when you spoke with them?

Do they come in a metal box? I am not too sure the TH does, even in the Kustom version - if they do well, yeah, they owe you a box. Short of that, I am not sure what more they could do for you - I mean you received what you purchased, albeit you had to wait an extra 4 days. Maybe refund the cost difference between standard and expedited shipping? If I purchased the TH, and got the TH, I would simply chalk it up to a glitch, or hick-up, and paint away.

I think someone's messing with the Airbrush;s as I ordered my Micron and when I got it The airbrush was laying across the foam and not in the cutout for it Thought it was weird when I opened the case?

Well at first they came in the metal Kustom box, but this one came in the Hi-line cardboard box. When they sent just the brush they put it in a metallic bubble wrap envelope that sealed as well as their usual paper packaging in the outer box. I was pretty pissed no doubt, and had a slight fear they wouldn't believe me, but they did cause of my long and pricy ordering history with them. But being coast I knew they would make it right. Cause I have only had one problem with them in the past a few years ago when a .23 needle sealed in the iwata packaging had a bent tip already. They had iwata in Portland send me one directly. I will still shop with Coast Airbrush they are generally a good company with parts you can trust and will be my go to as I'm a full time professional airbrush artist and they treat me accordingly.

basepaint said:

I think someone's messing with the Airbrush;s as I ordered my Micron and when I got it The airbrush was laying across the foam and not in the cutout for it Thought it was weird when I opened the case?

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Did you order the taller trigger or a quick disconnect? Cause I knows they'll open them for that or if you ordered a different head size.

Kustom th doesnt exist anymore, its a high performance th, so no more red box th's price was to high and werent selling so they dropped some bells and whistles to make the price more attractive for us, so that includes the red bix as well, if we are indeed talking about the kustom th now just being a hp th, no one notice the hundreds of dollar price drop?

crewchief227 said:

Did you order the taller trigger or a quick disconnect? Cause I knows they'll open them for that or if you ordered a different head size.

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Nope just a standard Micron set-up

Im confused... but then again that's pretty normal.

I think Mike H is correct. I got my TH from an import seller on Amazon 2 years ago, and it came in cardboard Hi-line packaging like you're describing. The price for the import ones was a lot less back then too, not just for the TH, but for all Iwata brushes, though the TH in particular had the largest price disparity (they were going for around $150 back then).

About half I year later I read rumors that Iwata had noticed the import sellers, and was moving to cut them off. Nowadays the imports all cost about the same as the Iwata USA distributed ones.

So my impression is that the TH was always just part of the Hi-line series in Japan, and at some point in the last 2 years they cottoned on to the Kustom markup for the TH in particular in the west being way too high, so they had their foreign branches swap it out of the Kustom to the H-Line series and halve the price.

Coast has the right price for the current Hi-Line edition, but for whatever reason, they haven't fully moved it off the Kustom page to the Hi-Line page. If I had to guess, I'd say maybe they're trying to prevent people who were planning on buying it from coming back to the Kustom page and thinking Coast had dropped it from stock entirely.

Meanwhile,,,, there is a shipping guy with a growing airbrush collection