What amount of damage or defect is acceptable with a new train purchase?

[Anonymous]

I recently bought several atlas o gauge engines. Some of the engines had minor problems. The UP dash8 40B had a few problems. The air tanks on the bottom of the engine were loose. In the box the tank had come off. I turned the engine over and tried to pu***he tank back on. The tank would not stay. The tangs would not grip. I bent the tangs a bit until they held. Another atlas engine had some broken truck brake parts. Instead of sending the engine back I fixed the parts my self. It would cost me 15.00 to 20.00 to send each engine back. I do not like having to fix these trains myself. I paid 390.00 each for these engines they should be perfect at this price. These were brand new factory sealed boxes. I could blame the UPS guy. The loose air tanks could not have been caused by him. My question to all is what is acceptable. I have had to send several engines back to Lionel and now it seems I will have to send atlas engines back as well. Why would you send an engine back to the factory? If the damage were minimal or barely noticeable would you just keep the engine? What do you guys think? My friends say they would send any engines back with the least bit of damage. They say for the prices that I pay I should get perfect products.

[3railguy]

I agree. Part of the problem is these finely detailed engines are fragile. When you buy them mail order, you are taking a risk. UPS can be brutal with packages and UPS will not take responsibility half the time. This is the reason I buy new finely detailed trains through a retail store.

[Anonymous]

Hello All: New is New, no scratches,no loose or broken parts. It should not matter if it is a $400.00 item or a $40.00 item, you have turned over your $$s for a brand new item factory sealed. You have shown your good faith, the manufacturer should do the same. Kind Regards Steve

[Anonymous]

Hello All: New is New, no scratches,no loose or broken parts. It should not matter if it is a $400.00 item or a $40.00 item, you have turned over your $$s for a brand new item factory sealed. You have shown your good faith, the manufacturer should do the same. Kind Regards Steve

[Anonymous]

I check high dollar purchases VERY VERY carefully with the Owner of the LHS standing there. It must be flawless, run as advertised and exhibit no damage anywhere.

I know that the owner and I share the same thought "Please let there be no damage"

The BLI switcher was the first engine I ever purchased to have problems such as running backward. However with information regarding swapping wires and or DCC reprogramming I will not need to send the unit back to BLI. I can fix it at the bench.

I am expecting one very expensive engine this year that was ordered last year. When it arrives at the store it better be absolutely perfect. It will be returned if it isnt.

[brianel027]

I'm not an inside expert, but if I can take a guess as to what happens....

1) The train product is made in China and then packed into an individual box with more packing material than we've ever seen with trains before.
2) Then those individual boxes are packed into larger shipping unit boxes.
3) Those boxes are packed into a container by Chinese workers either manually or with forklifts and then I would assume trucked to the nearest Chinese shipping port.
4) The container is then taken from the truck and loaded into the cargo hold of a very large shipping freighter.
5) Then begins the smooth, first class, temperature controled journey across the Pacific Ocean.
6) The freighter arrives at a US mainland port where the container of trains is unloaded and then loaded again on to a tractor trailer truck for the short drive across the United States. **I won't mention traffic, sudden stops, jerks, bumps and pot holes. Or the hot blazing sun or the freezing cold.
7) I would assume the container ends up at the home office of whatever company had the trains made. I suppose it is possible that some containers could go direct to a distributor, but I'm assuming they go to the company first.
8) The container is unloaded from the truck at the company... I would hope some samples are randomly inspected. It's obvious they can't all be inspected. Well, they could but mostly not.
9) Now maybe the container is entirely unpacked, or partially unpacked with other items added to the container. Either way, shipping boxes will get loaded up again and sent to the various distributors (some of who also do direct mailorder).
10) The container of train products is unpacked at the distributor. Some of the shipping cartons are probably opened, some aren't. Either way, some of these end up in another truck be it FedEx, UPS, or USPS, being sent to the various retailers who have order product from the distributor... another highway drive. See above ** no. 6.
11) Some of these items will end up on another FedEx, UPS, or USPS truck, having been mailordered by a customer. If the consumer orders the train item from a distributor-slash-mailorder house, the train item may avoid one or two less truck trips. See above ** no. 6.

I'm just taking a stab at this folks... your guess may be as good as mine., maybe better. I'm actually surprised - given the amount of sensitive electronics that are in so many train products and the ever increasing amount of fragile details on the trains - that there aren't more defective trains ending up in customers hands.

In theory, as said above, products should be mint condition and in working order upon arrival. On the other hand, China is a long long ways away. I would imagine every train item gets banged around a little bit on the long long journey from Sandra Kan to the customers train layout.

Of course, if the trains were made in the US, maybe the possibility of damage during shipment would decrease.

On the other hand, if the trains were made in the US, chances are the new damage would be to the train buyers wallet as prices would very likely increase.

I'm not saying we should just accept defective items, especially when they cost hundreds of dollars. But as the trains become more fragile with more prototypical details and more electronically loaded with features train operators seem to want, I can't imagine this problem going away real soon.

On a final note, most of the new trains I have bought in the past were made overseas, but were of the cheap, low end variety... no fragile scale details, no extra electronic features. Just simple toyi***rain details with a simple reverse board. And I never had one broke or defective upon arrival... maybe a loose screw, but that's it. Oh, there have been a couple of plastic things that have been warped... a Lionel plastic box car frame (not the shell but the frame was warped), a K-Line work caboose and some of the newer Plasticville buildings. I was able to fix all those myself.

[Anonymous]

I expect zero defects--regardless of the cost of the item. It is the seller's (manufacturer's) responsibility to assure that I receive a defect-free product.

[Anonymous]

Just a couple of comments on the postulated trip for our engines: first, international shipping containers are not usually insulated or climate controlled. Containers are made for these purposes, but the contents must require the climate control before the expense is justified. Sort of like shipping by regular boxcar, insulated boxcar or mechanical reefer.

The container ship probably docks in Long Beach or some other west coast port, and the containers are transloaded directly from ship to railcar, unless the manufacturer has a California distribution hub, in which case local drayage (trucking) is used.

Even with containerization (before which everything was break-bulk, i.e. loaded on and off ship by stevedores - watch "On The Waterfront" for how this process used to be done), count how many times each locomotive is handled. Amazing that the shipping damage is as low as it is. While I agree that an expensive item should be "perfect" when purchased, some understanding of the manufacturing and distribution realities, and some patience to allow the dealer and/or manufacturer to correct any problems, would not be unreasonable.

[palallin]

LoL! Perfection is simply an impossible dream, and you cannot buy it at any price. Nothing man-made is perfect, even if unbroken. Pursuing it in this fashion simply invite ulcers and anger.

What level of imperfection is acceptable? First, cost is irrelevant. An engine ought to run and pull its train; it should reverse (if equiped) and approximate the sounds/smoke/etc. that it was advertised as producing. Cosmetically, the fine details should be repairable or insignificant; the decoration should approximate the scheme advertised (i.e., I should not find an ATSF piece in a Frisco box). A car should roll and meet the cosmetic requirements above. Minor scratches and blemishes, teeny-tiny pieces missing, and cracked shells don't bother me enough to sweat. I have enough important stuff to worry about without increasing my BP over trivia.

[Anonymous]

No acceptions

[Anonymous]

Manufacturing or shipping defects; the solution is the same, do not accept the item! Of cource, if you spent a lot of time looking for, wating for, and wanting the item rejecting it is very hard to do when you might not ever see another one. Until EVERYONE is willing to reject any item with defects you can stop complaining because there is no incentive to correct the problem. "The business of business is business."

[Anonymous]

Send it back for a full refund or replacement.

[brianel027]

Thank you jdmavanti4 for the added information. I was being sarcastic about the smooth, temperature controled ride across the Pacific... I should have put that in quotation marks.

Ideally in a good business-customer relationship, the customer should always be right. If the product isn't as advertised, brand new and in full operating condition, the company should be held responsible. And should want to make the customer happy. One could ask can they afford to do so though when the defects could be in the hundreds or the thousands? But one could also reason with all the competition, how can they afford NOT to do so?

But there is the hard reality of the "factory" being halfway around the world. In some respects, the companies have brought this on to themselves by moving their manufacturing operations overseas. Personally I think most of the companies could afford to have manufacturing done stateside. List prices have not come down with overseas production very much. Lionel's prices have done nothing but increase since they moved production to China.

What the companies could NOT afford with stateside production, is to do the vast amounts of new product development and new tooling. Notice all the new product with new tooling coming from Lionel since they moved to China. This did not happen when production was stateside in Michigan.

In some ways, this is also in part the customers fault. We've demanded more realism, more variety and more prototypical accuracy and fragile details. Would the adult scale operator market be content with a Pennsy style steamer with New York Central markings on it? Would the adult scale operator market be content with seeing the same locomotive type issued for year upon year with no changes other than the color and the roadname? I think not.

Ironically it is the semi-scale traditional operators who have been content with the same product types (some of which have been around for decades). Most are thankful there is something they can sort of afford. I'm absolutely certain the higher prices across the board on all products are to some degree subsidizing the development of the many new scale type products that were are seeing. These items probably do not make enough of a return on the initial runs to justify themselves. Maybe some do though. I'm also certain the conpanies are no longer tooling product for longevity as they once did. MTH made that mistake and now all their former Premiere line items are now in the Scale Railking line.

Businesswise, the companies should be responsible for the damages and defects. Even though they have to be as annoyed with them as the consumers are. But given the shipping logistics and that the factory is across the ocean (making it harder to monitor every aspect of production on a daily basis) I don't see this problem going away any time too soon. Unless modelers are going to be content with rugged more toyish locomotives that are solid built with suggested or implied details... along the lines of the Williams GP-9, which I don't hear too many defect problems about.