Not meaning to hijack your thread, but there seems to be a lot of defective items being sold on e-Bay recently. Always described as "works perfect" or words to that effect.
I don't see it as often in model railroading as I do in other areas on e-Bay, electronics in particular. Model railroaders seem to be more up front about whether an item is working or not and state it in their listings.
Of course, as rrebel said, a wire could have come loose in shipping. The main thing is you found the problem and fixed it yourself without added expense. Now enjoy!
Don't be mad at the seller as a solder joint is one of those things that can go bad in shipping if it is able to be hit or tugged at all (seen it happen on locos). Glad you got it fixed!
Well did you pick it up for a far lesser price then if you were to have purchased it form an LHS etc.? If so then you profited by the sellers ignorance if not let the buyer beware. Gotten burned enough to know not to buy anything from eBay ever again. Glad you found and fixed the problem
I posted here a while back about a problem with my Walther's transfer table. There was no power to the traveling bridge rails. Well after doing some poking around with my multi tester I found a bad solder joint. After I resoldered it works great. Now I have a bone to pick with the ebay seller I purchased it from.