I have eight of the CNR green/black scheme, four in the CPR "wine red" scheme and my friend has five of the Northern Pacific two-tone green scheme. All I can say is these cars are gorgeous, and certainly priced competitively with Walther's and Branchline cars.
Dave
Paul:
Illegal price fixing is when two competitors agree to charge the same price (e.g., Walthers and Rapido agree to charge the same price for their passenger cars). This is not what Rapido was doing. Rather, they were simply trying to maintain their resale price by refusing to deal with resellers that aggressively discounted their product. I went to the Federal Trade Commission website and found this:
"The antitrust laws, however, give a manufacturer latitude to adopt a policy regarding a desired level of resale prices and to deal only with retailers who independently decide to follow that policy. A manufacturer also is permitted to stop dealing with a retailer who breaches the manufacturer's resale price maintenance policy. That is, the manufacturer can adopt the policy on a "take it or leave it" basis."
Here is the link as well:
http://www.ftc.gov/bc/compguide/illegal.htm
I did read that original thread about Rapido's policies (and argued back then that they were not illegal) and based on the paragraph above it seems like they were perfectly within their rights to withhold product from resellers that were aggressively discounting their product.
Generally speaking, anti-trust enforcement cases are decided on the basis of "rule of reason." This requires the court to evaluate whether consumers are actually harmed by the manufacturer's policies before taking legal action against them. As I noted in my original post, given the wide range of competitors to Rapido and the non-essential nature of the product, I would think you would have a hard time proving that consumers were harmed by what they were doing.
whitman500,Um, price fixing is very illegal. The law is there to protect us, the consumers. These laws must apply equally to everyone. It doesn't make any difference if Ford tells your local dealer that they must sell the car for $21,863.52 or if Gem tells your local drug store must sell razor blades for $.99 ea. It's why we have MSRP: Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price. They can "suggest" any price they want, but if I owned a hobby shop, no manufacturer can force me to sell at any price other than what I want to sell them for.
Over a year ago (note how old this thread is), someone on the Canadian Modelers e-Mail list (that the Rapido owner runs) said that his LHS was going to sell the upcoming Rapido passenger cars for something like 50% off MSRP. The Rapido and list owner replied with words to the effect of, "If he does, he'll never get anything from Rapido ever again." This set off a hubbub as numerous posters pointed out that it was illegal to force a retailer to sell at MSRP by withholding product. Not too far into it, further discussion was blocked by the list owner.
Rapido, to their credit, saw the error of their ways, and stopped threatening retailers. Instead they did what they could do legally, which means they started a "MAP" policy (or Minimum Advertised Price). This means that no retailer can advertise these products for less than a certain percentage of MSRP, which IIRC is around 20% to 25% off MSRP. Several other hobby companies do this like Tony's Train eXchange, NCE, etc. Fortunately for us, the consumer, retailers can still sell these for less than that, but they just can't advertise it.
Back to the point I made back when this thread was new, obviously Rapido can no longer be considered a "vaporware" provider. These new passenger cars are very nice, indeed (I just don't like how they feel so flimsy with the car sides not being attached to the floor). And I saw the Turbos at Philly this past summer, and I was very impressed. At least 3 or 4 are going to bought by my fellow club members, so I expect to be seeing a lot of them.
Rapido is to be commended for bringing out a superior product to the market.
Paul A. Cutler III************Weather Or No Go New Haven************
I would have to agree with Safety Valve on that one. If it breaks in thier hands they can figure it out.
Good Luck.i
That low huh?
I say ship it to him and let them heat and bend it. That way if the car fails they can send you a new one.
Here is a conversation (through email) that I had with Rapido Customer Service. It was the most expensive rolling stock I had purchased, but I didn't mind because I had the impression it was a top quality item. :
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 8:13 AM
Subject: CN Emperor Sleeper(101014 CNR Gr/Blk PS E series 4-8-4 Duplex Sleeper 'EMPEROR' $59.99)
Hi,
My wife just bought me this sleeper car as a gift. I was checking it out last and I found the coupler on one end is very low. So low that it it doesn't attach to another coupler very well. I tried about a half dozen cars and engines to see what was going on. On one end the coupler linked just fine to whatever I tried. The other end was too low.
Is there a way to adjust this, or is a design issue ?
Thanks,
Albert Elms, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Hi Albert,
Thanks for your email, and I'm sorry about your car. The issue with the low coupler at one end stems from the packaging being too tight at that end of the car. We will be redesigning the packaging on our upcoming runs of our cars to prevent this from happening again.
It is not a difficult fix by any means, but it does involve taking the car apart. If you don't feel comfortable doing this then you can send it back to me, and I will repair the car and send it back to you in perfect condition, and will send you a bunch of batteries to help cover the cost of shipping the car to us and the hassle.
Thanks again, and please let me know if you would like to take up on this.
Regards,
Dan Garcia
Customer Service Manager, Rapido Trains Inc.
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:27 AM
Subject: Re: CN Emperor Sleeper
How would I go about fixing the problem ?
The best way that I've found so far involves stripping the roof, sides, interior and trucks off of the underframe, holding the warped part over a boiling kettle or pot for a very short period of time (10 seconds - just long enough for the plastic to get warm), and then bending and holding the underframe until it cools and holds its shape straight.
This is by no means the only way...if the warp is not too bad, you could bend it while cold. One of our customers suggested cutting a small slot into the centre sill of the underframe (the two girders that travel along the centre from end to end) and then gluing in a slightly wider strip of styrene in the slot to lengthen the centre sill and straighten it. I haven't tried this method yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Thanks again, and regards,
Customer Service Manager,Rapido Trains Inc.
Seems a lot of folks want to compare the Rapido cars to the BLI CZ cars and make the CZ cars some sort of standard. I have some of the CZ cars that I am using for a basis for a Denver Zephyr consist. While they are nice, they have a slightly golden tint to them when they are run with other manufacturer's Bud cars. At some point, I will be stripping them, making small modifications and repainting them using Alclad. We can always find stuff wrong.
Even though I model the CB&Q, which owned no lightweight cars other than Budd, I will be getting a few of the Rapido cars to represent the foreign road cars, mainly sleepers, that showed up time to time on Q passenger trains.
And compared to RTR freight car prices, 60 dollars is okay for a highly detailed passenger car.
Rick
whitman500 wrote: As for this whole brouhaha about price fixing, I'm not sure why people are getting so upset. It's just business and is neither illegal
As for this whole brouhaha about price fixing, I'm not sure why people are getting so upset. It's just business and is neither illegal
jrbernier wrote: For a company with no track record, I do find it rather strange that they are trying to control pricing and their internet group site.
TA462 wrote:I have 7 in Ontario Northland's newer paint and 4 in the Ontario Northland's older paint scheme. These things are the best detailed passenger cars made, period. They are expensive but if you want the detail then you need to buy them. Just to compare, hobby shops up here in Canada sell Walthers VIA Rail Budd cars for 50 bucks, thats if you can find them. Now compare a Rapido car to a Walthers car, Its like comparing a Ferrari to a VW Beetle. I'll pay the extra 10 bucks for the Rapido car.
I still think that the Broadway Limited California Zephyr cars were a better product than the Rapido models. Sure they also carry a high retail price but if one wants a highly detailed model then you have to pay for that exactness.
I have bought me 7 C&NW Coaches & Sleepers and I already have sold them over eBay!
I was really disappointed in these models and will not buy a Rapido car again; the paint job was not worth a dime; the whole model was looking like it had been in service for 20 years.
The highly detailed body and interior actually is nothing special when comparing to European models - so they really can't make a point there.
I also think that the plastic they use for the models is very cheap and may cause some problems too. It's very difficult to find the exact words to describe it but man was I disappointed.
They advertised the cars as the next best thing to Brass - the models carry a list price of almost $60 (some dealers were selling them for as low as $35) which is extremely pricey. I mean even at $35 these cars were not worth the money.
I don't know if the newer runs are improved but I won't pre-order Rapido models again; I would need to see and run them before purchasing.
I ordered three sight unseen and two more later.
They should be coming out with the 10-5's and Cafe-Bar-Car in June at some point. So much for the April ETA.
I have 1 NP passenger car from Rapido and 3 more on order. The interiors are meaningfully superior to Walthers with different color seats and doors in the sleeping compartments and better detailed end doors (e.g, gates). They also have the grab irons installed (with Walthers you have to do this yourself). I've found them for $50 which is $10 more than Walthers.
On the downside, for NP the color scheme is very different than the other products on the market. To be fair, it is closer to prototype based on photos I have but it means your train won't match any of the available engines. Also, the sides of my car did not fit tightly and I will likely have to glue them which is less than ideal.
As for this whole brouhaha about price fixing, I'm not sure why people are getting so upset. It's just business and is neither illegal nor unethical. After all, they're selling a consumer product for which a number of substitutes exist (Walthers, IHC, Con-cor, etc.). Anti-monopoly laws were never meant to apply to these types of products. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
I got two Illionis Central coaches and was amazed at first of the detail. Upon closer inspection I was disappointed the the paints schemes they picked. The colors are no where near what they should be.
Also the grabirons where not painted and honestly not sure if they where even glued inplace as they all wiggle around.
They are great looking cars but with paint colors that are not even in the ball park why bother laying out that kind of cash.
QUOTE: Originally posted by dothinker I'll keep ya posted if and when they arrive. What's a "NYC pax train"?
QUOTE: Originally posted by dothinker interesting opinions here... Whatever you may think of it, I think it's very cool to try and enter the HO rr market with a quality product. I've ordered 2 sleepers and a coach, at modeltrains.com, downpayment of $10 each. Asked about the status of the production and date of delivery, got almost instant reply: "As per my latest conversation with Rapido Trains, a revised pre-production model is expected within the next month. The first group of production models, factory painted for CNR and VIA are expected in late July. The other roads will follow thereafter." As modeltrains.com is a business I trust, this sounds reassuring enough for me. csmith are you sure about the paint schemes? That would be a bummer, (though as long as I dont mention it to my wife it'll be allright, heh) well maybe I dont even want to know. Maybe an indication was that the road number of the NYC coach was in the same series, really just a couple numbers away, as Rivarossi's NYC 44-seat coach which i happen to own but that couldve been coincidence.
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin