Harry and the J’s

Dealers have it rough these days, but they need to take a tough stand when faulty products are delivered.  Personally, I wouldn't accept them... and I'd let the chips fall where they may with the importer or distributor.

Late last year, I was in the market for MTH's Amtrak transition cars.  My first line of search was the MTH Product Locator.  One dealer down south was the only search hit.  So I called the store and spoke to the owner and explained what I was looking for -- even gave him a couple of SKU's.  And he even said... "Oh, those are the transition cars".  So he KNEW what I wanted and expected.  Two days later when the cars arrived, they weren't "transition" cars at all -- both ends had high-level vestibules!!!  When I called him back, he gave me this song-and-dance that MTH's factory made them wrong.  To which I replied, "Why didn't you tell me those were factory errors when I ordered them?"  And he had the audacity to tell me he thought I knew they were made wrong!!!  Then he was complaining he'd be stuck with them if I returned them.    I told him he should have shipped them back to MTH as soon as he realized they were made incorrectly.  When I spoke with MTH, I was told dealers had the opportunity to return them... and MTH subsequently made another production run where the cars were made correctly.  I then discovered that Imperial Trains in western PA had the correct ones, and Regis took care of me quite well.  Meanwhile I returned the first set of cars via Fed-Ex for tracking purposes, and wound up needing to dispute the charge because the dealer received my return but never processed the credit.  When I called him BEFORE disputing the charges, he told me he was very busy due to the Christmas Holidays but would process the credit in a couple of days.  3 weeks later?  No credit... nada thing... zilch.  So at that point I just worked with the credit card company.

Bottom line... WE are our own best advocate... and sometimes our own worst enemy as well.  We can't assume all dealers are gonna do the right thing all the time.  Some will -- but definitely not all of them.  As buyers, we just have to take a tough stand... and not accept products that aren't made the way they're illustrated in the catalog(s).  At least in this case, Lionel provided a solution.  Had they not, then anyone who accepted these locomotives without "complaining" is really encouraging more of this nonsense to occur again and again.  As it is, Lionel is producing far too many SKU's in one calendar year.  So chances are pretty good that a new set of issues will surface this year -- because nobody is driving the production process.  We just don't know what those "new" issues will be yet.

At least THIS time, most of us have a happy ending to their "J" story.