helolo every one this is not about teh running quality at slow speeds, I think mine runs fine and the sound is great. This is about the manufacturing and packaging quality in China. My train had the following defects when it came out of the box:
totally bent guidance arms
cracked truck suspension
bend suspension springs
A lot of this damage may have occurred in the mail between the source from whom you purchased the set and Germany if the seller did not properly package it.
Rapido will probably send you a replacement set.
Nope sorry,
I transported the unit myself it came in a undamaged box and all the damages where found below the undamaged celphane wrapping after I closely inspected the unit at home. This is not transportation this was packaging and manufacturing during initial assembly of the unit. yes Rapido is offering to send replacement parts.
My point is more if this is a general problem with their assembly line and if they actually got it fixed. All the work I have now to fix the unit of mine is sure worth something. I have not seen any compensation for that yet but then I am not at the end of the communication with Rapido.
I have to disagree with your assessment of where the damage occured. I have a number of Rapido cars and many have come with various parts knocked of IN SHIPPING. The parts are always in the box, generally near where they came off. The two most common things are diaphragms and couplers. The parts are delicate and have limited attachment points…I have seveal with steps bent or knocked off. I am sure they are not sent that way from the factory, but have been handled poorly in shipping. Unless you hand carried your units all the way from the factory, you do not know what happened in shipping.
Actually it doesn’t matter if you hand carried it wrap in cotton…I highly suspect the damage was done in shipping,warehousing or at the LHS.
I have bought several locomotives over the years that had been dropped some where along the line because the motor and drive train was loose-this includes a Atlas/Rocco Alco S4 switcher…
You see before the Internet we understood things could get damage in shipping or warehousing…Now with the Internet its automatically bad QC…Never mind things still gets tossed,dropped and smashed in transit.
Ever see the end results of a pallet breaking at 15 feet??
hesi2000
Receiving replacement parts seems to be the standard for most manufacturers when dealing with damage claims. Or in the case of the item not being usable the replacement of that unit usually at the expense of the buyers.
What I find interesting is you comment about you should receive some kind of compensation or additional reimbursement for your troubles.
Over the years I have had a number of incidents of minor damage and in most cases I did receive replacement parts. It was surprising to open a sealed box that showed no visible signs of damage and finding that there were loose or broken parts in the case. Sure a shock but it happens,
It sure would be be nice if the manufacturers did give some kind of recognition to the aspect of those buyers not only paying for the item, but also having to fix it as well in the case of damaged items.
You have my sympathy, let us know how this turns out…
I would have brought it back or mailed it to where I purchased it from and asked for a replacement. I wouldn’t go on a website and complain about it. Who knows, maybe you broke the parts off yourself removing it from the packaging. That’s my guess because I’ve never heard of one problem with broken parts on them but I have heard of people braking little parts removing them. I know how difficult they are to remove. Rapido offers you replacement parts and still that’s not good enough for you? I highly doubt anybody would compensate you for your time, I wouldn’t expect it anyhow. Anybody else notice that the majority of peoples very first post is usually a complaint and usually because they didn’t get their own way?
I had a couple of issues with my Turbo as well, some may have had their origin in handling on the trip from Rapido to my (mail order) store and from there to my place while others most certainly don’t.
On one of the coaches one of the eye-bolts was bent quite a bit and broke off almost immediately when I touched it; this may be due to handling. The eye-bolt on the other side, however, has some remnants of glue right around it; this is not much and no problem for me, but obviously not a handling issue. Several other coaches were not really well packaged so that the guidance arms were bent quite a bit. This again was no problem. I am not sure if the coaches have been shaken so much in their box or if this is due to bad handling at the factory during packaging there. Jason from Rapido is aware of the problem and told me: “The packaging is not good enough for overseas shipments. … We will redesign our packaging for The Canadian and other big trains to ensure better support.”
Another “problem” was that one of the coaches had lower couplers on both ends. So this coach has definitely not run in any Turbo before it came to me. Again, Jason was very quick in informing me how to fix that (which was really simple).
Finally a spring that should have been attached to a coupler was missing – it was nowhere in the box but definitely missing. Here also, Jason was very quick to offer a spare.
To cut a long story short: Yes, there were a couple of issues. And I believe not all of those were due to handling during shipping. On the other hand, Rapido has been absolutely helpful, quick in their responses and very generous in offering spares or replacements. And they are also willing to improve on those issues they didn’t anticipate.
Regards,
Harald
I must say, Rapido has nothing to gain and all to loose with poor quality products at high end prices. In other words, a reputation of poor quality will drive them out of buisness, whether deserving or not. When you get your package, Rapidos name is all over it, but the names of all the various shippers seems to be lacking. A whole lot of the workers in the shipping industry are under the assumption that anything fragile is in “shipper proof” packaging and handle it as such. Temperatures can go to extremes. A lot can happen that is not any fault of the manufacturer, but they deal with it anyhow. If Rapido is making things right without question, then I would be happy. Not all mfgs handle complaints that way.
I am not quite sure what motivated you to write such acussations but let me tell you this. the Rapido turbo train is packaged very comfortably in a blister package that can be easily folded open and is not subjecting anyone to use inadvertant force to remove the train or loco from its packaging with force risking to break off parts.
My motivation to post was not a complaint and I carefully worded it so it won’t come out as such, it was to share the quality issues that I have found and to get to know if others had the same. I even made sure that there is a understanding of Rapido being reactive to the issues.
Thank you Harald
This is exactly the point I was making as well. As a example the broken brake magnets on the trust tracks are due to the fact that the blister packaging has no caving for them and by putting the PDC into the packaging have a large likelyhood of being bend or broken off.
I had the same experience with the guidance arms, in my case a eyebolt was missing entirely and the broken off lug for the nose doors is explainable through a original installation mishandlig in case one pushes the door in with the bottom part first and misses to allign the nosepart in its champher on the top of the shell.
There are more explanations but the point was the existance of production assembly line quality issues that should be fixed for a train modell of this price category.
thank you for sharing
Juergen