Like many others in our great hobby I have returned to it after many years in the wilderness. So many changes, so many new and exciting products the mind boggles. The thing that is now occuring which I find unpalatable is the idea dreamed up by the importers of locomotives the “order now and wait while we order your item”. In September last year I ordered a loco from a distributer which was expected to arrive in November… That date has now been put back to March that is a 6 MONTH delay. who knows if this deadline will be met . I can only hope that our suppliers don’t go a step further and demand full payment when ordering…
It seems to be the new darling business model of the N. American industry. I don’t know how it is working for them, but I have learned to forget about projected delivery dates. I have been waiting for a Sunset Selkirk for over two years now, and it isn’t looking promising for 2011. BLI’s UP 9000’s have gone a year past their initially projected delivery, and I have felt a very compelling urge to begin breathing…so I am.
Crandell
I for one will not support this new way of doing business by pre-ordering. If you feel the same way, you can vote with your money by not giving it away for products that don’t exist.
[2c]
It is a frustrating proposition.
I was fortunate to have an LHS that, in the past, would go ahead and pre-order batches of limited production models that the owner knew would sell quickly. When the Genesis HO FP45s (non-sound) arrived, they sold out instantly but he had reserved one for me.
I’m wondering now about the upcoming U50BB as my LHS might not be in the financial position to order several thousand dollars worth of models that may or may not sell out. So do I preorder and hope that it does not become “vapor ware?” Or do I say forget it and take my chances on ebay. I guess I’ll take one of the forks on that road once the I get there.
If it’s not in stock I don’t order it.
Welcome to the new world order of MRRing. Pre-order if you want it, wait , wait, wait some more, then have it cancelled on you and not produced at all due to “low numbers fo pre-orders” or because of “cancelled orders” because the wait was too long.
You should have been around here about 4 years ago. There were HUGE fights over that proceedure. Why? because hobby shops and e-tailers were charging credit cards WHEN THE ORDER WAS PLACED, and NOT when the order SHIPPED OUT THE DOOR! Then people A} had the product all paid off on their credit cards long before it was to arrive or worse, got cancelled, and B} COULD NOT GET THE MONEY BACK TO THEIR CARDS, either form the CC company OR the hobby shop or e-tailers. or C} IF they did get a refund back to the card, they had to “spend the money again” as they could not get cash back form the card for the cash they paid it off with!
Now people call to pre-oder and ASK when the CC gets charged and most hobby shops and e-tailers ahve changed their policy and now only charge when the item ships IF the CC get approved then, because they were loosing business due to it.
If it ain’t available or on the shelves, I don’t buy it.
I have only pre-oredered 4 shorty modern modeled passenger cars due out “early 2011” that I will see how it goes. They promised not to charge my card until shipping and to actually call before shipping when the cars arrive to be sure I still want them {which I do} and onto which card I would like to charge them then. I will see how this experience goes before I pre-order anything again. I know they have my order entered into their data system as I did ordered other in-stock items and they shipped with zeros listed as not yet shipped for the 4 passenger cars on my invoice . SO I have hope. Now if only they come as promised and are produced as promised, I will be happy even if they come in JULY.
I never reserve pre-orders.
I am not offended, I just don’t do it and probably never will. I’m more of an instant gratification kind of guy.
I know what you mean, I’m an instant gratification type of a guy also. But when I miss out on a new release because everybody is sold out of it, that irritates the [explicative removed] out of me.
So basically I’m irritated at the entire “Limited Production” crap that these company’s have for a policy. If a product sells well, why wouldn’t they make more, and make more money? I don’t get it.
That means the more it happens that you miss out on a limited production pre-order run, the more they will force you into it if you really really really want the product and then they can charge full {or even discounted} MSRP for the item and make MORE profit AND sell out ALL produced with no leftovers to be “firesale’d” !
People WILL pay a premium for a “limited production run” of somehting if they really want it. Look at “collectors items” Bachmann can sell thousands of {pre-orderd} On30 Hawthorne Village trains as “collectors items” and know how many to produce and can sell each loco/track oval/DC controller for $150, and sell each car at $79.99 because those who want the set will pay it to get tehm all…AND WAIT for each one to be produced to get the whole set! and they do it time after time!
There is a madness to the method.
We all know that the Franklin Mint has proven that some people will pay any price for anything if you include a lithographed “certificate of authenticity” and call it a collectors edition, but I am not among those people and never will be.
Agree.
I will pre-order if and only if I really want a particular product(s) and my credit card is charged when said product(s) has shipped from the retailer. The thing I hate most are the production delays.
I pre-ordered one time. During my wait ,I went on vacation to a place 800 miles from home. Of course I took in the LHS tour (MR mag in hand with a AAA map inside) and saw my “pre-ordered” diesel loco. on the shelf …twice. One of the shops already had it on special.
Not only was it irritating but ,like a smuck, I felt that my pre-order was a committment on my part. So 3 weeks after I returned home I got my pre-order. NEVER AGAIN!
We really need a “beating a dead horse” emoticon (smiley)
I can understand why manufacturers do this. It doesn’t mean I like it.
If I know it’s something I have to have (ie: C&O 2-6-6-6 H-8) and it’s limited production then I’m more likely to divert my savings there instead of a model that’s common place and on the market for years in ten different forms. (ie: C&O F-7 A-B)
But there is a downside I’m sure they don’t think about. If I have to pre-order and I’m on a budget (let’s say I allow $20/month towards a new loco) and I don’t think I can meet that target, then I won’t buy it. I might have picked up a PRR Q2 if they were available, even though I’m a C&O guy. But the pre-order thing really put it outside my savings budget by the time they were released. Funds were diverted to a Bachmann C&O engine instead.
Years back I worked for the Harley Davidson motorcycle company an American icon and I witnessed something I had never seen before and thought I would never see again until this same stuff has been happening in our hobby but thankfully not to the same degree. These yahoos would come to our dealership and camp out over nite in the parking lot, yes it’s not a typo they would come with motor-homes, pop up trailers, and pup tents just to be first in line to hand over a hefty deposit to wait for as long as a year for their new motorcycle.In many dealerships people were actually buying product over list price and some went as far as buying others places on the list. I found this to be totally ridiculous and laughed at these people. Sorry to say same goes for our hobby. If I give you my money I want what I am buying with in a “reasonable” amount of time not six months later.I recall back a few years trying to buy QSI sound decoders that were supposed to be coming out “real soon” and real soon turned into two years later. Not to get into some bickering match but I feel there should be a law that a manufacture should not be allowed to accept orders for ANYTHING that can not be delivered to the customers with in 3 to 4 weeks just to throw out a number.
[:-^]
The only time I have pre-ordered anything was about a year ago last August (18 months). I ordered a steam generator car for the WP. So, guess what ?? I’m still waiting.
I won’t be doing that any more.
Johnboy out…and still waiting [|(]
Not to get into some bickering match but I feel there should be a law that a manufacture should not be allowed to accept orders for ANYTHING that can not be delivered to the customers with in 3 to 4 weeks just to throw out a number.
:Lessee. You’d kill the building of custom homes for people. The company I used to work for in the semiconductor equipment biz would go out of business because lead times on order to delivery could be as high as a year or more (EVERYTHING was built to order). Boeing (not to mention Airbus, Embraer and Bombardier) would be disallowed from accepting orders for aircraft and GE and EMD wouldn’t be allowed to build locomotives since there is a long lead time for delivery as railroads and airlines generally order for anticipated needs, not for immediate replacement. In any case, Boeing, EMD and GE can’t deliver within a 3 to 4 week time frame. Bath Iron works in Bath, Maine, which builds naval vessels would have to build ships in anticipation of a ship order from the Department of the Navy rather than building to a contracted order.
Personally, I have no problem with pre-ordering. OTOH, nobody has yet come out with something (say a Southern Pacific P-6 4-6-2, laser kits for the SP depot in Pacific Grove and Monterey, buffet parlor car "Oliver Millett, building flats or full kits for any of the sardine canneries along Cannery Row) that I want badly enough to commit to it ahead of time. In the cited cases, I’d probably even be willing to pay full retail.
Andre
I’ve only pre-ordered once in my life and never again. It was the Sunset Z-6 and I decided that I was too old to wait for it, after a year. I cancelled the pre-order, used the deposit at the LHS for something else.
Wouldn’t you know it? Six weeks after I cancelled the pre-order, Sunset put the Z-6 in release.
Oh, well–[:(]
I’ve decided that If it ain’t in stock, I don’t need it.
Tom
It takes at least 12 months to bring a Chinese locomotive model project to market. The prototype data package has to be assembled, and a first sample built. This must be compared against all known photographs of the prototype (in the right time frame) to make sure there are no obvious blunders. Then the cutting of dies can commence. Parts list have to be drawn up, and a spot on the production line reserved. With the merger of most of the Chinese model railroading manufacturing companies, reserving that window has become more difficult. If you can’t have everything ready when the window occurs, the manufacturer goes on to the next order, and you have to reserve a spot down the road. That’s why the length of time to market has been steadily growing.
The importer must also commit at least $200K upfront for new tooling and dies, the production spot, and components like motors and decoders.
If I were investing that kind of money over that kind of time, I would certainly want more than a finger in the wind as to what my sales might be. Making some extra above and beyond the expected initial sales figure can be very profitable for all as impulse sales take off. OTOH, produce even a few too many models, and the unsold units have to be dumped (to pay off the investors) at bargain prices, under cutting the dealers’ margins and creating lots of ill will.
If the likely sales can support a second run, the dies can be re-used making the second run much more profitable than the first. But again, waiting in line for a production window is a reality.
OTOH, if pre-orders are really dismal, perhaps I don’t want to throw my money at a project that is likely to fail. Delaying the start, or cancellation might be fiscal sanity.
The Chinese model manufacturers are unlikely to grow more capacity. Their source for the cheap semi-skilled or skilled labor required to assemble the locomotives is drying up. What the Chinese
Exactly, I have trouble with that too. If I’m going to pay for it, I want it in my hand within a reasonable amount of time or forget it. Empty promises don’t cut it.
As a matter of notation, I too am one of the lost who has returned and so far what I see does not please me. Prices have sky-rocketted, stock has depleted, many of the former selection of excellent manufacturers have disappeared, and this whole pre-ordering & limited production system where you may or may not be able to aquire something really really bites the big one!
I used to think being a Jeep owner was expensive, but now that I get back into MR I am thinking that the two must be in colusion to extort my hard earned cash.