Has Lionel gone back to posting SHIPPED dates in the schedule?

As far as I know there has been no change to their madness.

This new "strategy" of deleting shipped items from the list is one of the most ill-conceived approaches Lionel has taken regarding their online shipping schedule -- especially for a customer-facing document.

 

If the approach has any kind of internal merit whatsoever, that's fine.  But then they should have two "sections" to the schedule:  one that shows all items yet to be shipped (sorted by product number), and another section that shows all items shipped during this calendar year (also sorted by product number).  And then at the end of a calendar year, one final schedule showing all items shipped that year could be saved for reference/archive purposes.

 

This is not rocket science, and I hate to harp on the undoubted costs associated with Lionel's new level of executive management.  But sometimes I just wander why companies are so top-heavy these days as opposed to spending money down in the ranks where everyday employees actually "get stuff done properly". 

 

Just calling it the way I see it. 

 

David

I guess my question is:  Are the items with a "shipped" date on the photo in the 1st post just random noise or does this represent Lionel now updating shipped items with the shipped date again?

 

I think I'll ask on their Facebook page.  They seem to answers questions there.

Chris,

 

Good luck on Facebook.  If the folks there are the same on the talk_to_us crew, history has shown they don't have a clue what's going on.  But they are polite and professional and trying to do a good job.  It's just that the left and right hands within Lionel (and all the other importers as well) don't often talk to each other.  Even with MTH, their PR group incorrectly told a recent inquirer that MTH is not producing the LCCA Goliath Brute and sent them over to Lionel for further info.    Yikes!!!  Some days we wonder if ANYBODY knows what's going on anymore.

 

I think what you noticed with the "shipped" comments showing up in a few places are more or less for partial shipments.  It doesn't mean "items shipped during April 2013" the way we'd think it does, but rather some items have already shipped in past months and additional shipments are expected in April 2013.  Absolutely an absurd and non-intuitive way to think, I'll admit.  But that's the only thing I've been able to decipher over the past several months that Lionel has been removing items from the list when they ship.

 

God help us all, please!!!

 

David

Dont think they are changing it to show shipped items. I just picked up the Koi aquarium car #2 which arrived at my local dealer last week and already is no longer on the shipping scedule.  Agree that its a crazy system, was better before.

 

BTW, Lionel dealers do have the ability to check inventory of any item. If the item has been shipped and is still available its listed as "in stock".

David, I agree!! I'm new at the pre-order game with Lionel, so not as familiar as some others here with the way they post the shipping schedule. As a "newbie", I must say Lionel employs a ridiculous method of tracking shipping status. For example, there are new items (not left-over stock) in the just-released catalog that do not show up at all in the shipping schedule because apparently they are already here in the US, ready to be shipped to dealers. Why can't they just show ALL products in the new catalog in the shipping schedule and state "available for shipping", or "shipped" when that's the case? Instead they choose not to show them at all, forcing interested potential customers, especially newbies like me, to do the detective work to figure out when these items will be arriving. Crazy!