LIONEL CUSTOMER SERVICE??

Nicholas Smith has them for about $450.00

thank you potrzbe

 

i ordered from nicholas smith a few minutes ago

 

still the customer service issue stands

 

j

Well, next time try here first. These guys know more about Lionel than Lionel does...

That is sadly the truth in more ways than one.  Work environments have changed... communication is a disaster at best... and in most cases than not, the left and right hands literally don't know what they're doing.   But the executives continue to rake in ridiculous compensations.  Amazing...

 

BTW, this is not just a criticism of Lionel either.  A month or so ago, I recall reading a thread where someone made a few inquiries to MTH about the LCCA Standard Gauge "Goliath" (Brute), and they were told by an MTH rep that MTH had no information on the product and sent them on their way to Lionel or the LCCA to get the information they needed!!! 

 

Bottom line... the information you get is ONLY as good as the accuracy of the person giving it.  Pretty sad no matter how you look at it.  

 

David

That's the truth right there, and now you know. As with a vast number of manufacturers in the U.S., product goes to distributors who market the product to dealers. Lionel has no idea at all to whom product goes, as cbojanower noted.

 

What you have to do is call around, and call around some more. Go on line, ask on the Forum if anyone has seen the item at any dealer, check advertisers in the O gauge magazines and call them. Sometimes it takes a good deal of research, and sometimes you get lucky. I have spent time over days sometimes trying to find an item.

Lionel dealers can check stock at the factory level from the Lionel dealer website.

Interesting in that quite a few of these Heritage engines are listed as in stock.

 

My company deals with customers who ask the same type question--- where can I get this item (cheaper or best price or best service)? Our response is ' we cannot favor any distributor or customer' and give a list of our top 10 distributors.

The first mistake made was to call Lionel (or any manufacturer for that matter) to inquire about the retail level availability of a product.  MTH at least has a product locator on their website, but I don't believe Lionel or others do.  Still, lacking that sort of feature, I think it's unreasonable to assume that you can just pick up the phone and call the manufacturer to see which dealers have a particular item.  The folks there are simply not going to have that information available, and even if they did it's unreasonable to expect them to provide it to individual customers.  Do it for one and they would have to do it for everyone.

 

Ditto for the person who contacted MTH to inquire about a product made exclusively for the LCCA.  The people handling the calls at MTH are not going to know any specifics related to that product, and the proper thing to do would have been to contact the LCCA.  It was/is, after all, their product.

 

Common sense, people...common sense! 

Common sense is not all that common. But the reality is that Lionel is not a manufacturer . And do not even keep manufacturing records. I have been custom manufacturing since 1984 and prior to AutoCad kept paper copies of all manufacturing drawings. Lionel is a company that specifies product from overseas manufactures and hopes that they get what they asked for. And redistribute through lower tier distributors. In my experience, I have yet to talk to a tech support guy who had any real working knowledge of the product other than looking at the same parts schematics that are available on line. And they do not seem to aware of any documents or drawings with dimensions or tolerance call outs. Probably all in Chinese characters if they exist. I can look up details of products that I made for customers 10 years ago and re manufacture one offs to replace as needed per request. And I regularly talk to manufacturers who also not only have good archival documentation but can also trace product through distribution chains to find obscure parts with minimal effort. And they really are just another wholesaler providing what will eventually be throw away overseas manufactured electronic goods that with the exception of those owned by a few tech savy people tinkering with them, will not be more than highly detailed paperweights. Except for the post war stuff of course.