Lionel service dept changes

That's a neat trick - dropping it off a month before the York meet!

I suspect you meant April 24.

Hate to be so crass! But, stick that sixty dollars where the sun don't shine! That sixty really means at least a hundred With shipping! Stop playing games with parts And stock them. I will fix it myself. I am sick of sending expensive locomotives to be serviced that become more damaged in shipping. If I have to spend a hundred I might as well put it into parts instead of service and shipping. Stupid stupid stupid! They move so much now they must service engines out of the back of an RV!

Um does he have a track? He puts it on, sees what the problem is, calls Lionel and sees what they can do. If they can duplicate it and get an RA all is good.

I think if you get an RA and a documented case that you and the phone tech troubleshot it, then I doubt the charge would get applied if somehow it was working fine when it got to Lionel.

I never ran a repaire department, but I did work on a phone help desk for a few months, that in mind I find it hard to remember me working for nothing.

Only my two cents!

John, I agree. Service is something that effects everyone one of us at some point. We keep spending more and getting less for what we purchase. It just seems that nobody cares and is willing to get screwed!

Maytag made a ton of money on washing machines that were reliable. In fact the repairman sat around waiting for a call that never came. People should not be hassled with the worry of repair all the time And should expect reliability. Plan and simple stand behind your product and keep the consumer happy!

I'm guessing they're going to be very selective about who they charge $60.00 for "non-repairs."  In other words, they'll do this only for repeat offenders, not those who don't have a previous record of repeated cluelessness/refusal to read the darn manual.

uh huh, you sure bought into that advertising didn't you.

FWIW Lionel's service Dept has been top notch and very fast the few times I have had to use them.

Hmm, So, If they don't find anything wrong, I pay 60.00. Well, does that mean, I get 60.00 from Lionel when the item is bad out of the box. First of all--what person would go through the problem of shipping and cost if they thought they didn't have a issue? Maybe, a customer unfamiliar with the products technology?  But, It's alright if a hobby shop checks it out for free? I think the dealers should take the same tone on returns and checking out possibly bad units for Customers. I think they should charge 60.00. It would be just great for business.

This idea is dumb...just like the system of a thousand remotes. A system cab2 can't operate...Einstein please. The other issue- the first time a customer gets hit for the sixty dollar fee... I'm sure the next unit sent back for repair will be a John Gotti job.

It will certainly be broke. This may actually cost Lionel money.

I agree.  And even if they do charge a fee for the time spent trying to find a non-existent problem, is this any different from if you call in an engineer to fix your home heating system that has 'broken', and he discovers that you had run of fuel, or turned off the gas when you went away on vacation?

I'm sure that there will also be some cases that cannot be easily replicated, and a charge may be levied in error. But I'm fairly sure that if the problem persists, and can subsequently be proved to be a genuine problem, that the fee would be refunded.

In such cases of intermittent, or hard to replicate problems, it is most important to provide the service department with full details of the problem, and the exact circumstances of when it occurs. For example, would you take your car to the dealer and just say 'The lights don't work!' or would you tell them 'When turning left in heavy rain, one headlamp goes out.'?

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I never ran a repaire department, but I did work on a phone help desk for a few months, that in mind I find it hard to remember me working for nothing. 

I managed a help desk. The majority of calls could have been avoided if people read their documentation. Help desk employees are paid, so I don't know what "working for nothing means". Operating a help desk is part of a companies cost of doing business.

Few people would intentionally send back a working train. They have to pay shipping, and are without their property of a period of time. Plus they risk shipping damage.

Has this policy been documented on their product boxes, or on the written materials packed with their trains?

Turning away from the hobby, I wouldn't buy anything from a company with a warrantee policy like this.

Lionel’s best repair man Brain Tusin is staying in Ohio

Maybe Brian will be opening up his own shop.

If Brian stays in Ohio hopefully he will let us know where he is doing business.

Any authorized Lionel Service Facility can do repair work on Lionel trains and warranty work on all but Vision products. Some shops are even repairing out of warranty Vision products. They are free to charge their own hourly rate as well.

Other than repair parts becoming hard to come by for a few months, I don't see the move as a big deal for the customers.

Pete

Agreed while i did stock up on motors smoke elements couplers and several es44 parts...I am very ****ed you cant buy a motor driver board 90% of the new engines have the same board...Its not like its the sound board... I gonna buy a blow out engine from charles ro i guess...

Wow,  you really don't expect many of us to be sad that you can't had deliver your items to Lionel do you? For the majority of us it makes no difference where the repair place is going to be, its just an address we ship to.

As for the $60.00 charge, once again we have spent two pages speculating about something that Lionel has yet to post officially. Maybe, as others have speculated, is a targeted charge at those who are unwilling to work the approved route and insist on sending their items in without working with the CS support techs.

I worked phone tech support for 12 years, and you do get those who demand that a tech come out and fix something while refusing to go through the basic troubleshooting process on the phone. We would snicker when the work order came back saying how all that was found was a disconnected network cable, monitor was shut off or a simple reboot fixed it. We would categorize these as an ID Ten Tee error or (ID10T) errors. But hey its only your tax dollars that was paying us to spend an hour driving to a remote location and plugging in someones computer, no problem with that right?

Like I said earlier, if you work with the tech on the phone, and have them write a detailed ticket (which they should do since that is their job) and they,  along with you, can duplicate the problem. Anyone would have a hard time billing you when a miracle fix happens during shipment. Now if you are the guy who calls and insists that his train is broken and "I don't have the time to work with you, send me an RA" and when it gets there all that is found is the sound pot was dialed down, you should get charged.

Not EVER to change the subject but Forget it.You know all of these high end stainless kitchen appliances we are buying?...WAIT until you find out what it cost to bring a repair man out to your house to work on them PLUS parts.You won't remember what your name OR a train is.Nick

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Not EVER to change the subject but Forget it.You know all of these high end stainless kitchen appliances we are buying?...WAIT until you find out what it cost to bring a repair man out to your house to work on them PLUS parts.You won't remember what your name OR a train is.Nick

When my stainless steel oven needed warrantee repair within a year, there was no charge for parts or labor.

When a board went bad after about 10 years, it cost around six hundred.

When the oven failed again within a year due to that same board, plus an equally expensive one, both boards were provided by the manufacturer without charge (one was under warrantee). Labor was around two hundred.

It's hard to avoid electronics in appliances, I can avoid them in my toy trains.

in Canton.  the only thing worth anything in Canton is the pro-football hall of fame.

Canfield.

Good news for me because they are moving to my neck of the woods.Being that I live in monroe nc.Which is only 30 miles from concord nc.I am sure when the move is done and every body is set up.Every thing will be fine just give them so time.

the only thing worth anything in Canton is the pro-football hall of fame.

You apparently have not rode on the Cuyahoga Valley Railroad a few miles north of Canton.

Most of the replies I have read could have come from corporate. When I have talked to CS you usually talk to someone who reads off a computer or cheat sheet. Only once was I able to talk to a tech. As C. W. Burfle said turning away from the hobby, I wouldn't buy anything from a company with a warrantee policy like this. Here is the text from Meghan of CS so unless its a trial balloon it is Lionel's new policy.

 Regarding the $60 dollar fee, if a return authorization comes in to our facility under warranty and we find that nothing was wrong with the item, we do charge a $60 fee to cover the time spent for the technician to check over the engine. This fee can be avoided by doing some simple troubleshooting with the customer service rep over the phone. Sometimes, there a simple fixes that can be done over the phone with the customer. It helps you avoid the cost of having to ship the item back to us. Again, 5 to 10 minutes of troubleshooting with our customer service reps can save you shipping costs and time spent without your engine.

there headquarters are not in canton.  the train just goes close.

Cuyahoga Valley Railroad

Peninsula, OH 44264

quote:

Free shipping for veterans on warranty repairs. 

I appreciate our service people and our veterans.

But this policy does not help people who are not veterans.

Maybe only veterans should buy newly made trains?

I share the same concern, particularly with newcomers to the hobby.  The Lionel name is still magic around the holidays, and I would hate for someone's first experience with O gauge trains to be negative in any respect.

Maybe they would be HAPPIER if they WERE in the auto buisness.

Automobile manufacturers are only required to issue recalls on "safety related" issues.

Anything else is a  T.echnical S.ervice B.ulletin and is paid for by the consumer. I.E defective timing chain components on 3.5l v6's across several foreign and domestic brands, a $1500-$2000 repair.

Other things, i.e. like the transmissions going out near the 100,000 mile mark on the majority of 96-05 Ford Taurus' is just a crap product, no TSB. A $3000-$4000 problem.

Funny how Ford dropped the "Quality is job 1" slogan years ago.

Of course theres that faulty ignition switch thing GM chose to ignore while we gave them our tax dollars. No recall or TSB, eh it only killed 13 people.

False equivalency.  Using warranty policy requirements of automobile manufacturers and comparing it to O gauge train manufacturers/importers, has such a large disparity between the two there's no valid comparison or argument.

I don't know where this falls in regards to recalls.

My wife's Subaru needed new rear wheel bearings after more than five years.

They were replaced one at a time without charge because Subaru had some sort of bulletin out on them.

Well, say what you will John. Obviously there are differences but Shawn stated "they should be happy they are not in the auto buisness" as if to say automakers are obligated to fix all out of warranty defects at no charge

I don't think there are any manufacturers of anything that will recall out of warranty items with potential defects and fix them free of charge. Fire risks for an appliance, a wheel falling off of a subaru etc, are SAFETY issues that will be recalled and repaired replaced or refunded.

Even with its flaws Lionel has set the service and parts dept for o guage pretty high.  In fact,Lionel did recall/repair or refund the waterlogged steam turbines last year.

I'll play "devils advocate" here, how many people post questions on the forum that can be answered simply by reading the owners manual of the product in question?

 I.E.We get, what are the "three blinking cab light"? posts here all the time even though Lionel has the codes listed in every owners manual. Others ask, how to turn smoke on and off etc.

On a side note,I had an out of warranty loco "defect" fixed for free including shipping both ways. Sometimes "its not what you say, but how you say it".

Its the same ole "pile on Lionel" type of thread, and as mentioned much earlier, with all due respect, this info comes second hand from another forum member. There has been nothing official stated from Mike Reagan or anyone else at Lionel.

How about the $600 Back Shops that dont work,it looks good in the box,Lionel said too bad,we dont have a board, I also own a ZW-C Boat Anchor that went back twice,so why would I buy a ZWL.

mIKEY