MTH Quality Control

I would call Midge from parts on the phone, that is how stuff gets done. If that fails try to get a hold of Jason who is the head of parts.

I e mailed Midge over a week ago no reply so evidently it was deleted I'll try calling Jason. 

And that is why we have telephones.  Sometimes "telephonic" works better than "electronic".  Keep calling and have someone paged if necessary. Hope your luck improves 

Gene H posted:

......... I recieved my Union Pacific Aux water tender today and .......................................................I tried e mailing parts only to be ignored as well. 

Gene H posted:

I e mailed Midge over a week ago no reply so evidently it was deleted I'll try calling Jason. 

I'll state first that I don't disagree with your topic regarding lack of QC.

But you do realize how the way your first post read could make us believe you tried to email today, when you received your engine and considered the email ignored because you did not have a response yet? (for a relatively small (big picture, not trains) company like MTH I would not expect immediate feedback)

With your follow up, I'm making a guess here we must be talking about a separate event for the parts department contact attempt, since it's not possible to email a week ago for an issue you noticed today.

-Dave

Gene, if its any consolation my experience with MTH is the same as yours. Both emails and phone calls get ignored. I tried for two weeks to get information on parts replacement. Zero, zip, nada. I ended up making my own.

Size of the company??? I get replies from places like Siemens and Agilent-Hewlett Packard within a few hours if not minutes. You could probably fit 20 MTHs in their warehouses alone.

Pete

My first engine, a MTH Proto 2, was DOA from the LHS. Luckily, the LHS took pity on me and did a same day repair at their own facility for no charge. The rest of my MTH products have been good. Overall, quality control for MTH has had a little better track record (I like the pun) than Lionel.

I bought a RailKing diesel in January this year and attempted to register it and the system would not take the registration. Worried that the lack of actual registration would void the warrantee, I emailed MTH on January 8th for help getting the engine registered. On March 14 they finally answered my email. So that is two months...hardly prompt.

In addition I have had many problems with their RealTrax track and switches that I just fixed myself. I have seven of their switches. Each suffered  a non-operational anti-derailment feature and had to be dis-assembled to adjust the points so trains would not derail going through them. One diesel came through with an inoperative 2/3 rail switch I had to wire around. One streamliner car, that was supposed to accommodate O-31 curves, had to have part of the body cut away to make the many O-31 curves on my layout. My new articulated RailKing Allegheny, that also is suppose to do O-31 curves, will not do all of them on my layout and the smoke unit is non-operational (I don't use smoke because it stinks up my whole house so it is academic that it does not work). My tinplate City of Denver will not accommodate one of my switches by shorting out the track. I have to run it on a different loop. This is a design error not a quality control issue. MTH 100watt power brick has a circuit breaker in it so slow I was popping the 20 Amp fuses in the DCS TIU with every derailment. I had to add a series fast acting magnetically triggered aircraft circuit breaker to solve that problem. Every engine that I have had apart for whatever reason uses twist electrical connectors like you find in home wiring and the rest of the wiring is a jumble of wires with no attempt to neatness for easy trouble shooting of a wiring problem.

Once you start a layout you become committed to the chosen "System". I chose RealTrax (a BIG mistake) and MTH DCS (actually an excellent simple to use digital control system). But that later choice limits me to MTH engines with Proto 2/3 unless I add the Lionel digital control system to my layout at well over $300 or run conventional which negates any Proto 2/3 engines at the same time. So I am stuck in MTH. I think the Lionel system has similar problems. I am too far invested in MTH to do nothing more than repair their problems and live with it. It is kind of a sorry state but I accept it.

LDBennett

The parts I inquired was a differnt issue. I repaird the tender with a washer from my parts box and didn't need there parts but I inquired about diaphrams for a Aerotrain and no reply. This isn't the first time this has happend. Bachmann and Lionel has there parts listed online and your order is at your door withing a week. It took MTH 9 months to repair my LO-v and 6 monhs for my P5a and it too Lionel 1 week for my Camelback and there are more Lionel trains out there than MTH.

Norton posted:

.............

Size of the company??? I get replies from places like Siemens and Agilent-Hewlett Packard within a few hours if not minutes. You could probably fit 20 MTHs in their warehouses alone.

..........

That was exactly my point.  Those are large companies that have more resources applied to customer service.

In the grand scheme of things, MTH is a small company compared to any company that is not a hobby niche.  Both Siemens and Agilent-HP (or Keysight, is it now?)  are huge compared to MTH.

I'm not defending MTH here.

-Dave

I think MTH's position would be "Be glad you have any O gauge trains and accessories at all". Sorry folks but it is a dying hobby following all us old folks who is all that is left pursuing the O gauge train hobby. Things will not get better with MTH so you just have to work around their quality problems and fix them yourself.

LDBennett

LDBennett posted:

I think MTH's position would be "Be glad you have any O gauge trains and accessories at all". Sorry folks but it is a dying hobby following all us old folks who is all that is left pursuing the O gauge train hobby. Things will not get better with MTH so you just have to work around their quality problems and fix them yourself.

LDBennett

I would take issue with that.  This hobby may be shrinking a bit but it is far from dying.  There were plenty of train nuts before "Baby Boomer" came along and there will be after we are gone.

I've been dealing with MTH since the company's inception and never had an issue that was not resolved to my satisfaction. Midge, in parts, has always been helpful and got back to me with an answer every time. What really bothers me is when MTH makes something wrong when they could have easily done minimal research and made it right.   

I have not had any problem with MTH products. Usually it's my lack of knowledge about something like the DCS system. 

The only minor complaint is their traction tires wear out quickly.

Lee Fritz

Grampstrains posted:

LDBennett posted:

I think MTH's position would be "Be glad you have any O gauge trains and accessories at all". Sorry folks but it is a dying hobby following all us old folks who is all that is left pursuing the O gauge train hobby. Things will not get better with MTH so you just have to work around their quality problems and fix them yourself.

LDBennett

I would take issue with that.  This hobby may be shrinking a bit but it is far from dying.  There were plenty of train nuts before "Baby Boomer" came along and there will be after we are gone.

I would take even stronger issue with it. The "dying hobby" refrain is reiterated far too often on this forum. Gimme a break. Look at all the advertisers at the top of the web page. Lionel's entry level LionChief line is very popular according to some suppliers I know and there is a another new product line -- O Scale Reproductions -- entering the market. As for quality, I would give MTH pretty good marks based on my own experience. Their on-going issue seems to be parts access and repair turnaround.

Sorry guys, but you saw my list and that is only the problems I can remember off the top of my head. I have only bought MTH stuff for the last 2 to 3 years as I never had O gauge before (except when I was kid some 60 years ago).

I don't mind fixing small stuff but the RealTrax problems and their impact on a couple engines is very disheartening to me, especially with the high MTH prices. But for me MTH is the only reasonable game in town, at this point. I sure am not going to throw out $1000 worth of RealTrax even if it is problematical. I can live with it after several fixes but the RealTrax is far from perfect. I don't think my expectation are excessive (??).

LDBennett

My premier line centipedes board shorted the first time I put it on the tracks.

PAUL ROMANO posted:

I've been dealing with MTH since the company's inception and never had an issue that was not resolved to my satisfaction. Midge, in parts, has always been helpful and got back to me with an answer every time. What really bothers me is when MTH makes something wrong when they could have easily done minimal research and made it right.   

Paul, Could you please tell me the secret password or show me the secret handshake? My messages go unreturned.

Dave, my point is if MTH does not have enough staff to do the job they need to hire more people. Does no good to sell product if you can't back it up. I actually prefer what MTH makes and in most cases take care of any issues myself but not if I can't get the parts. My local dealer has the same complaint and is seriously considering cutting the cord.

Pete

I agree about a dying hobby. Todays children, teens etc don't even know what a steam locomotive is. In a resturant all you see is people eating and looking at there I Phones. You can tell at York how the aisles got wider with no traffic jams. I mean traffic jams of people when someone stopped to look at a item lol. As far as traction tires I feel like a Good Year Tire store I replace at least one set a week on any make but if you like to pull long trains like I do, that's the price you have to pay.  

I've been procrastinating for years about building a layout. My motivation was my 8 year old grandson that visited for Christmas. He loved my trains. His father introduced him to trains starting with Thomas. They live in a very small apartment in Japan, so no room for trains like mine.

Norton posted:

Size of the company??? I get replies from places like Siemens and Agilent-Hewlett Packard within a few hours if not minutes. You could probably fit 20 MTHs in their warehouses alone.

 

Correct. Those companies are large enough that it makes sense to have multiple someones who do nothing but sit there and wait for the phone to ring all day long, and are somewhat knowledgeable about the products and services of the company.

MTH is small enough that one person has to fulfill multiple roles. They need to make every dollar count to keep their heads above water. To have someone knowledgeable manning the phones all day long with no other responsibilities does not make fiscal sense, and to have some clueless minimum-wage rent-a-secretary answering the phone is no better than having nobody answer the phone at all.

I'm not saying it's right or condoning it, which is what people usually assume. I'm just saying that's how it is. It's the reality of modern business.

I have resisted the constant lure of fully featured trains and track systems for years now.  Just an occasional glance at the forum here once a week reassures me that I need to wait longer for the product, technology and quality control to mature.  That tubular track and conventional stuff is still running.

Mine have always been repaired locally. They make some nice looking trains but their lack of people to take care of customers, and repairs, is a big turn off for me. It's been like that for a long time, I can't justify supporting a company that does business that way.

"To have some clueless minimum-wage rent-a-secretary answering the phone is no better than having nobody answer the phone at all."

I don't know if I agree with that, while said person may not be able to help the person with a problem, they at the very least can act as a front end for the company, to make customers feel someone cares. More importantly, you don't have to know anything to make sure that the right person gets the question/problem, if they have some sort of call tracking system (which is not exactly a big deal), the front end person can make sure someone gets it who knows, and also can follow through. Keep in mind that with MTH we are not talking a company producing millions of units a year and expecting one person to handle it all, so having someone making sure that trouble calls and so forth are answered is not impossible, even for a small firm. They probably are akin to a small car dealership in terms of activity. 

I am not directly criticizing MTH, since I have not had to deal with them, I am simply saying that there is no excuse for even the smaller companies to have decent customer service, there is technology to allow for efficient call tracking and problem resolution.  Having talked to someone and knowing they are working on it, even if it takes some time, is better than feeling ignored. Sadly, if in fact this is the way MTH is (and like I said, I have no personal basis to know), that comes off as a company that seems to feel customers don't count, that basically they feel like they don't have much to worry about, and so forth. 

I hate to be contrary but I bought two Railkings in the last 12 months, one diesel and one steamer, both worked perfectly.

I've got tons of MTH stuff and prolly about 60 MTH locos and I haven't had much in the way of poor quality with any of them. Maybe one had to go back for service once but other than that they all came out of the box and worked great. Now a customer of mine loves MTH and every loco he has bought in the last year had some sort of issue. I have 10 times as many trains and 1/5 the problems ha had. I guess it's just the luck of the draw

Matt Makens posted:

I've got tons of MTH stuff and prolly about 60 MTH locos and I haven't had much in the way of poor quality with any of them. Maybe one had to go back for service once but other than that they all came out of the box and worked great. Now a customer of mine loves MTH and every loco he has bought in the last year had some sort of issue. I have 10 times as many trains and 1/5 the problems ha had. I guess it's just the luck of the draw

I would take that a step further and guess that a lot of quality problems are self inflicted. Handling, wiring, track power, PS2 battery and the DCS/DCC switch being in the wrong position come to mind. With all of the MTH engines I have I have only had two "quality" problems. A loose roller screw and a loose wire inside a steam engine that shorted to the shell. Both very easy fixes. One the great features about MTH engines is how easy it is to remove/replace the shell in most cases. Lionel Legacy not so much.

Why is it that anyone who has or has heard of a "quality" issue from one of our O gauge suppliers, that they feel free to complain on this forum???  Wouldn't it be better and more efficient to try to make a telephone call or a letter to resolve the issue? 

As far as MTH, I've had a couple of minor issues which were addressed andd fixed via use of my telephone. As far as email, I won't use it except to friends. I've been a supporter of MTH because of their high quality and variety of product and will continue. I think this forum can be used for more critical and interesting issues.

JMHO, Dave G.

dgauss posted:

Why is it that anyone who has or has heard of a "quality" issue from one of our O gauge suppliers, that they feel free to complain on this forum???  Wouldn't it be better and more efficient to try to make a telephone call or a letter to resolve the issue? 

As far as MTH, I've had a couple of minor issues which were addressed andd fixed via use of my telephone. As far as email, I won't use it except to friends. I've been a supporter of MTH because of their high quality and variety of product and will continue. I think this forum can be used for more critical and interesting issues.

JMHO, Dave G.

Some of us have made telephone calls but they are never returned. Same with emails. Are you saying I should expect a better response if I wrote a letter? If they don't have the 15 seconds to hit the reply button and type "I will look into it" then hit the send button how do you expect they have the time to sit down, write or type a letter, then put it in an envelope with a stamp and mail it? 

Pete

"I bought a RailKing diesel in January this year and attempted to register it and the system would not take the registration. "

It has been my experience that every MTH product that I have ever bought came with a Warranty Card that could be filled out and send in if one so desired.

What did Einstein say about repeating the same thing(email) which doesn't work? That's why I don't use it.

Re: telephone calls, have you made more than 2x?

BTW, I'm not a spokesman for OGR.

"Why is it that anyone who has or has heard of a "quality" issue from one of our O gauge suppliers, that they feel free to complain on this forum???"

Let me turn the question around, and say why shouldn't they feel free to complain? Are people afraid that if people complain on here, that MTH and Lionel or whoever will get their nose bent out of joint and will pull out of the O gauge market?  If someone feels they haven't gotten good service from someone, have tried to reach out to them in good faith and didn't get a response, why shouldn't they complain? 

And more importantly, why do some people feel like they have to make excuses for the companies in question? Things like "they are a small company, you can't expect any better" . While I think it is great that people have suggested ways to get in touch with, in this case, the folks at MTH, the excuses I hear bother me, because if someone is in business and someone has an issue with them as a customer, the company should be concerned. It reminds me of back in the day when the US car companies were so terrible, and all these "GM guys" and "Ford Guys" were basically saying people shouldn't complain about the cars or worse, should buy the cars because if they don't, 'they won't get any better' (reminds me of the GM of the NY Mets telling the fans that if they wanted to see better teams on the field, they should buy tickets to games, no matter how bad the team is). 

I think it is okay when people say they have had good experiences with MTH as well, that is saying that not everyone had a bad experience, but suppressing a bad customer experience doesn't do anyone any good..it is almost like people think that MTH and Lionel are doing them some sort of favor by being in business, that they basically are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, charity in a sense, and we better not complain because they might think people are ungrateful and pitch their tent and go away, which is ludicrous, these are operating businesses making money, and if people complain about their quality they aren't going to fold because they are still making money after all. If the worry is that if people complain on here, no one will buy the product and they will go out of business, given that O gauge trains are an oligopoly, that isn't likely either. 

dgauss posted:

What did Einstein say about repeating the same thing(email) which doesn't work? That's why I don't use it.

Re: telephone calls, have you made more than 2x?

BTW, I'm not a spokesman for OGR.

3 phone calls and 4 emails within 2 weeks. Its not for lack of trying and the question was very simple regarding parts availability. Their web page is fairly useless for most items as the parts diagram link is almost always grayed out. I order from Lionel on a monthly basis. That is what I am comparing MTH's service to. Its been mentioned the as small as 3rd Rail is I have never waited more than half a day for response, one time Scott was in Korea when he replied.

Pete

Scott T Johnson posted:

Grampstrains posted:

LDBennett posted:

I think MTH's position would be "Be glad you have any O gauge trains and accessories at all". Sorry folks but it is a dying hobby following all us old folks who is all that is left pursuing the O gauge train hobby. Things will not get better with MTH so you just have to work around their quality problems and fix them yourself.

LDBennett

I would take issue with that.  This hobby may be shrinking a bit but it is far from dying.  There were plenty of train nuts before "Baby Boomer" came along and there will be after we are gone.

I would take even stronger issue with it. The "dying hobby" refrain is reiterated far too often on this forum. Gimme a break. Look at all the advertisers at the top of the web page. Lionel's entry level LionChief line is very popular according to some suppliers I know and there is a another new product line -- O Scale Reproductions -- entering the market. As for quality, I would give MTH pretty good marks based on my own experience. Their on-going issue seems to be parts access and repair turnaround.

The O Scale Reproductions is just a rehash of the RMT line. If the hobby isn't dying, then it is sick. Fact is, young kids do not have interest in trains at the same level as we baby boomers. I have serious concerns about the future of the hobby. I would not agree, however, that this precipitates a "love it or leave it" attitude from any manufacturer.

Your best bet if you like MTH products but question the quality is to make your purchases from a dealer that is an MTH authorized service center. I am an MTH certified repair tech and any train that I sell to my customers I will repair under warranty. If your dealer is not willing to do that and MTH is having a hard time dealing with their workload then maybe find another dealer

Since, there are so many viewers on this topic, I am going to ask the forum what they think I should do about an old acknowledged MTH steam engine problem that I wasn't aware of. My trains were packed up for the last 14 years or so. I have a Premier PRR Atlantic with the "flickering headlight when smoke is on" problem. I don't know how I wasn't aware that my locomotive had this problem. Maybe I never tested the smoke since I was operating a carpet layout. I've been too busy working on my new layout to deal with this, so I have not called MTH. Does anyone think that MTH would help me? I'm hoping to hear from those that are aware of this problem. If not, are their any techs on the forum that could help me?

Michael Hokkanen posted:

Scott T Johnson posted:

Grampstrains posted:

LDBennett posted:

I think MTH's position would be "Be glad you have any O gauge trains and accessories at all". Sorry folks but it is a dying hobby following all us old folks who is all that is left pursuing the O gauge train hobby. Things will not get better with MTH so you just have to work around their quality problems and fix them yourself.

LDBennett

I would take issue with that.  This hobby may be shrinking a bit but it is far from dying.  There were plenty of train nuts before "Baby Boomer" came along and there will be after we are gone.

I would take even stronger issue with it. The "dying hobby" refrain is reiterated far too often on this forum. Gimme a break. Look at all the advertisers at the top of the web page. Lionel's entry level LionChief line is very popular according to some suppliers I know and there is a another new product line -- O Scale Reproductions -- entering the market. As for quality, I would give MTH pretty good marks based on my own experience. Their on-going issue seems to be parts access and repair turnaround.

The O Scale Reproductions is just a rehash of the RMT line. If the hobby isn't dying, then it is sick. Fact is, young kids do not have interest in trains at the same level as we baby boomers. I have serious concerns about the future of the hobby. I would not agree, however, that this precipitates a "love it or leave it" attitude from any manufacturer.

I must say that I get a major league charge when I read posts about our "sick" and/or dying hobby.  I have been a member of this forum for fifteen years and from day one I have read post after post where someone stakes out the position that this hobby is all but dead.  Well, I'm not quite sure what they are smoking but in the last fifteen years this hobby has grown by leaps and bounds.  Those individuals who were mature adults during what we all refer to as the golden age of this hobby back sixty to seventy years ago would stand there today with their mouths hanging wide open if they saw all the product we have available today.  So like one poster said, "Gimme a break".  

As far as quality control is concerned every manufacturer in the toy train industry could do a better job ensuring their products are trouble free, at least when they are received. 

I did contact MTH on  a couple of my problems but they were design problems for which MTH could offer no help. Examples:

RealTrax...Rails that don't line up because there are no alignment pins, switches whose points don't fully travel, guard rails in switches that allow wheels on the other side to bump into  frog, MTH engine that shorts going through switch by design of the engine (tin plate single truck powered diesel)

Power Brick with extremely slow acting circuit breaker that allow 20 amp DCS TIU fuse to blow before 7 amp breaker trips. The circuit breaker is operational but EXTREMELY slow.

An offer of replacements will not solve any of these problems. I jury rigged them and they work acceptably or the engine that shorts out through a particular switch is not allowed on that loop.

How about a two month delay in answering an email reporting the failure of the web site to accept my registration of a new engine.

Another sore spot is the lack of parts diagrams for most of the products (part icon greyed out). I don't even know what to order let alone being able to get to a parts ordering person via phone.

Today service is not paramount to business, it seems. There are exceptions but they are not the rule. I see this same exact phone/email responses from a hand gun manufacturer I frequent.  Who here has not  been sent to robo-music for long periods of time when trying to contact almost any company? Such is life, I guess.

LDBennett

I don't know if it is good or bad, and I have no dog in the fight here, but what I find interesting is that the top suggestion to get acceptable customer service here is to try to speak to the one person that might be able to actually help.  The problem with this, to me, is that if you are a member of the general public, you would have no way to know who it is you need to talk to, and it seems that there is no one answering phones or answering emails to tell folks who it is they need to speak to.  Seems like poor foresight into customer service.  

JGL

I've noticed track head alignment issues on my Real Trax O-82 curves, but they are hollow rail. I don't have a problem with solid rail. I also had a problem with switch points not closing, but simply had to apply a little more pressure attaching the switch machine, It wasn't fully inserted.