Sunset Models. Translation needed.

Right or wrong, the buyer sounds like an arrogant jerk. I can't think of much I can do to help you at this point, but here are some packing tips that may save you some future grief.

One of the biggest factors, is that the loco should be packed so it can't move around inside it's box. If the loco can move around, it's like a person in an automobile in a wreck that is NOT wearing a seat belt. The car hits something solid and stops dead, and the person inside becomes a projectile and hits the windshield or whatever.

Those engines are heavy, and if not secured inside the box, they can fly forward or backward with a lot of inertia and stuff can get bent. Make sure stuff is immobilized in the center of the box.

Put that box in a larger shipping carton and pad it on all 6 sides. A couple inches of padding on all sides is generally sufficient. And yes....mark the model/models in an unobtrusive spot.

Doing it that way has worked for me many many times!

Regards and Happy Holidays,

Simon

PS: I'd block that toady from bidding on anything else!

The few brass locos that I have received over the years were all secured to a wood base before any packing started. They survived to Australia.

Agree with all the above, including Jay's comment.  Easily fixed.  I have the feeling it was shipping damage, which you can no doubt prove with before and after photos.

I doubt that Jay or I know the purchaser. He or she would have contacted us for straightening.

Thanks all for the excellent tips going forward. The site I sell on pretty much said I had no choice but to issue a full refund, so best to let it go and move on or my Irish temper might flair! 

Suzanne,

Yeah sometimes ya just gotta let it go.

A while back one of the members of this forum bought an old Max Gray Berkshire, ebay I think, it was in really bad shape.  Some of the damage was from shipping, some had occurred earlier (I could tell because of the repairs done to it).  I told the guy to send it to me and I'd see what I could do.  If memory serves, there were drivers out of quarter, broken journals where the drivers go, broken steps, ladders, defective motor, and some other issues I've forgotten.  I felt bad for the guy and got real charitable.  I told him to just pay for the return shipping and I'd write off the rest.  He wholeheartedly accepted my offer so I mailed the model back to him.  It's been nearly two months and I've yet to be paid for the shipping (it was only around $30).  Can't find him now.  The moral of the story...all of us get shafted sometimes.

I'll still give away parts and help people out but it sure leaves a bad taste.  Maybe some day I'll get to meet him face to face.

Jay

Jay

I hope whoever did that will read your post and get a check off to you...

Mark in Oregon

Jay,

How generous you are! Well at least I can say my positive experiences far outweigh the negative. I did have a recent buyer who requested a  different carrier then USPS and it was more money so I send a PayPal invoice but I’ve had no response / no payment.

Thanks Mark,

I'm not betting on it.

Jay

Suzanne,

For sure, way more positive.  Maybe the guy fell on hard times.  I just don't know.  If he had and contacted me I'd probably say, forget it.  It's really just the principle of the whole thing.

As one of my English buddies told me, Sailor Vee!  For some reason he didn't like the French.  Weird friend he was.

Jay

When I was a young man I worked at a huge package handling facility. You cannot imagine the  impacts a box takes. The video shows the hits a box takes. If the packing foam had lost its elasticity it could have turned into a quasi concrete making things even worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0-ukGIwcH8 

Its clear it is bent and it is either 1 of 2 things.  Shipping damage, or buyer dropped it and bent it.

Impossible to know.  So I would submit a claim to the shipper or resell it and note it is damaged.

Either way packaging is utmost key with these items.  They are heavy and when a package is dropped the weight can be slammed into the end.

Brass is soft.  Anything with weight has momentum and slams into ground harder than something lightweight.

That's the one thing about shipping these things buyers don't understand.  To protect them they need lots of packing, but that creates a much larger box and more expensive shipping which the buy never wants to pay. 

Its a catch 22 situation.

I'm smelling a large rodent (of unusual size).   Why would the buyer with all that experience say this unless they're looking to swap locos (my emphasis)?

"Unfortunately there is a big problem. The locomotive cab is bent out of square with the rest of the locomotive. It appears to be bent up in the rear, and with no damage to the paint, it seems it was assembled this way, with the damage not being caused in transit. This stands out like a sore thumb, and is completely unacceptable to me. Your photos in the listing did not illustrate this condition. I wish to return it for a full refund. Please advise."

To me the damage the buyer shows wasn't shown in your sales pics because is wasn't there!  So it can only be shipping damage or buyer-caused.  Unless the bent loco is a ringer.  To my untrained eye the buyer's pics look like a duller finish than in your pics, and what's the pink blobby thing in the cab?

Paranoid Pete.

The "pink blobby thing" in the cab is probably a reflection of the hand used to take the close-up picture.

Chuck

Fred Lundgren posted:

When I was a young man I worked at a huge package handling facility. You cannot imagine the  impacts a box takes. The video shows the hits a box takes. If the packing foam had lost its elasticity it could have turned into a quasi concrete making things even worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0-ukGIwcH8 

Wow, it really makes those "Fragile Handle with Care" stickers seem useless!

Pete M posted:

I'm smelling a large rodent (of unusual size).   Why would the buyer with all that experience say this unless they're looking to swap locos (my emphasis)?

"Unfortunately there is a big problem. The locomotive cab is bent out of square with the rest of the locomotive. It appears to be bent up in the rear, and with no damage to the paint, it seems it was assembled this way, with the damage not being caused in transit. This stands out like a sore thumb, and is completely unacceptable to me. Your photos in the listing did not illustrate this condition. I wish to return it for a full refund. Please advise."

To me the damage the buyer shows wasn't shown in your sales pics because is wasn't there!  So it can only be shipping damage or buyer-caused.  Unless the bent loco is a ringer.  To my untrained eye the buyer's pics look like a duller finish than in your pics, and what's the pink blobby thing in the cab?

Paranoid Pete.

 

Dear Paranoid Pete,

A ROUS is likely. I woke up feeling so dismayed about this. The site I sell on really dropped the ball. I called right away when this happened and rather than suggest a shipping claim they insisted that I get the item back so I could inspect the damage claim. Big mistake. And yesterday when I called to say it wasn't in the same shape that I sent it, they said,"Well you accepted the return so you have to issue a full refund now."

Rude & (quite possibly) an unscrupulous customer, and horrible advice from the site made this a real mess.

Plus I hate that this fine piece got damaged. Is it fixable? At what cost?

PRR1950 posted:

The "pink blobby thing" in the cab is probably a reflection of the hand used to take the close-up picture.

Chuck

SandJam posted:

Its clear it is bent and it is either 1 of 2 things.  Shipping damage, or buyer dropped it and bent it.

Impossible to know.  So I would submit a claim to the shipper or resell it and note it is damaged.

Either way packaging is utmost key with these items.  They are heavy and when a package is dropped the weight can be slammed into the end.

Brass is soft.  Anything with weight has momentum and slams into ground harder than something lightweight.

That's the one thing about shipping these things buyers don't understand.  To protect them they need lots of packing, but that creates a much larger box and more expensive shipping which the buy never wants to pay. 

Its a catch 22 situation.

 

 

 

 

Can this be repaired?

Simon Winter posted:

Right or wrong, the buyer sounds like an arrogant jerk. I can't think of much I can do to help you at this point, but here are some packing tips that may save you some future grief.

One of the biggest factors, is that the loco should be packed so it can't move around inside it's box. If the loco can move around, it's like a person in an automobile in a wreck that is NOT wearing a seat belt. The car hits something solid and stops dead, and the person inside becomes a projectile and hits the windshield or whatever.

Those engines are heavy, and if not secured inside the box, they can fly forward or backward with a lot of inertia and stuff can get bent. Make sure stuff is immobilized in the center of the box.

Put that box in a larger shipping carton and pad it on all 6 sides. A couple inches of padding on all sides is generally sufficient. And yes....mark the model/models in an unobtrusive spot.

Doing it that way has worked for me many many times!

Regards and Happy Holidays,

Simon

PS: I'd block that toady from bidding on anything else!

Thanks Simon,

I'll implement all those tips for sure!

Suzanne

Is it repairable?  Yes.

Cost?  Not sure.  It shouldn't take that long.

Jay

Thanks, Jay!

Look at the top of the cab where it meets the boiler. Is the front of the cab bent or cracked at that point. If cracked you should be able to pull back at the back of the cab roof and see some movement. If bent it will take more force to straighten it. Worse case the cab has to be removed (unsoldered), straightened, resoldered, then the engine repainted. At that point it may not be worth it, at least for you to do it. Someone who does a lot of this may be interested for themselves as salvage project.

Pete

JohnActon posted:

mwb posted:

Simon Winter posted:

LLKJR posted:

I don’t sell much on ebay, but when I do, if someone bids on my item and they have any negative feedbak as a buyer, their bid gets cancelled and they get blocked.

 

Larry

So if I have 2000 positive feedbacks and one negative, I'm toast?

Simon

Yes.

 

 A seller can no longer leave negative feedback for a buyer so long as the buyer pays on time. It's been this way for quite a while now. So are you aware that the feedback rating showing in the sellers ad only goes back one year and you have to actually go to their feedback page and look deep to be certain.  Do you go to the trouble of looking up the feedback of the person who left the negative. Sometimes it is the person who fires off the first negative who is the crook. My very first ebay transaction ended up with me getting a negative feedback. From the time the seller's ad started till the time it ended, and I won, the seller changed his eBay ID. This is before PayPal and the seller wanted me to send a $300 USPS money order to a PO Box address in the Arizona boondocks a town that is not on any map. This raised some red flags in my head so I requested a phone number and the seller refused to give me a phone number so I walked away without paying and he left me a Negative feedback.  I did the same for him with an explanation on the feedback as to why I did not pay. Then the guy added an explanation to my feedback that I tried to negotiate the price down after I had won which was a bald face lie.  I sort of kept up with the guy looking at his feedback from time to time and about a year later he had five more negatives and was banned from eBay, then without my request the negative feedback I had received from him just disappeared.    The people at eBay really do try and make their system fair, honest and safe but crooks and idiots are very clever.          j

I am starting to wonder if Ebay really cares about being honest and safe after an incident where I purchased multiple items at one time from a "powerseller" on ebay that listed a couple thousand trains for sale.  I was shorted some tank cars ( $45.00 value) and because she combined shipping with another car ebay sided with her as being delivered even though I did not get it. This had previously been a good seller and I was surprised at how I was treated but not surprised when I saw recent feedback left from a few people with the same negative experiences I went through.  So I did something I don't often do.  I left her negative feedback and it stayed there about a week and then magically disappeared, her feedback was down to about 99%  a week prior and suddenly she is advertised as a seller with 100% feedback.  I have lost faith in ebay after this.  BTW I have good feedback with around 1600 transactions..  scared of ebay now..

Norton posted:

Look at the top of the cab where it meets the boiler. Is the front of the cab bent or cracked at that point. If cracked you should be able to pull back at the back of the cab roof and see some movement. If bent it will take more force to straighten it. Worse case the cab has to be removed (unsoldered), straightened, resoldered, then the engine repainted. At that point it may not be worth it, at least for you to do it. Someone who does a lot of this may be interested for themselves as salvage project.

Pete

Can't you just come over? hahaha I just took these photos.

I owned one of these models but sold it after I scratch built one for a friend and got it back.  If I remember correctly, this model, like so many others, has the cab attached with four 2mm screws (underneath).  Removing the cab would provide a lot more information for what it will take to restore the model.  It's also a lot easier to repair with the cab removed.

Not advocating you do so, just saying that's what a repair person would do.

Jay

What's the condition of the styrofoam insert near the cab?

The fix is probably going to be using a soft cloth to prevent scratching the cab and bending it back, since it's brass.

Jay C posted:

I owned one of these models but sold it after I scratch built one for a friend and got it back.  If I remember correctly, this model, like so many others, has the cab attached with four 2mm screws (underneath).  Removing the cab would provide a lot more information for what it will take to restore the model.  It's also a lot easier to repair with the cab removed.

Not advocating you do so, just saying that's what a repair person would do.

Jay

If thats the case then, as Jay has said further up, the repair would be fairly easy to make like new without even having to repaint it. Also explains how it moved so far forward as the cab is not attached to the top of the boiler as a soldered cab would be.

This also confirms your buyer is nowhere near the expert he purports to be.

Pete

Sometimes long distance deals go south.  Put it back on eBay with an explanation of what happened.  Don't name the buyer in your ad, but block him from bidding.

Or, if you want to fool with it, ship it to Jay with return postage.  He qualifies as an expert.  There are very few of those in the O Scale world.

I might add a tip here. If you buy an older 3rd Rail loco, check to see what foam they use. Initially, 3rd Rail used the same soft yellow foam that they also used for HO brass. Grossly inadequate for O scale. Before you pay, insist that the loco is repacked in something better.

In my case, it was a PRR 2-10-0, package likely dropped, and the cab was bent worse than the subject loco  here. Fortunately, the former repair guru Gary took in hand and had it repaired by a real brass guru and  I got the loco back, actually better than new.

bellymoondrop posted:

Thanks all for the excellent tips going forward. The site I sell on pretty much said I had no choice but to issue a full refund, so best to let it go and move on or my Irish temper might flair! 

Suzanne, is there any chance you could reproduce the earlier photo that you used in your ad ?  Same setting and same angles as close as possible ? I am curious if you can see the problem with the cab at the angles your first photo was made.  Same time of day.

   I am certain there are those out there who have shipped more packages than I but I am up over 2000 and know a bit about shipping delicate items. Large O scale brass steam locos if not the absolute hardest are among the hardest things to package. Small steam and diesels are not so difficult.  Large locos are another matter. The shear mass surrounded by delicate protrusions, it could be a chapter in a mechanical engineering book.  A packing strategy that has worked for me when I did not have the original shipping box with a board that the loco frame fastened to, was to cut an old bed sheet up large enough that when you set the loco on the center line you can fold the material over the top of the loco and it will almost reach the table top on each side. then I cut a piece of carpet pad about a foot longer than the loco and I place the loco on a soft surface like a bed and roll it up in the carpet pad till the pad is about 2" thick all the way around the loco. Then I wrap the mummy, I mean loco, in several places with packaging tape pulled snug.  The carpet pad should overhang the front and rear of the loco about 4" making a good shock absorber on each end which are the most venerable areas. Now I make a snug fitting inner box for the loco and  the tender gets the same treatment.  I now find a suitable large box to place both tender and loco boxes in and I tape the tender and loco boxes together so they move as one and they need a minimum of 4" on every side with foam peanuts but not packed too tight.  You want the inner boxes to have some float to compress when the box gets dropped.   I have shipped several US Hobbies large locos using this method and not had one damaged yet.  It is a lot of work but when your shipping thousand dollar plus toys I don't think there is any easier way to get them where their going. If you plan and measure close you can keep the entire package under the 84" combined length + girth limit for a standard size package.  Warn the buyer to unroll the mummy on a soft surface.          j

JohnActon posted:

bellymoondrop posted:

Thanks all for the excellent tips going forward. The site I sell on pretty much said I had no choice but to issue a full refund, so best to let it go and move on or my Irish temper might flair! 

Suzanne, is there any chance you could reproduce the earlier photo that you used in your ad ?  Same setting and same angles as close as possible ? I am curious if you can see the problem with the cab at the angles your first photo was made.  Same time of day.

 Great packing tips, John, thank-you! It snowed here tonight so I can see about reproducing the photos as you suggested tomorrow.

Suzanne

 

 

This may not have been a problem with packing or shipping. Given that we now know the cab is only screwed on, the buyer could have done this if he tried to lift the engine out of the box by lifting on the back of the cab roof.

3rd Rail packages their engines pretty well. The box would have had to drop a considerable distance and then land squarely on the cab end of the box to create this kind of damage. The box would have been damaged in the process.

Pete

Shipping a heavy O scale brass locomotive has always been a somewhat risky proposition even when it is put back in a box with the original pieces of foam.  I've found that the risk of damage (especially front end and cab) is greatly minimized using Sunset's method of strapping the locomotive to a strip of thin wood (or Masonite) cut to the exact interior length of the box.  Like Sunset I do the strapping using wrapping paper and tape before putting the model in the box.  Also like Sunset I cut 2 "rail lines" into the face of the board to provide some additional limits of motion. 

Back in the dark ages of O scale when brass locomotives came unpainted and partially assembled (boiler off the chassis)  the boiler weight was packed separately.   Removing the weight still is a good idea.

Looking at the picture of the back of the cab on the returned model, I noticed the left side handrail has been refitted. Also I still can't quite shake the feeling the finish is a bit different. Looking at the cab interior on the pre-shipping model it looks crisp and clean and shiny, and the handrails look like bare metal or maybe blackened. The returned model looks duller and the handrails look like weathered black. 

On the other hand the slots in the 2 Philips screw heads below the drawbar hole seem to be at the exact same angles. What are the chances?

_{Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me...}

Pete M posted:

Looking at the picture of the back of the cab on the returned model, I noticed the left side handrail has been refitted. Also I still can't quite shake the feeling the finish is a bit different. Looking at the cab interior on the pre-shipping model it looks crisp and clean and shiny, and the handrails look like bare metal or maybe blackened. The returned model looks duller and the handrails look like weathered black. 

On the other hand the slots in the 2 Philips screw heads below the drawbar hole seem to be at the exact same angles. What are the chances?

_{Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me...}

All I can say is that I wish some of you lived in Reno so I could just ring it over for a look! I'm going to re-photograph is with my 35mm but there is too much snow to do it today.

bellymoondrop posted:

Pete M posted:

Looking at the picture of the back of the cab on the returned model, I noticed the left side handrail has been refitted. Also I still can't quite shake the feeling the finish is a bit different. Looking at the cab interior on the pre-shipping model it looks crisp and clean and shiny, and the handrails look like bare metal or maybe blackened. The returned model looks duller and the handrails look like weathered black. 

On the other hand the slots in the 2 Philips screw heads below the drawbar hole seem to be at the exact same angles. What are the chances?

_{Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me...}

All I can say is that I wish some of you lived in Reno so I could just ring it over for a look! I'm going to re-photograph is with my 35mm but there is too much snow to do it today.

Pete, I forgot to say that a gentleman I was referred to from this forum came for a visit and he put the handrail in its proper position.

LOL! OK that's good. I gotta go, Nurse says it's time for my meds. 

Pete M posted:

LOL! OK that's good. I gotta go, Nurse says it's time for my meds. 

Well one thing that has been brought to the surface.

Going by the help and advice from the members here this would have to be the best American forum going.

Great stuff, thanks to the people that run the forum. Roo.

Best advice in shipping was from a Fedex desk clerk: "It doesn't matter what you put on the outside of the package, they all get handled the same." I have learned, shipping mostly electronics, that double-boxing is required. Even then, some heavy pieces (due to uneven weight distrubution)  are not candidates for shipping since the torque generated when the packages (all of them, any carrier) fall 3 feet from one conveyor belt to another can rip the heavy components (power transfomers, mostly) off the chassis. This would apply to trains as well.

Suzanne one thing I didn't see anyone post. If your using Ebay, they have a block buyer list you can use. once you find it ( I did it by searching block buyer on there help section search ) book mark it so you have it, and that way anyone you have trouble with you can block them from bidding on your items. Now the down fall of it, if they have more than one account the other account will still be able to get in to bid. 

rtraincollector posted:

Suzanne one thing I didn't see anyone post. If your using Ebay, they have a block buyer list you can use. once you find it ( I did it by searching block buyer on there help section search ) book mark it so you have it, and that way anyone you have trouble with you can block them from bidding on your items. Now the down fall of it, if they have more than one account the other account will still be able to get in to bid. 

I have been trying to find how to do that! Thank-you, Bill! I most definitely do not want to do business with that individual again.