trainz auctions moved

Reading it they seem to be moving auctions that were on their own website to this new site. I think they will still have auctions on ebay. No...I did not sign up for the new site.....if they go to it only I'll miss out then.

The new site appears to be a captive site for Trainz. It has some extra bells and whistles besides the auctions, and the auctions are somewhat more extensive. The site was a mess the first day - I sent a pretty nasty e-mail to the webmaster - but they have gotten it to where it seems to work right and the server responds quickly. The old Trainz auction site is as dead as Elvis, as far as new auctions go - at least for the moment, I think you can still access records of your own past transactions. 

 

Signing up is an easy process. They have three levels of membership with various add-ons included, and if you are an existing customer of Trainz you get a free upgrade to the middle level. The top level is of no use to me so I didn't bother figuring out exactly what you get for your 45 bucks a year - free is good enough for me. I've bought a lot of stuff from Trainz auctions over the past year or so; they've messed up on a lot of descriptions but they've always been willing to make it right so I'll at least have a look at their new operation. 

I did not know until this past week that Tranz runs atleast 3 shipping points across the us. I would guess that they have more and I just don't know different at this point. I have had shippments from a place just North of Boston and some from Omaha and of course Atlanta.

Like SW Hiawatha says descriptions and "testing" are iffy. i have gotten items said not to work or missing components that worked fine with nothing missing and then just opposite. Items listed as excellent were scratched or broken. That said, getting items at blowout prices even with the buyers premium precluded complaints. Buyer beware.

 

Then there was the same item offered at Trainzauctions and eBay simultaneously. Which bidder wins? Its a jungle out there.

 

Pete

Hello Pete,I find it hard to believe that the SAME EXACT item was listed on ebay and the trainz auction site at the same time,that's just not a good buisness practice,and they seem like an honest outfit to me.And if it did occur,I would think it had to be in error.Can anyone on here tell me of another auction site that tests thier items,and goes through half of the checking of the item as Trainz does?If so I'd love to buy from them also!!!Also,what do you guys think of the 15% buyers premium that Trainz charges on thier auctions?Do you mind paying this,or would you rather take your chances at Mauer's or the other online auction houses that charge the buyers premium,and do no testing of the items at all?

Never tried the auction. And now that I know they add 15% on I doubt I ever will. But I have bought a lot from them from their site and Ebay. Always made good on any issues. Always minor. And I once called them about a NIB Tmmc starter freight set on Ebay and talked him into delisting and selling to me at a very fair price. And have not seen another listed for that amount since. Funny thing, they did once send me someone else's order worth several hundred dollars in addition to a $19. replacement. And if I had not told them, they would of had no idea because there was no paper trail. Not all that organized it seems but if you consider the volume of used and NOS that they process they actually so very well.

This new website: is it called "Dash Trains"?  I just received an email on this, but did not follow through exploring the site.  The location of this site is in Georgia, which is where, I believe, Trainz is located.

 

Bill

http://trainzauctions.com/

 

this will explain, it to those that did not get the email,  I can not copy and paste

the email

Page is very exact of how to proceed to this web site :  https://trainz.infusionsoft.co...379/9f0ff709a1aec1a0

 OK, but the free middle choice is waved for the first year only?? What does it cost for the next year? Will I get a bunch of junk emails and sign up for other stuff like phone calls that I don't want??

 I'm on the fence. I've had great luck with all my purchases through them and have got great deals, fast delivery, etc.

I don't understand what you are saying here. I just checked trainz and they are still on Ebay.

Ebay will buy Dash & that will be the end of it.

I heard that Trainz will continue to do thier regular auctions on ebay as usual.But they are going to be moving more of thier product over to the DASH website,as they continue to grow and offer a unique auction schedule,not seen before.This way,you'll know what day your scale/area of collecting ends on.Postwar auctions will end on Saturdays,MPC on Sundays,HO on another day,and so on.They are also developing a unique train search engine,where you can locate product by SKU,model number,road number,etc...It's all an attempt to make things easier for the train enthusiast,and I'm sure it will have some bugs to be worked out,like any new software like the I phone 4 and 5 did.I was also made aware that more extensive testing and clearer,accurate,yet simple descriptions are also part of the change.I believe it is an attempt to give the train enthusiast an overall better internet buying experience.Let's watch and see!! And you may be right,ebay might buy DASH and try to crush them.They are the GIANT!!What a brilliant thought!!Feebay will not like this at all!!!(LOL!!!)

So far I am not impressed with the DASH site.  I prefer the old Trainz auction site.  I found it much easier to use.

I just signed up.  I can say the site is pretty slow, if they don't improve that it's likely to cost them.

 

I also note that they add a 15% buyers premium as well.  Sounds like eBay in reverse, the buyer pays the fees!

Agreed. Clunky with a capital K and just about useless with a tablet.

 

Pete

Not impressed with the new site. Find it very un-friendly to use, its disappointing!

The site was a mess the first day - I sent a pretty nasty e-mail to the webmaster - but they have gotten it to where it seems to work right and the server responds quickly.

LOL..I sent them a rather nasty email too on the first day as the site was terrible! The search functions were wacky, 0-8-0 item descriptions had a picture of a Dreyfus Hudson and it took 30 seconds for a page to load..and I'm on a 25mb download connection!

Another deceptive practice that Trainz is doing on the Dash site is every auction in the O Gauge Modern category states "Free Delivery Available"..but when you click on the shipping tab there is no free delivery..only free pickup?? 

I doubt I'll be going back.

I miss the ability to sort by price.

I like the Dash train site. They have been doing a lot of changes to improve. It's free to put your inventory into and track what you have. The old Trainz auction site was slow. Give it a little time they are working on making it better.

Scott Smith

I see there are a lot of questions and uncertainty about what we are doing with our auction platform and Collector-Model Trains. So with this rather lengthy post I will address to the best of my ability.

 

Is TrainzAuctions dead? No. TrainzAuctions will still be TrainzAuctions, now they'll just be at DASH. We'll be pointing the domain name (www.trainzauctions.com) over within the next week. We have to wait for everyone to finis checking out on the old site first.  There are ads and links all over the internet, so it's easier to just move the domain than fix all the links.

 

Will Trainz.com still sell on eBay? Absolutely, we list items to the market that makes the most sense for that particular item. 

 

Is DASH a captive site for Trainz.com? No. We have a very strong partnership with DASH but they are building a community and marketplace around model trains that is open to all, we just happen to be the first. The biggest thing we have done for them and for you is shared our database. We have by far the best database of model trains and parts in the world. We have been building it over the past ten years by capturing and creating a catalog of every item. That catalog is now public information on the Collector-ModelTrains site in their catalog tab. We hear eBay bashing all the time, well, now Dash is here, we think it is the answer for us and for you. With all the data and information we provided them, it will make it easier for you to sell your trains there if you want to do-it-yourself.

 

Is DASH a mess? The DASH guys are in the learning phase right now. They're constantly monitoring the performance of the site in relationship to the traffic. They're deploying new servers and making code changes every day. We're a tough first seller to have hosted on the site due to the amount of traffic that we bring with us. Trust me when I say those guys aren't getting a lot of sleep right now.

 

Is the old TrainzAuctions site dead? Not yet, but we will close the doors on it soon.

 

Is Trainz.com a multi-location national powerhouse? We wish. We're all in Buford, except for a few remote Customer Service and Sales reps. When you receive packages from other states you're actually receiving something from one of our partners. 

 

Tested or Not? We run a business, so we have to balance our responsibility to our customers with our responsibility to our employees. That's marketing speak for we have to make money. Quick tested means we powered it up and checked the bells and whistles. Some items go to our repair shop for more extensive testing and repairs when it financially makes sense for us to do it. All of our listings have an Operational Status included to help make things a little more clear. The bottom line is that if we say something works, we'll back that up.

 

Description errors abound? Not really. We process and sell around 200 items a day in a normal month. We do make mistakes, but we learn from them. Our returns, refunds, and credits typically account for less 2% of our total sales. We track it every week. We recently gave every department within the company an opportunity to define their own goals for the next year, and every single one chose reducing that number. 

 

Is the buyers premium a scam? We don't think our customers are dumb. We fully disclose the buyers premium at every opportunity, and fully expect you to adjust your bids for it. The buyers premium helps us be more competitive on our consignment deals. We thought about selling consignment items with a buyers premium, and items we own without, but just thinking about that can get confusing.

 

Does Trainz.com double dip on markets? Yes and no. We list our new products on multiple markets, but our "collectible" items we only list to one market at a time. When you see something on both places at the same time it means someone in IT messed up, or we really have two of them. Juggling 200 new items a day isn't easy, and we're constantly finding new ways to mix things up. We're also constantly working towards making improvements to keep it from happening again.

 

What happened with the roofs? There are three or four people checking in deals in our receiving department every day. A lot of our collections are packed and boxed by our sellers or consignors, so everything isn't always where you think it should be, and sometimes things just aren't there at all. One day someone unboxed the cars and a few days or weeks later someone else found the roofs in another box and just figured the cars were missing. It's a big warehouse with lots of people milling around, no one person is aware of everything.

 

Is Trainz.com anything like a circus? Some days, Yes, but most of the time it is a well choreographed play - it has to be with the transaction volume we do. Southwest Hiawatha… We'd love to have you over to watch the show. Drop us a line, and I'll pick up the plane ticket and we'll provide all the popcorn you can eat. Actually, I am serious, contact me at 866-234-1800 and I'll have you as our guest for the day and you can see and judge for yourself.

 

What happens to the free DASH Club membership after a year? We're not sure yet. Right now we're focusing our efforts on getting DASH off the ground, once we're happy with how things are working we'll have that conversation with the DASH guys. The one thing I can assure you of is that we will always make sure our customers are taken care of.

 

Is DASH or the old TrainzAuctions better? We obviously think DASH is the answer. These guys are laser focused on providing something that works for the train collecting community at large. DASH is taking all the feedback it is receiving into consideration, and we're passing along all the feedback we receive. With time DASH will only get better. 

 

Thanks for reading.

 Thanks Scott G for the reply. And thank you for all the deals so far too.

I'm going to miss the old site too. I guess anything new takes some time to get used to.

I wish some of you would get to the website and bid on some of these trains. I can't afford to win all the stuff I want to bid on.
Scott Smith

Scott thanks for the nice, responsible response.   I sure appreciate someone admitting to mistakes, a new learning curve, and honesty.  In the internet age that can be a rarity.

I like Trainz.com, and I've bought from them on EBay; if they had a retail

store (they don't, do they?) I'd make a little day trip up to Atlanta and shop.

 

The "tune up" thing (like a "buyers premium"), though, is just infuriating, and has

already affected my bidding on their items. I have skipped two big-ish items lately because of that. If that remains, I will probably just move on, as it -seems- to be replacing testing. Quick-and-dirty testing is just fine; you're not buying this from L, M, A and so on.

 

The reasonable s/h price level is a great positive for me - until lately (see above) Trainz had been becoming my "default" eBay dealer. 

 

I do not intend to use DASH, etc. One site is enough. I also have enough RR stuff.

I don't like the buyers premium either; however when I realized that they are taking consignments it is the only way they can run a profitable business.

Scott Smith

Scott the new auction site is so slow and it's hard to navigate ..

So what's with the "Free Delivery"?? All I see is "Free" local pickup 

Chuck,

 

The "Free Delivery" is not right. We reported that to Dash last week and they fixed it, I thought, I checked a bunch of listings and it was changed. Unfortunately I see listings tonight have it on there. Their software is seeing the $0 pickup option and somehow translating it into Free Delivery. Some of these Modern O listings tonight are  actually some of the first auctions we posted, so I think the fix didn't get applied to all of our listings. 

 Oh boy Scott, I don't know what I did wrong. After searching for ten minutes I haven't even found anything for sale yet. I think I'll need to research their search engine a bit.

 Are your auctions on a separate page?? Is there an easy way to see what's for sale?

It's also worth noting that DASH is experiencing the highest site load they have thus far. They're working on getting things back in line as I type this.

No i haven't signed up either, I had bought quite a few MTH and Lionel steam engines from them on eBay over a 5 year period, then I tried one of TRAINZ "other" NON-EBAY auctions about 2 to 3 years ago.  Had a horrible experience... the auction didn't end at it's posted time, my highest bid wasn't honored..

 

After writing in three times to complain, I got one ridiculous explanation about insufficient number of bidders (no reserve auction ??) and never got a response at all to the other two emails.   I have never bought another item from them, and I doubt I'll ever spend another dollar there !   Good luck    

The site is still too slow to make it worth using.  I tried to log on Sunday evening (5/26/13) at 6:53 CST and while I was waiting for the site to load, I connected to the OGR site and went to a page on the forum and was reading it before the DASH site page finally loaded.  They really need to address this problem.

 

Don't like the new site for the auctions at all.  I wont be back.

I have to say, I have bought from Trainz on ebay and while the sale was fine, I wouldn't call it stellar.  It took two requests to get a total with combined shipping and communication was slow.

 

I still can't grasp why a buyers premium applies to all auctions on the dash site, and 15% to boot.  What is has to do with consignments boggles me.  I have purchased things on consignment from hobby shops without ever paying a buyers premium.  Typically, on consignments, consignor pays a portion of the total to the consignee for the service.  This is the way it worked when I consigned things in the past.  To try and pass that on to the buyer is poor business.

 

While some of the auction prices are appealing, add in that fee and they become very uninteresting quickly.  Then couple that with an extremely poor performing website......

 

Should have had it right before switching it on for the public.  Again, another poor business practice.  At some point, you have to listen to the customer, because I doubt you can sustain things this way.  Being is business is a tough balance, been there.  If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.