I have purchased quite a bit of rolling stock from Trainz and so far they are batting a 1000. No issues at all. And so far I have been completely satisfied with the timeliness of shipping and the quality of packaging. I have no doubt they would make any reasonable effort to correct a situation that, on some rare occasion, might fall short of my expectations. I certainly appreciate Scott's willingness to jump on here (the Forum) to address customer service issues and demonstrate some operational transparency at the same time. Very reassuring.
@Arnold D. Cribari posted:
And Arnold, that's a very enjoyable game-day photo of your Kramer figures, although it looks like your right-fielder has some discipline issues! I can almost smell the hot dogs...
Jim
My two cents,
Thank you for leaving this thread in place.
Small businesses are in trouble in this country and I for one am committed to doing what the forum creators and moderators have requested which is to support the forum sponsors.
By the same token the vendors who support this forum should be required to do right by the forum members who are committed to supporting them.
I trust that if someone is a member of the forum in good standing that they wouldn't post an unwarranted complaint here after exhausting direct attempts at resolving the issue with the vendor.
So again, thank you for leaving this thread in place. We need the dialog and the two-way street.
Regards,
John
Thank You for leaving this thread in place. – Thanks, Craftech, I agree.
Thanks Alan OGR CEO-PUBLISHER for your reply and support!
Chuck Sartor – I am glad you asked that question. Trust me, the last thing we want to do is list something and then not have it. When we listed it, we had it. The problem was one of a few things: 1. We put it away in a bin that was not the same bin as what was in the computer, so when we went to find it, it wasn’t there; 2. We didn’t count them correctly when we put them away i.e., thought there were 12, but really only had 11; 3. The part was pulled to use in our service dept. and was not deducted from inventory; 4. We accidentally picked that part for an order and somehow never went back and corrected it; 5. It was needed by Aliens who came alive from one of the Alien transport cars we have and was beamed back to their home planet.
Ok, well those are reasons are not excuses, but we are human, and mistakes happen. Just to put that in a little perspective we currently have 15,842 different products in stock, so that is 15,842 different bins. According to our eBay metrics we have not been able to fulfill 152 items out of 45,570 since December 1st and about 10 of those were parts. About 120 of those were our drop-ship partners that indicated they had it in-stock and when we went to order it, they did not. We are fanatical about filling orders that we sell and go to great lengths to avoid it. It is one of eBay’s requirements to be a Top-Rated seller.
Thanks again for all your business and happy railroading! Off to inventory 2 x 18’ trailers of trains in California this morning …
Well FYI Scott, The errors won't deter me from purchasing from your company in the future. I will admit that 95% of the time there are no problems.
From what I have researched in regards to eBay sellers. A rating of 99.8 and above are good trustworthy sellers. 99.6-99.7 are fair and 99.5 and below stay away from. Trainz’s eBay rating is: 99.8
@Scott@Trainz posted:We are currently not answering phone calls, phone calls get automatically converted to text and are put in our ticket system. We typically then respond to these via email.
35 years of IT experience. Based on VM to text to ticketing to email back there may be an issue with the email back. I’ll throw out a few ideas for you. Just trying to help.
If the customer has never emailed you before, their email system may interpret your response as spam. Thus going to their junk mail filter or being blocked period. Did they ever block the Trainz email newsletter? Another possible issue.
How are you getting their email from a phone call? Do you tie the phone number to a profile? Is the email in the profile current?
If the phone they called in on is a cell then you could text them back. Near 100% success rate but might cost you money.
Or can you turn the text into a voice message and send it back to the originating phone number.
Hope that spurred some ideas for you.
While I have been a forum member for a short time compared to others here, I thought I would share my recent experience with on of our forum sponsors. I recently ordered a steam engine from Trainz directly from their site, i reviewed the description of the item (including photos) and the rating and decided to purchase. After arrival, “I” was not as happy with the condition, although the description was accurate. I contacted their customer service via email, and was contacted within 24 hours of my initial email. They provided several options to satisfy me, all of which were more than generous, including, lucky for me, replacement with identical item (or full refund, I chose identical item, which was perfect).
While I plan on being around for a while, I have told my spouse, use them to sell my collection. The part of this hobby for me which “keeps me coming back” is the fun it provides me and I want that for all that take part in our little community. I have only heard second hand about the sellers experience with Trainz (and will only know that, but have heard it is very fair), but from a buyers perspective, they are great to deal with.
@Scott@Trainz, thank you! I personally will continue to be one of your patrons. Your customer service team is one of the best in our hobby!
Jim
Trainz is a top notch company hands down! I give them props for even tackling the on line toy train business. No matter how hard you work and try to do right by people their are always that handful of people who will never be happy. And shipping... Don't even get me started on that. In the past year I have received more damaged trains than I have in the past 15 years combined. And not because of the sellers! @Scott@trainz I want to personally thank you for all of the amazing items I have purchased from you over the years. You are a treasure to this hobby and always remember that!
As I mentioned earlier, this has been a really valuable discussion. I am happy we are having it and apparently so is the Trainz owner as well as the OP. We should encourage it more. It certainly isn't nasty. Rather quite the opposite. It doesn't appear that either one is being unreasonable. Keep em coming.
John
