I recently (March 21, 2014) purchased 4 tofc cars from the Atlas web store. As of today, the order shows that it has not shipped. One week ago I emailed Atlas customer relations asking what the typical lead-time is on a web order. There has been no response.
My question is: what experience have any of you had in dealing with Atlas and their website retail?
They have done nothing to impress me, so far.
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I placed a telephone order about 6 weeks ago for a preorder item. The jury is still out for me. Does anyone know of an atlas dealer who will answer e-mails?
Rob, First, Patricia in the Golden Spike Club has been very good at getting back to me.
Second, I ordered a reefer shell quite a while ago and I received it in a reasonable time.
Third, I emailed them about 4 or 5 days ago and am still waiting for a reply.
wb47, Beth from Public Track is good with following up on emails.
Hope this helps both of you.
I emailed Bill Serratelli in the parts dept at 9:35AM yesterday and he responded at 12:59, a little over 3 hours. That's hard to beat for service.
I've had someone ask me to hold while they go look to see if the parts I wanted were actually on the shelf. Again, hard to beat.Call them if you're concerned.
took almost a month for me to get 2 boxcars from atlas direct. took about 4 days to get 2 atlas tankers from nicholas smith trains.
joe
I have ordered some construction vehicles from them and no problem there. Also emailed the sales manager (Jerry, I think) about something and he emailed me back same day. He could not answer my question, so he had one of the engineers that worked on the product email me with the answers. We exchanged a couple of emails.
I thought they gave great service the times I have contacted them or ordered from them.
I ordered a bunch of stuff. CC charged immediately, 6 weeks later, no stuff. Called Atlas and was told it was backordered and won't be in until sometime mid/late next year. I immediately cancelled all orders I had made and got my money back.
WB47....I strongly recommend you contact Paul Johnson at Catoctin Mountain Trains in Thurmont, MD. His e mail is "trainspj@aol.com". He is the best and will certainly move things along with Atlas. Tell him I sent you. Jim
It has been slow, but not impossible to buy "real" tofc cars on eBay...they show up occasionally at reasonable prices. I have purchased 5 of them since I placed the Atlas order, and am thinking about cancelling my web order. If they approach their retail in a half-hearted manner and don't reply to my order or my emails, I think I will cancel the order. They haven't processed my credit card yet, and that is in their favor.
I have had good service on the Atlas web-store as I use it to purchase parts for repairs. My orders usually ship out within a couple days and if i need to call for some reason they get back to me in a few hours. They do have quality service but they also get over 100,000 contacts per year so sometimes you may slip through the cracks.
Here is the conclusion to the matter:
I called Atlas Customer Service and talked to someone about the status of my order. They said that the items ordered were not ever manufactured. So the order was cancelled.
It is my guess the O scale tofc cars were posted online for Pre-orders, but for whatever reason, were cancelled. That is very reasonable. But don't you think it is time to take the web page down?
I order my Atlas products from reputable dealers like Petersen Supply Co. (Portland, OR). Being a repeat customer I get discounts, too.
Here is the conclusion to the matter:
I called Atlas Customer Service and talked to someone about the status of my order. They said that the items ordered were not ever manufactured. So the order was cancelled.
It is my guess the O scale tofc cars were posted online for Pre-orders, but for whatever reason, were cancelled. That is very reasonable. But don't you think it is time to take the web page down?
Rob,
You are indeed reasonable and rationale. Atlas is not, in my opinion. To this day I have no idea how or why they stay in business.
I ordered a bunch of stuff. CC charged immediately, 6 weeks later, no stuff. Called Atlas and was told it was backordered and won't be in until sometime mid/late next year. I immediately cancelled all orders I had made and got my money back.
The credit cards are not charged until the order is ready for shipment. If you can email me your name and approximate date of the order, I'd like to look into this further. My email address is pgraf@atlasrr.com
Here is the conclusion to the matter:
I called Atlas Customer Service and talked to someone about the status of my order. They said that the items ordered were not ever manufactured. So the order was cancelled.
It is my guess the O scale tofc cars were posted online for Pre-orders, but for whatever reason, were cancelled. That is very reasonable. But don't you think it is time to take the web page down?
If we take orders for items, but the volume doesn't meet the factory minimums, we may leave the orders open for a period of time to see if we can gather enough orders to make the production viable. Of course, if we did that we wouldn't want to cancel your backorder either.
Can you let me know what the items were that you were trying to order, item numbers or road names?
Must be epidemic in the Model Railroad world... I am currently wrangling with Walthers over similar issues and intend to cancel my orders this morning.
There are lots of great Atlas O dealers, including us. I would suggest placing your orders there....
it appears to be only the rolling stock. I ordered two non rolling stock items on two separate orders and both arrived in a week
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