....... Maybe it is time for Lionel to protect themselves and inspect these high end models when they receive them of the boat. I am sure they would not ship it out if they saw the windows missing, so they would not incur the shipping cost to and from and possibly they may ship it back overseas or repair it themselves if they had the parts.
...............It must cost them money and if there were many in that condition it would cost Lionel a small fortune in shipping. They are heavy!
I know when we buy something in the high value range like the centipedes we inspect like a new born.
Just my two cents.
John
(sorry for the odd modifying of the quote with the "...." above, but needed a good way to split the responses - the html looked much more involved then the way you could just use the quote/unquote switch in the old days)
1) The way it is now this risk is successfully being transferred to the end customer, so what would be the motivation for a change on either the part of Lionel or the factory? Right now Lionel only pays for the shipping to return a defective item to them for repair if you are a veteran (nothing wrong with giving veterans some benefit here), which reduces the risk, as only a certain percentage of customers fit that criteria. The business model you suggest would just move it up one notch. The factory can continue to ship whatever quality level of merchandise they wish, as they know there would need to be some really serious issues before anyone is going to send a container full of trains back across the ocean. Now, if we were to suggest inspection before the items were accepted for shipment, that would be another story. A bunch of messed up trains sitting in the factory because they were not built properly (or carefully enough, whichever the case may be) would actually have an impact on the factory operations.
2) The small fortune in shipping costs is now successfully spread across the end users, so this is a non-issue.
-Dave
