After seeing many, many comments about problems, lack of customer service I have to
ask why does anyone buy lionel anymore?
I've had issues with Lionel before, but most of the problems I can fix myself in a night or a weekend. When you think about all the reasons they produce, issues are inevitable, people like to point out the problems on here but nobody posts a thread about "my new locomotive works".
"After seeing many, many comments about problems, lack of customer service I have to
ask why does anyone buy lionel anymore?"
My answer is simple. The failure rate cited by others is not remotely representative of my own experience with literally 100s of products over the last 25 years, nor that of my friends and acquaintances. These horror stories are statistical outliers. I'm not saying anyone is lying, but we tend to hear about the most extreme negative experiences, and a few more people are all too happy to jump on the bandwagon based upon a couple of bad experiences of their own, or, dare I say it, general hostility towards Lionel. 
You don't read posts from thousands or tens of thousands of customers who haven't had problems because we don't (except at instances like this) post about them. I think I may have returned about 1 or 2% of my Lionel purchases due to initial failure. I haven't had to use Lionel customer service so I cannot evaluate them. I will say that the dealers I've employed have accepted any problems for exchange or refund so the dealers are excellent. At least the ones I've used.
