Grr argh
So, I bought some passenger cars for my train set on E*bay – they were described as ‘Like new’. The trucks won’t hold the wheels, the couplers are all damaged.. my question is, do I give bad feedback? I hate giving bad feedback.. I’ve only done it once when a $500 item completely failed to show up. [at which point I discovered that paypal’s money back guarentee is useless because it only applies for like 20 days after the transaction – and generally you give at least 14 for things to show up, so you have to apply for it inside a week or so, and then they want you to do arbitration first.. anyway, that’s the only time I’ve ever given bad feedback on ebay – but, at the same time, the trucks and couplers are clearly damaged on all four cars.. these are *not* ‘like new’.
Don’t know what to do.
*sigh*
May 19th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
If they didn’t arrive as advertised, give appropriate feedback. You didn’t get what you bought. Don’t feel guilty. Or complain to the seller first, and see what they say.
May 19th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I vote complain by email first and give them a business day or two to answer. Unless they give a very good answer (like a full refund) then give them bad feedback.
May 19th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Ditto above.
What gauge are you working with? I used to have a lot of extra N stuff somewhere.
May 19th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
HO, gauge of my childhood. The only problem with it is that it’s flippin’ huge, so the train layout is currently spanning two rooms – Kayti thinks I should go ahead and span the entire house – I’m wishing I owned the house so I could mount it along the walls at near-ceiling height.. of course, then dealing with derailments gets to be headachy.. and one ends up building a robot to run around and rerail train cars.. 😉
S.
May 20th, 2007 at 3:51 am
I agree with everyone else–contact the seller first and wait a little while to see if they resolve it. If not, then leave bad feedback.
I love model trains. Can you try photographing it so I can see, please? Sounds rather impressive!
May 20th, 2007 at 5:47 am
I don’t recall HO being huge. I think that’s what my grandfather had. He had a really nice layout in his basement, a whole town with stores named after his kids, a factory that was burning, and even a state park. We had fun for hours, running the trains all around the town, and trying to remember the right switches to throw.
and I agree with everyone else.
May 20th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
It’s certainly not the biggest. O and G are both larger and in commoon use, and there are people who run 7.5″ gauge and even people who have full-scale ‘model’ railroads.. (old dead steam engines and rolling stock are pretty cheap ($1500-5000), so the only thing expensive about doing that – besides the enourmous investment of time it takes to refurbish a steam engine and keep it in running condition – is the size land it takes to make a reasonable 1:1 scale railroad (think several square miles)
May 20th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
I’ve taken a few photos.. any excuse to play with our new camera..
May 20th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Oh, yeah.. see next journal entry..
May 20th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Wow.. yeah, I don’t think I’d want to build a layout for the full-scale. o_O
May 20th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I have a buttload of O. It really takes up an amazing amount of room. When we were kids we’d run a line — all sectional track so you don’t need a layout, per se — from my brother’s room down the hall into my room, then a loop down into the living room, and maybe a run around the outside of that into the dining room. It was *gigantic*. We’d park the trains themselves under a couch, and we had to put risers under the legs of the couch so the engines would clear. We had it all wired up with remote switches and indicators so we could tell where trains were while they were running. I think one of the engines weighed 25 pounds, and another could hit roughly 30 mph.