You hate Kato the GS4? Look at this!!!

I will challenge you to produce the post in this thread (or any other) where I was "dissing Rapido." Others may have, but I've merely provided the counterpoint in what I believe to be a fair and respectful manner. I obviously appreciate Kato for all they've done for me related to CB&Q and now other roads of interest. I think the casual reader needs to hear reports like that instead of disinformation suggesting that if they buy Kato's latest (Daylight, Broadway Limited, etc.) they'll have to sacrifice valuable hours of their lives upgrading to expensive Micro-Trains couplers. It is simply not true.

 

I stand corrected

Dear sir: You are indeed correct; I mistook a previous post made by someone else for yours and unfairly associated it to you - I am incorrect and am very sorry for the error. It was unintential and unfair to you. I am very sorry for the serious error.

Mike

 

Maybe the smartest thing Rapido can do is stay out of the n-scale business completely so they don't lose their minds dealing with the drama queens that continually find something wrong in nearly everything produced.

 

Sometime it pays to go back and look at first entry and read what the thread was actually talking about,My take was not the quality of an item but how a manufacturer handles their mistake. Kato furnished a fix free of charge,Rapido simply made decals to cover thier manufactureing mistake and than turned around and charged the purchaser for the fix Now that is lame I haven't heard any complaints about the real quality of Rapidos passenger equipment only that you might incur a hidden charge for their mistakes.

 

I will... (be one who is 'dissing Rapido')

Their dedication to customer service (or their basic business sense) is TERRIBLE.

It is inconceivable to me how/why they have taken the business action of charging customers for a quality control issue. In the automotive business this would have been part of a recall. But not here!!!! Rapido wants to charge the customer for this "service".

If this was a european company which was marketing to the european customer, I could maybe see this behavior....even for the English market, but for the US market these are HUGE management decision failures. This is an instance where management is making business course decisions without considering the implications. I would be willing to bet that the management meetings are populated by "yes-men". I have personally seen this in the past, and invariably strategic planning failures are the consequence. It is my opinion that this will occur with this company too.

The inability of the company to produce the correct initial configuration is compounded by failure to adequately address the issue. I now have a very negative view of the company and I will question the authenticity of any additional items that they produce. I'm not a "rivet counter", however, I will research a subject before blindly trusting Rapido to produce an accurate product. As Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust but verify."

In my opinion, this is an issue of corporate reliability and responsibility.

:thumbs_down:

 

Hi all,

I just saw this thread after doing a Google search to see if anyone was talking about the Panorama Line. Apparently the issue with the IC decals has caused a stir.

Here's the situation from the horse's mouth.

If there is a real QC issue like a scratched paint job or missing parts, we never charge to fix it. We even give free stuff to cover the shipping to get the damaged car back to us, and we pay the shipping to get the car back to you.

Color is a different issue.

As some people have already stated, color is a subjective thing that is hard to get right. What is right? Look through your own slides and you will see 100 variations of a car color on 100 cars painted the same color by the same railroad. That being said, a number of people contacted me when we did the IC cars to say they were too dark. We used a Pullman 1:1 scale paint chip, which always looks too dark on a model. We also got several requests asking us to keep the dark color, mostly from ex-IC employees who worked on the trains close up and knew we got it right for the 1:1 trains. I decided to go with the majority and change the orange and then make replacement decals, to be sold at cost. Boy did I underestimate the cost.

Why charge for them? It's simple - they have cost us a ton. I made (and paid for) one set of 1000 decals, which was my minimum. Based on feedback I received, we would sell about 100 (we so far have had requests for about 30). However, they still didn't look right. When I was in China a couple of weeks ago I brought one of our newer IC cars and told the printer to match it. No problem. He matched it. And now we have to pay another $2000 for another 1000 decals. So we've now paid $4000 for IC and VIA decals, and to date we've received requests for 30 IC and 1 VIA. I have to try and recoup some of those costs. $4000 spent on decals is $4000 not being spent on new passenger car moulds. The way it is looking, the only way I'll recoup those costs is for VIA to decide they need my decals on their real cars.

The VIA stripes are a particular nightmare. The first cars were too light because the factory was new and didn't understand that one coat of yellow ink on blue paint looks wrong. The next releases were OK but then when we moved to a new building the factory lost the original paint chip and neglected to tell me. The baggage car stripes are consequently too dark, and by the time I found out about this they were already on a boat to Canada. I model VIA, and I want to improve the stripe colors for many of my own fleet of 67 cars and counting. So I'm still working on that one. The thing is, the variation in stripe color hasn't bothered most of my customers - it just bothers me so I've got to do something about it.

Would I offer decals again if we screw up? I'm not sure. I think the belief that we screwed up has to be universal for me to go that route again. With the VIA stripes, I seem to be in the minority, and with the IC orange, there is still a significant group that were upset when I followed the will of the majority and made it brighter. I guess I'll just have to take it on a case-by-case basis and hope that I don't screw up again. I do almost all the R&D for the company, so any mistake is usually my fault.

So that's it. This probably won't convince delljohnb that my business choices were sound, but at least you all have the facts of the situation and you can make up your own minds.

Best regards,

Jason
--
Jason Shron
President
Rapido Trains Inc.
Relocate

 

Thanks Jason ... and I, for one, will be watching for the release of your n-scale cars. I even surprised myself after I did a sort of "cost comparison" of just how close your pricing actually is vs. what it would take to do similar detailing with current available equipment.

So bring it on ... we need more "quality" products in n-scale rtr other than brass. :thumbs_up: :tb-cool:

 

rapidotrains: Thank you very much for your time to post here on TrainBoard. I look forward to your N scale products.

 

I also appreciate hearing from Rapido. It is good to see them address concerns that their customers have.

 

Your business decision to make a post on this board was excellent.

I may not agree with the basis for the "Decal Decision", however, directly addressing the problem...for right or for wrong...goes a LOOOOOOOG way toward making/developing an excellent reputation within the model train community. Keep up the good work and you should have a happy and profitable experience in the hobby market.

Resp,
John "delljohnb" Baugher

ps. I do like the upbeat, clever, and lighthearted attitude that you take in your advertisements. Keep it up!


:tb-cool:

 

I agree with everyone else here, jason, takes alot of guts and respect for your customers to come on to a public forum like this and explain your decitions. Bravo!

as for the passenger cars, I too am one who looks forward to their release, as a Northern Pacific Modeler, I am really lmited on my choices.

Next $50 question, any plans from Rapido to go into N scae Steam? if you want to make a lot of people happy, produce a quality 4-6-0 ten wheeler as your first release.

 

The price isn't that bad at all. In Europe, we are used to prices of 30 to 35 euro (that is about $45 these days) for quality coaches. For a Minitrix coach of the Dutch railways, you have to pay € 35:

And there is no lighting in this coach, and it has rapido couplers!

And for Fleischmann coaches a price of € 45 is normal:
http://www.totaltrain.nl/main_frame.php?shop=Fleischmann+N

 

Thanks, Jason for your good detailed explanation.

I was one of those IC veterans who suggested the darker paint on the IC coaches.

Being in N scale, I lookward to your new offerings.

Barry

 

If we want companies to offer us N Scale cars, we should give them the benefit of the doubt. As Rapido states, color is subjective.

This is not the deep pockets auto industry. This is not a safety or performance issue that demands a recall.

At least they are giving us a choice to pay their cost for a fix or live with the color.
I commend them for giving us this choice and for their communication and honesty with the customer.

The customer's choice is buy or not. It sounds like you have made up your mind without ever seeing the N Scale product.
I plan to wait and see what they offer before making up my mind.

 

Is HATE the right word?

Every time I see this thread pop up to the top of the list I cringe a little. I have read all of the posts four or five times and am amazed at how widely some of you cast your nets in response to a problem that amounts to little or nothing in the bigger scheme of things. (Pick your problem...Rapido, Intermountain, Kato, couplers ???). Perhaps it is the word "HATE" in the original post that triggers such ire at so many different things. Kato has done more for N scale than nearly any other company and their "fix" to a minor problem with what is otherwise a beautiful locomotive has been timely and simple. Nobody should have to send their GS4 back to get the fix installed...any primate can do it. Rapido is offering something NEW, but it is being condemmed for a five buck fix that may or may not be "necessary". The expense deserves a comment, but not a condemnation or a tacit call for a boycott! Rapido's explanation is rational...unlike the title of the initial post.

So...I am curious...how many of you actually HATE their GS4? I own nearly 400 locomotives and 2000 cars and I cannot say I HATE any of them. I am looking forward to my second GS4 and hope that Kato produces them in other paint schemes.

Steve E.

 

I will offer a GS-4 disposal service. Anyone who absolutely hates their GS-4 should feel free to mail it to me. PM me and I'll give you the address.

:tb-biggrin:

As far as the Rapido color matching...

wellllll... the prototype railroads don't always get their colors exactly right, so I don't know what it really matters on these IC cars. In fact, it would look even MORE prototype, I would wager, if the color varied a little bit from car to car.

This fix is not something necessary to run the trains - nothing like a faulty coupler or known issue with the trucks. Thanks to Jason for coming here and explaining.

 

These are not $15.00 cars. These are are high end cars. For the price that is being asked, they should be correct.

 

Based on Jason's reply, and assuming the numbers he has used are accurate, the market basically doesn't care. I know I discussed this issue with several distributors when this thread came up. None of them reported any dealers returning the cars due to complaints over the colors. That doesn't mean that everone believes that the colors are correct just that they don't care enough to complain.

HMMmmmm Maybe we should not have sent the Daylights back that were horribly incorrect in color: One set had 3-day old grey poupon for the orange and the other had "Howdy-Doody" clown pink for the red. We rejected them and did not send them out to customers. Maybe we should have shipped them.

 

Yes, but if the prototype roads use different shades from year to year based on whatever is in their paint shop, how is anyone going to know? Who is to say which is the correct color? How can we even determine that there even exists a correct color?