Customising, and how it affects your warranty

[Newportnobby]

Not a great deal to recommend Railway Modeller this month for an NGauger but hidden away in the letter's page is an interesting reply from Dennis Lovatt at Bachmann to the question "Will me customising my model affect the warranty?"
Most of it is common sense but it's good to see the official line.

My source of RM has them all bagged as there is a separate leaflet about preserved railways so you may not be able to just read the letter and leg it without buying one

[austinbob]

Not a great deal to recommend Railway Modeller this month for an NGauger but hidden away in the letter's page is an interesting reply from Dennis Lovatt at Bachmann to the question "Will me customising my model affect the warranty?"
Most of it is common sense but it's good to see the official line.

My source of RM has them all bagged as there is a separate leaflet about preserved railways so you may not be able to just read the letter and leg it without buying one

I don't get Railway Modeller so what does it say about customising and warranty just out of interest NN?

[njee20]

What is the gist of it?

To me common sense is that if your customisation is unrelated to the failure then your warranty should be unaffected - fitting etched plates shouldn't impact on split gears for instance. Whilst hard wiring a DCC chip and having a PCB short I would not expect cover. 

[longbow]

That's the gist of the letter. Body mods generally won't affect the chassis warranty.

It would be useful to what degree the major retailers accept returns of modified items.

[njee20]

I suspect there's rather a lot of subjectivity making it hard to say what is allowed/not.

[Newportnobby]

Sorry, but I'm not going to put details of the letter on the open forum without the consent of Peco Publications. I'm happy to approach them for such consent but guess the simple reply from them would be 'buy the mag'. Sorry.

[njee20]

Right. So this is a bit of a pointless post. Why talk about something you can't talk about?

It sounds like you'd be providing Dennis Lovatt's line anyway, not Peco's.

I saw a great layout the other day, amazing, best I've ever seen. Can't tell you about it though.

[Newportnobby]

My OP was more about the mag than the letter and I'm sure if anyone's that interested they'll buy it. Maybe you understand the laws of copyright but I don't so how about you go and buy it and then report on it all

[njee20]

Nah, I'll go and buy it and post a cryptic comment about it, but I can't really talk about that

[woodbury22uk]

Railway Modeller states the conditions for dissemination of its content. This is at the bottom of the Editorial page. The gist of it is that you must have the publisher's explicit permission.

The thrust of Dennis Lovett's letter is that before any mods check everything is working OK. Damage and performance changes resulting afterwards are not likely to be covered by the warranty if they result from the work carried out. Cosmetic weathering does not affect the mechanical warranty.  My assessment is there are lots of grey areas but that Bachmann are probably able to sort out whether a motor failure is due to manufacturing or user mis-use.

[njee20]

Great, thanks Lindi.

Yes, pretty much as expected then. The weathering one must be a ball ache - someone being a bit liberal with an airbrush screws everything up.