Dapol Black Label Product Launch

[martyn]

 

If you're buying at an exhibition, try asking if the seller is happy for it to be tested on a layout, and then ask permission from a layout to try it.

We have done this on numerous occasions on James Street, most recently Bealman's loco he bought from NPN at York. I appreciate that some layouts may not like to do this.

Martyn

[PLD]

I've decided not to buy any more Dapol, GF, or Sonic following too many returns of duff out of the box locos - all steam in my case.

Once again, we come back to the question of why 90% of the failures are in the hands of 10% of modellers??
It's clearly not manufacturer-specific; so if not the modellers themselves, what else is the common factor? IIRC your previous sequence of issues was all via the same retailer, so perhaps something in the way they handle their stock, or the postal service used?
Buying in person and test running before buying (as you subsequently hinted at) is the way I'd go, rather than chasing the absolute lowest prices on-line...

[jpendle]

I've decided not to buy any more Dapol, GF, or Sonic following too many returns of duff out of the box locos - all steam in my case.

Which leaves 2nd hand Union Mills or the Rapido Co-Bo.
That seems a little drastic to me.

John P

[Newportnobby]

RevolutioN's class 128 will be of the correct era, maybe

[zwilnik]

I've decided not to buy any more Dapol, GF, or Sonic following too many returns of duff out of the box locos - all steam in my case.

Once again, we come back to the question of why 90% of the failures are in the hands of 10% of modellers??
It's clearly not manufacturer-specific; so if not the modellers themselves, what else is the common factor? IIRC your previous sequence of issues was all via the same retailer, so perhaps something in the way they handle their stock, or the postal service used?
Buying in person and test running before buying (as you subsequently hinted at) is the way I'd go, rather than chasing the absolute lowest prices on-line...

Firstly, a 10% failure rate alone is enough that a product would normally be recalled and the something in the process fixed.
Secondly, we're modellers. So a large chunk of us are more likely to consider fettling or fixing a duff model if it's easier than going through the return process, especially for a model that's in short supply.
Thirdly, there also appears to be another chunk of people who only collect the models and hardly ever run them, so may not even know they have a lemon.

[Ali Smith]

I'm not bothered about Dapol Black Label as long as I can get Johnnie Walker Black Label!

[PLD]

Once again, we come back to the question of why 90% of the failures are in the hands of 10% of modellers??

Firstly, a 10% failure rate alone is enough that a product would normally be recalled and the something in the process fixed.

Who mentioned a 10% (or any other) failure rate?? 

[zwilnik]

Once again, we come back to the question of why 90% of the failures are in the hands of 10% of modellers??

Firstly, a 10% failure rate alone is enough that a product would normally be recalled and the something in the process fixed.

Who mentioned a 10% (or any other) failure rate?? 

Good point, a minor logical fallacy on my part there. (although if 10% of the modellers are getting Lemons, they're rather unlucky or the failure rate is close to that). The actual failure rate isn't known though, but I still think in some cases it's higher than it should be and being partly masked by the other things I mentioned.

[PLD]

Good point, a minor logical fallacy on my part there. (although if 10% of the modellers are getting Lemons, they're rather unlucky or the failure rate is close to that). The actual failure rate isn't known though, but I still think in some cases it's higher than it should be and being partly masked by the other things I mentioned.

Not quite...
Information from retailers suggests return rates are somewhere in the 3-5% range...

To illustrate with numbers:
If 100 modellers buy 10 locos each (1000 in total); if we accept the upper 5% fail rate, there would be 50 duds in there, but it won't be that 50 modellers each have 1 failure - there will be 10 modellers ("10% of the modellers") with 4 or 5 failures each, another 5-10 modellers with 1 fail each and 80 modellers with no failures at all...
We've never got to the root cause of that uneven distribution...

[zwilnik]

Good point, a minor logical fallacy on my part there. (although if 10% of the modellers are getting Lemons, they're rather unlucky or the failure rate is close to that). The actual failure rate isn't known though, but I still think in some cases it's higher than it should be and being partly masked by the other things I mentioned.

Not quite...
Information from retailers suggests return rates are somewhere in the 3-5% range...

To illustrate with numbers:
If 100 modellers buy 10 locos each (1000 in total); if we accept the upper 5% fail rate, there would be 50 duds in there, but it won't be that 50 modellers each have 1 failure - there will be 10 modellers ("10% of the modellers") with 4 or 5 failures each, another 5-10 modellers with 1 fail each and 80 modellers with no failures at all...
We've never got to the root cause of that uneven distribution...

What you'd suggested (handling by retailer, couriers, specific handling by modellers etc.) are all valid possibilities that might skew the stats, but it could also be those 80 modellers who never have problems, some are just not reporting them or returning the models. Either because it's something they think fixing themselves is more practical than hoping the replacement will be better (or even available) or they're just collectors who never run them (or don't run them enough for a fault to show itself).

When the models are done in such small runs, even 3-5% can appear quite significant, especially when there aren't enough models allocated to retailers to be able to replace a duff one.