Broadway limited is having a garage sale

[John]

[robertjohndavis]

I weighed mine. 1 lbs 4.8 oz including the box.

It’s being returned. I am out $44.09 all-in and will now have to pay return shipping.

How BLI responds will help me decide whether or not to cancel my current pre-orders. I have been a customer in HO and N since the very first release of the Hudson and have spent thousands of dollars on BLI products. My experiences with them have been good, especially their service department.

There is something about this grab bag fiasco that rubs me very wrong. I feel taken advantage of. Like they would expect me not to weigh the box to find out if I had been ripped off.

[mu26aeh]

Being underweight is just salt in the wound

[MVW]

Reminds me of the old joke about two women trash-talking a restaurant.

"The food is horrible," says the first one.

"And the portions are so small," says the other.

 

Sorry about your experience. I've always liked BLI's products, but this sounds like an unmitigated boondoggle.

Jim

[bbunge]

I wasn't overly impressed and was surprised to see basically lose parts in a box.  I haven't weighed it.  Perhaps I don't want to now.  I was hoping for more mech parts - perhaps a bag of gears, another of steam running gear parts.  I did get enough parts to put together a P-5... no electronics, but that isn't a problem.  I'm interested at some point in pulling the motors from the 3-4 junk chassis to see if there is anything usable.  If so, that might be worth the price.  A lose steam compressor, some other steam related accessories on two steamer shells might be useful for a future 3D print project.  Those two shells have bells on them that I can use as well.  I'm not sure it was worth my time to dig out all the freight car ladders from the bottom of the box... and the running boards. 

Did anyone go to the actual event?  Certainly if I were local, the chance to pick through their junk bins would have been worth the time.

[robertjohndavis]

Got a reply from BLI today. They said the N scale boxes were supposed to be 1 lbs, HO 2 lbs. Website was wrong.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Got a reply from BLI today. They said the N scale boxes were supposed to be 1 lbs, HO 2 lbs. Website was wrong.

Uhh, that’s not an excuse. What a colossal screw up.

[thomasjmdavis]

I sounds like ...

a) They had 2 good ideas- a garage sale and a grab bag sale... The problem is, they put them together. So, the grab bags were whatever junk was left over after all the good stuff was taken at the garage sale.

b) None of the decision makers (who decided on 1 pound N scale boxes) actually proofread their own website for accuracy.  This kind of lack of editing has become pervasive in the modern internet age.  A mistake like this might be forgivable in a magazine ad- once it was printed, it was too late. But on a webpage, the correction can be made in short order, as soon as someone spots the error.

c) The value of the parts is well below expectations- with many parts being essentially worthless due to damage. The ads I saw at least implied that the value of the contents of the box, although an assortment, was considerably greater than the price tag.  The responses I'm seeing here, as with the video posted above, indicate that this is not the case.

I don't have any skin in this particular game.  I would have happily traveled 100 miles to go to their garage sale, where maybe I could pick up F unit and switcher shells and chassis and other stuff I could actually use.  But, it would have ended up as a 3 day trip there and back from Michigan. (I don't do 24 hour drives on diner coffee anymore).  I figured if I bought the 'grab bag' box, I'd end up with some  busted moo-ing boxcars and water tank parts- which are the last things I want.
After reading about the experiences of people who DID buy the boxes... I will be very cautious about any similar offerings from BLI in the future. 

[tehachapifan]

Got a reply from BLI today. They said the N scale boxes were supposed to be 1 lbs, HO 2 lbs. Website was wrong.

This is the angle they are taking on this??

[MK]

Got a reply from BLI today. They said the N scale boxes were supposed to be 1 lbs, HO 2 lbs. Website was wrong.

Uhh, that’s not an excuse. What a colossal screw up.

It's more than that.  It's false advertising!

If BLI just let this stand and makes no attempt to make those who bought a box whole, then it gives you an insight on how the company really thinks about its customers!

[Hedron]

My box is 20 oz...counting the box.