The rating is for George's Trains customer service for repairs.
This is my first interaction with George's Trains. They were recommended to me by Credit Valley Railway in Mississauga (a competitor) as the place to take Lionel products for repair.
I had bought a Lionel Polar Express train set in December 2018 to have at our place for our grandchildren to play with when they visited. Although I like trains, I have never been in a position to have a set, but decided to take the plunge for our grandchildren. Within a year, the train stopped being controlled by its remote control. To the best of my knowledge there is not an other way to control the train, other than by the remote.
I took the locomotive and tender to George's Trains on December 15th, 2019 for repairs. I asked if the repairs could be done by Christmas and they said "no". Fair enough. It was an inquiry, not a request or demand. Two calls by me over the next eight weeks, since drop off to George's, finally resulted in the comment that "8 weeks is not unusual in this business". (Full disclosure - they send this particular type of train out to a third party for repairs; they do not do repairs to this particular Lionel product themselves.) Again, fair enough, but why could that information not be given out at the time I dropped off the equipment?
Further comments from the staff person I talked to was that they are "absolutely swamped" and they have no idea of when repairs to my set would be done. The person I talked to was reluctant to call the third party repair place to get information for me because if they did that for everyone, it would "slow down their business so that nothing else would get done".
Aside from the seeming lack of communication or customer service, I am having a tough time deciding if the original cost of the train set should be written off as a sunk cost and give up the idea that having a train set for our grandchildren is worth it.
Don M read more