Moebius Model kit with missing or damaged parts?

GF

Sr Member
Well either I'm really unlucky or there's some quality control issues with Moebius kits, out of 3 Moebius kits 2 I had issues with.


The Cylon raider was my first Moebius model purchase ever and was perfect, the 2nd kit was TOS Colonial Viper and came with a flawed canopy, it had a small black piece embedded/molded into clear plastic, 3rd kit was the TOS Galactica with a missing part, part was approx. 1 1/2" square inch hull panel. I purchased hundreds of kits and never had a single part missing, this includes many garage kits with tons of loose parts in bags, what's more frustrating is Moebius charges a fee to get replacement for missing/damaged parts regardless if its their fault or not, the worst part is they don't know when they can send the parts as apparently they can't access the warehouse at the moment:eek I heard Pegasus and Revell have some of the best customer service when it comes to part replacements, anyone with similar experiences?

Gerardo
 
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I never had any problems with them as far as defective or missing parts. I lost a part and had it replaced, and that was an easy experience... promptly delivered.

of course I found it after the replacement arrived... typical.

Jedi Dade
 
Anecdotally, I have had good experiences with Revell (USA) but poor with Revell GMBH - but that was in the past (more than 8 years.) Pegasus is a (relatively) small operation and much easier to reach someone in their operation for a personal discussion even over the phone. Mobeius kits I have purchased have never had any QA issues that I've seen, so I have not attempted to work with them. Seems the first place to go with a problem such as you've described is the place of purchase - many times these days, the manufacturer wants the distributor & retailer to act as their agents in resolving 'returns and defects' issues. Best customer service I've ever had was back in the day with Monogram, who earned my loyalty time and again with their fine, courteous and prompt assistance with parts issues (which were not usually QA problems, but my own fault.) Given the number of their kits in my stash, I'd say they got a good return on their investment!

I'd say, keep trying and keep your cool. The staffing 'depth' of some of these manufacturers these days is rather shallow, as they are operating with thin margins. Missing parts are rare because of the packaging tech used (where every packed box is weighed such that even a tiny part missing would be enough to trip 'kick out'.) A molding defect such as the clear part would probably only be seen by a human inspector - most are not *that* high tech (aka 'big enough) to be using digital camera systems for 100% inspection...

You might even try using social media if you can't find a sympathetic ear; often, there are Facebook pages for these companies, for example.

Good luck & feel free to share your results with us here... Regards, Robert
 
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I never had any problems with them as far as defective or missing parts. I lost a part and had it replaced, and that was an easy experience... promptly delivered.

of course I found it after the replacement arrived... typical.

Jedi Dade

Did you have to pay for it?
 
Anecdotally, I have had good experiences with Revell (USA) but poor with Revell GMBH - but that was in the past (more than 8 years.) Pegasus is a (relatively) small operation and much easier to reach someone in their operation for a personal discussion even over the phone. Mobeius kits I have purchased have never had any QA issues that I've seen, so I have not attempted to work with them. Seems the first place to go with a problem such as you've described is the place of purchase - many times these days, the manufacturer wants the distributor & retailer to act as their agents in resolving 'returns and defects' issues. Best customer service I've ever had was back in the day with Monogram, who earned my loyalty time and again with their fine, courteous and prompt assistance with parts issues (which were not usually QA problems, but my own fault.) Given the number of their kits in my stash, I'd say they got a good return on their investment!

I'd say, keep trying and keep your cool. The staffing 'depth' of some of these manufacturers these days is rather shallow, as they are operating with thin margins. Missing parts are rare because of the packaging tech used (where every packed box is weighed such that even a tiny part missing would be enough to trip 'kick out'.) A molding defect such as the clear part would probably only be seen by a human inspector - most are not *that* high tech (aka 'big enough) to be using digital camera systems for 100% inspection...

You might even try using social media if you can't find a sympathetic ear; often, there are Facebook pages for these companies, for example.

Good luck & feel free to share your results with us here... Regards, Robert


Thanks for the info, actually customer service reply was prompt, I guess I'm just unlucky theres always a issue with anything I buy :(
 
I had a part replaced - the engine exhausts for the Viper MkII (mine had really bad sink marks). As I recall, they asked for pictures of the bad part and sent out a replacement right away when I responded. I don't believe I paid anything for either the part or shipping... I was under the impression that they only charged for parts that you screwed up yourself and wanted to replace instead of buying a whole new kit - missing parts might fall into that category because they can't really be sure the part was actually missing, not that you'd try to lie about that but you can understand that some people do take advantage of things like this sometimes. A small fee is still better than either paying for a whole new kit or throwing the one you bought in the bin....

Mark in Okinawa
 
My Viper canopy had a defect from factory, I sent them high resolution photos clearly showing the obvious flaw and they still wanted me to pay $10 to get a new Canopy.
 
My Viper canopy had a defect from factory, I sent them high resolution photos clearly showing the obvious flaw and they still wanted me to pay $10 to get a new Canopy.
Yeah, that's not a good customer service story. One thing about the 'picture of the defective part' thang, it can be used to document what defects are happening at the manufacturer's site, especially important since all of the actual production work is contracted out to China - so somewhat out of their control. It might be different if it was their own facility. So, makes sense. The $10 fee seems excessive...

R/ Robert
 
the cost to get a new canopy was basically one third the cost of the full kit:confused
 
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I had two of their Batman Tumblers and there were some pretty flawed parts in there and some were so fragile just getting them off the sprue was nearly catastrophic. Not overly impressed with their quality control and the plastic seemed pretty cheap considering the cost of the kit. It reminded me of the stuff that failed inspection at the plastic factory i worked at and we had to recycle.
 
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