Purchases regretted

[LeftyAl]

I was in contact with Andrew Bolton at the time letting him know of my frustration. He helped me out in the end as I was at the point of wanting to get the car fixed and them sell it. So my regret was buying too new a car with no local support.

I know it wasn't HPI's fault, but for a period of time the enjoyment of a nice new kit was over shadowed by a lack of parts/spares. It ended up being shelved for a fair few years. I got it down when my son showed some interest in it. Might get it going again. 

My son is looking for a new car now and i have been encouraging him to make sure that he does some research around spare parts and options to set expectations before he breaks it.

[nowinaminute]

I tend to get buyers remorse after every purchase but then again, I regret it when I miss out on something too 

I think the remorse is more to do with the ever mounting pile of "projects" more than genuinely not wanting the item though.

 

[ThunderDragonCy]

Only time i ever got it was with a TA01 i picked up off ebay to see about touring cars a couple of years ago. Was sold a right pup! Shell was a horrid weirdly proportioned pre painted job, alloy dampers turned out to be crap, had mismatched ta01 and ta02 front end. Spent money sorting it then it just wasn't very good. Sold it quickly! Should have just done what i did with buggies and bought an entry level kit and started from scratch. A TT02 with a nice shell and some cva shocks would have been spot on in hindsight. 

[Guest]

I generally buy large lots of multiple cars and then ticker on them. Get them fixed up, sell some, keep some etc. I constantly question why have I just brought another collection (waiting on one as we speak). I cant seem to help it. Usually I sell them and break even (forgetting the spare parts I add that I already own so they are kind of free). I guess for me that is the hobby, I get to build and paint etc without breaking the budget or adding to my already over sized collection. 

[Mad Ax]

I think I've had this a few times, but it's hard to say as I've bought and sold so much over the years.

My first purchase on my adult return to RC was a Dark Impact, which wasn't a regret, but my second was a Midnight Pumpkin, which was.  As a child I had the Midnight Pumpkin Jr truck, and I lusted after the full-size Pumpkin and Lunchbox - they looked like the coolest things on four wheels.  I expected them to be go--anywhere conquer-anything four-wheel-drive beasties, but I was disappointed with the reality - a truck that fell over on a whiff of throttle, rattled like a cheap toy, had bargain-basement parts and go so scratched after one run that it looked a decade old.  I always blame Tamiya marketing for this - I now appreciate the LB/MP for what they are, but at the time I thought they were something else.

I did some trades with some fly-by-night members on here.  There was one youngster, I forget his name, who arrived on the forum, built some very nice scale cars (including IIRC a very nice Defender 90 long before the scale scene was really taking off), had some great ideas and then just as suddenly vanished.  One of his projects was an RWD Schlesser Buggy based on a TB02 chassis.  I don't know what possessed him to use that as a base and I don't know what possessed me to give him some cash for it at a Tamiya event, but I bought it, sure enough.  I have no idea what I did with it.  It sat around for years waiting for me to do something with it, but I'm fairly sure I no longer have it.  Not sure if I traded it at an event or just threw it away - TBH there wasn't much left of the original chassis.

I also bought a four-linked Sand Rail grasshopper chassis from another long-lost poster.  He had a neat idea and documented it well on the forum, then out of the blue put it up for sale.  I bought it.  What I got was a much-hacked Grasshopper tub and gearbox and not a lot else.  He'd had some good ideas but unfortunately had gone a little too far down the wrong path, so I had to replace the gearbox casing to put it right.  I did eventually make it run (with a TXT body on it) but it never really looked right and handled like a pig.  Maybe not a bad project to pick up again someday just for the badword of it, but it'll never be anything other than a much-hacked Grasshopper.

I might say I regret buying my E-Maxx, but I'm not sure I do.  I wanted one for years but they were always out of my budget.  I got mine when a friend was selling off his collection.  He needed an office chair, and I had a brand new one that I didn't like, so we did a swap.  I ran the E-Maxx just once and fried the Castle Creations ESC.  He used the chair a few times and it broke.  So I guess we were even on that one, although I don't think either of us felt too good about it in the end.  I've barely run the E-Maxx since then.  It's rare that I go anywhere with enough space to run it.

Others?  I don't know.  A few things I've bought, shelved, then sold again.  Various new-built shelf-queen touring cars with street bodies, mostly.

I have regretted some parts.  I once put up a wanted ad for broken hardbodies and got sent a box in the post on the proviso that I would "pay in kind".  What I got was a real heap.  I still have most of it, but I've never been able to make anything from them.  One day, I keep telling myself...  Well, one day has never come.  The guy asked for "random vintage parts" in return, but I didn't really collect vintage, so in the end we settled on a nominal sum.  Not a lot of money, but I didn't have much to show for it.

In my early days I would randomly jump on "rare vintage parts" listed on here - even if I didn't want or need them.  I still have a few in my box.  I guess I thought that one day they'd be useful to me, but they weren't.

[Saito2]

18 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

I always blame Tamiya marketing for this

True. Tamiya never played up the wheelie aspect of these trucks (LB/MP) back in the day like they did the Wild Willy or even Pajero. If it weren't for the RCCA reviews back in the day, I wouldn't have known until I bought it. Nowadays they kinda have them shoved into the wheelie series as the CW-whatever platform.

[Grotty Otty]

Not so much regretted as disappointed. Built the Monster Beetle (and even went as far to as use a Thorpe diff) but due to spending far to much time on getting the body spot on its no fun to drive! First time I've ever really been conscious of scraping and scratching up a vehicle, although what I should do is purchase another body and not paint it and worry about it I guess! 

[Big Jon]

I'm always dissatisfied when I buy used cars, even if it's a chassis that I really want. Because I'm stupidly anal about weird things that nobody cares about, I always end up spending more than the cost of a NIB kit on replacement parts and hop-ups to make it as close to perfect as I can, or sometimes the project will stall for a long time while I find that one part that I saw once on the internet ten years ago. Then, the car never really hooks me because I didn't build it new from a kit, with all of the experiences of building a new kit.

I've also been disappointed with Castle electronics every time, every RTR I've ever bought (which is why I haven't bought a RTR in forever, and won't buy another), and cheap servos.

As long as I've been doing this, and as much stuff as I buy, I figure that I'm doing pretty well.

[Juggular]

@Saito2 always seems to start good topics...

No regrets.  There were design failures.  Incidentally, those are the hyped ones, that I bought as soon as they got released.  Like Juggernaut 1, but Tamiya made it right. Even though I bought it a year after release.  Terra Crusher was another hype.  It was too sluggish, but not too bad after installing HPI tires.  Mad Bison has a counter gear getting caught in every tree root.  As I grow older, I try not to go for the hype.  I might still fall for it because I love RC.  If you love it, it's possible to expect a lot.  This hobby comes with that risk.  

For me, it helps to think that these are just toys. (okay, please don't hate me for calling them toys... but they are adult toys... uh...well, not that kind of toys, I mean, toys for grown-people, who are adults.)  "Regret" occurs only in my mind.  It's not an objective thing you can measure like "1 liter of water."  During the past 1 year or so, my attitude kinda changed.  I lowered the expectation. (I should thank @Saito2 for that. I got to relax on how I look at things)  

I learned to expect that even good looking E-bay offerings will have bent piston rods in the shocks, or a spur gear gone bold from a wrong pinion.  Of course I'd be disappointed.  But no regrets.  Restoring is fun too.  I botched up some areas as I painted NSU Prinz TT shell.  If it didn't turn out to be perfect, I can run it to dust in style.  Maybe I'll do better next time. Or maybe I'll mess up again. Then I'll have another decent looking runner.  

Perhaps I can relax because I don't put in a lot.  I spent some money on 4 link upgrades for Juggernaut 2, and TLT-1.  They turned out fine, so no regrets.  Juggernaut's red paint job resulted in the paint sputter orange-skin.  But since I like orange-yellow color now, it's good.  I'll sand it and paint it in orange.  For the most part, shocks, motors, and cheap tires are all the upgrades they get.  You don't often go wrong with those.  After all these are Tamiyas, not Mars landers.  I started to think that I'm meant to break these as I run them.  I'll have fun while I break them, I'll have fun while fixing them.  If they don't break, then I got lucky.  It's a hobby, the whole purpose of having a hobby is to relax and have fun.  Of course, I'm only speaking for myself.  There are people who want to exert control and perfection.  That's cool too.   

 

[Pablo68]

I usually get buyers regret, I bought something today in fact......might have bought something else too.....

Not sure where I'll put em all tbh, and that's before the re re Ultima has been released, and I'm going to get one of those.