Catalogue rant

Why do manufacturers charge for their product catalogues? Imagine if Marks & Spencer charged you to look in their shop window. I’ve just laid out £10 for three catalogues for what I believe are tier 1 suppliers: Peco, Graham Farish and Ratio/Wills. In retrospect, I needn’t have bought the GF one because they at least have a decent web site with their product descriptions available. Good for them. I suppose they’re entitled to try and fleece me for an extra £3. And they succeeded (though that’s £3 less available to buy a loco from them).

But what is Peco doing? It’s living in the dark ages, that’s what. The Peco web site has descriptions of its products, but no illustrations. Pointless. You have to buy the catalogue. Same for Ratio/Wills, owned by Peco. So I have to buy the Ratio/Wills catalogue too, if I want to know what the products look like.

Come on, Peco. Get with the 21st century. Put your excellent products in full colour on the web site. I’m sure you’d sell more of them that way.

If Dapol can, you can.