Model Railroading > New Athearn website is beyond useless

What moron designed this?    And what morons at Horizon thought it was a good idea to unleash it?   This thing is beyond useless.   You can't find anything on it much less check on preiviously released models.

If you search for something, they list 3 upcoming or in stock items, wait a few seconds, and hit enter, it will show all of those items. That's about the best I've been able to do so far. 

Mike ONeill
Parker, CO

Totally nuts that you can't filter by type of rolling stock, etc. Like, why remove a feature that already existed and was useful??? 

Progress baby! Progress. They are saving us from our selves and shining the light of civilization.

ATSFSuperCap Wrote:
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> What moron designed this?    And what morons at
> Horizon thought it was a good idea to unleash
> it?   I see the hand of Garner behind this.

TomG Wrote:
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> Progress baby! Progress. They are saving us from
> our selves and shining the light of civilization.

Hey them IT people or ever what they are called need something to prove there worth or lack there of been dealing with that problem for years with my Bank.

The same morons that keep changing Ebays sight every 6 months so you cant find anything. These people might be book smart but as my dad use to say, they couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the directions on the heel. Also the same people that god forbid the grid go down, they wont know what to do without asking their phone. Thank you public school system

dwb909 Wrote:
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> The same morons that keep changing Ebays sight
> every 6 months so you cant find anything. These
> people might be book smart but as my dad use to
> say, they couldn't pour piss out of a boot with
> the directions on the heel. Also the same people
> that god forbid the grid go down, they wont know
> what to do without asking their phone. Thank you
> public school system

Your dad and my dad were both right!

I only spent a few minutes on the new sight trying to find info on the California cars. That was enough. Horizon is saving me lots of money. 

Hopefully the site is a work in progress. 

No, I don't really believe that either....

I am  not a fan of the new site either. I really liked how on the old site you could scroll
down the Announcments and they aged down, had pix, and you find older stuff, check the PDF, find the item to see dates etc.
I spent some real time on there the other day and went thru all 97pages of annoucments. Neither the Beet cars nor the
surfliners were in there at all. The reason; I determined; was because the projected arrival date had aged passed the
one year mark.  I found both items, by keyword search, and both have projected arrivals in July, _of _2024_  ouch. 
So between everything being jumbled, and the aged dates, it's not really as good as the old site. Not progress!
To Jim; who does Athearn tuesdays,credit; he took my question on this, and I asked specifically about the above
mentioned cars. He cited supply chain issues with chips, especially for the Surfliner/CaliCars. One would think this
should not affect the beet cars (I ordered quite a few) but maybe has something to do with etching? (for the extensions?)
Dunno on that. I hope it isn't a number of pre-orders issue. Please pre-order these needed cars. Much better than
another box car  lol.  Hope this helps.

Not to defend Athearn...but I am willing to bet that nobody at Athearn had a lot of input into how this site works. It probably was designed by an IT firm, not model railroaders. Especially with the bare bones search function. And like everything else IT, in order to make it better, we have to contact Athearn with suggestions. Enough people do it, the search will get better.  

Model railroading isn't the only one affected. I find Ace Hardware's website to be just as useless, especially the search function. Like someone else mentioned, probably the same clowns that put together Amtrak's awesome website.

I worked for a large international tech firm before Covid. The CEO insisted on installing new SAP software. First in one branch, then others through out the US over a two year period. It never worked from day one, but the installs kept happening. It rendered us next to useless and customers began leaving in droves. Then employees. The feed back fell on deaf ears as branch after branch fell victim of being unable to provide customer service. The company hasn't recovered.

Seems the CEO wanted an easier way do do his reports. He got it, meaningless numbers and a boot out the door.

Retired from IT. IT would typically have no role in this in such a large company. IT would proivide a server. Marketing would do the site.

BAB Wrote:
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> TomG Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Progress baby! Progress. They are saving us
> from
> > our selves and shining the light of
> civilization.
>
> Hey them IT people or ever what they are called
> need something to prove there worth or lack there
> of been dealing with that problem for years with
> my Bank.