Very useful! Online Parts Lookup

[playmofire]

I'm sorry to hear that, Walter.  All the staff are pleasant and helpful, but Caroline was especially so.  I wish her all the best in whatever she's doing now.

[skypurr]

That is a shame, she was helpful. 
I echo what Gordon has said.

[GrahamB]

I agree that Caroline was very helpful. I wonder if the job was all that great....

I sent in my 350-part list by Excel spreadsheet, as usual, but heard nothing back for a week (Caroline often answered within a few hours!). When I rang to enquire politely if there was a problem, the lady I spoke to told me she has to enter every part list manually (i.e. type every part number again), as well as cross-checking on a different system for alternatives to items no longer available. She had got half way through my list, but promised to finish it that day (which she did). I apologised profusely and promised never to send such a long list again. I also expressed my extreme disbelief that PM(UK) staff have to do manual entries, even when they receive a list electronically.

I cannot believe a company like Geobra has not created software which can take an electronic list sent in by a customer (conversion to TSV or CSV from other formats would be easy) and look up, electronically, the part numbers on a stock list database. Crikey, I could almost do it myself in Excel and I'm no IT boffin.

So I have written to Geobra, specifically Gabi Lodes-Bernt, the boss of the DS operation, to ask why they don't develop this. I sent the letter in English to PM(UK) to start with, in case this is some local practice which the bosses at HQ know nothing of, but as I have received no reply in two weeks, I suspect they are not interested in improving their own working practices.

Watch this space...

[Tiermann]

I just want to report on a variation of this that I've found very useful as well. At Playmobil.de if you go to the page for a set there is a link on the left to Ersatzteilfinden. When you click it, up pops the window allowing you to see a list of parts in the set with numbers. This has been around for a while, but be aware that sets that don't come with instructions often now include the parts lookup link. So for instance you can look up the parts in the newer cats set 5535 that doesn't have instructions and find out the part numbers for all the cats in it. This works for some parts in 123 sets as well. So that's another route for finding part numbers for recent sets. Not every part is always listed, but many are.

[surfergirl]

Thank you Graham and Tim....this is a very useful function, not least because it gives you a guide to the price of each part too.

Claire