I have a Revell 1967 Chevell SS396 kit. I have had the kit for sometime and recently pulled it out to work on. I soon discovered that one of the red tail lights was missing! The kit is old enough that it includes an address to write to in case of problems with the kit. Write to? Who writes these days the internet and emails? I tried their customer service page on their web site and was informed I needed to upload and invoice or my request would be deleted. Really? Who keeps a receipt for a kit I maybe bought 20+ years ago! The date on the box and instructions show 1989 so it could have been longer than that!
Do I have another recourse? The part is much too complex to even try making a duplicate.
The kit is most likely OOP but some samples are available on Ebay. I don’t want to pay over $40 for a replacement kit over one tiny part.
There are a couple of them on Ebay that are going for a little over 26 bucks including shipping. I know it’s a lot of money to spend for just replacing one part, but you should also consider how much your time is worth and how much just bypassing the aggravation of trying to get a replacement is worth. I buy duplicate kits all the time, usually because I’m a fan of experimenting with new techniques…and sometimes that doesn’t go well. LOL. When I have to replace one part, having a whole other kit to pick parts from also gives me the comfort of knowing I have other replacement parts in case I screw something else up. 20 or 30 bucks is a small price to pay for just not having to jump through a bunch of hoops.
To be honest, since my original post, I just found out I have on the way. I had put one of those kits on my watchlist a few days ago. The owner sent me an offer and then I sent a counter offer. I got tracking info this morning that it left Florida at 7:29 a.m Saturday. The seller must have dropped it off at the post office last night. My ebay account is set up that if I bid or make an offer on something, it is charged automatically if accepted. Kind of annoying in a way so I have to be careful what I bid on.
Not the first time I ended up with duplicate kits, because of damaged or missing parts. I just hate ending up with an extra kit I can’t use.
I’ve been dealing with eBay since 1996. When I win something, I tend to shove the shipping page inside the box. If I buy it at a hobby shop, I’ll put the receipt inside the box. Heck, I even opened up an MPC Millennium Falcon kit I built in college in 1985 and it has a barely legible sales receipt inside.
Many of the old kits get reissued on occasion. You can see if it’s been reissued and request the kit part based on the new kit number.