Skewed on their wheels. The coaches were a little twisted.

Other than two Roco 44976 coaches (already mentioned) where the addition of some detail parts caused a weak point and break in the the support for the axles, I have not experienced a single problem with any of my 1:87 coaches from Roco. The broken bogies were immediately replaced by the dealer.
I have noticed (once again already mentioned) that on some Roco coaches, I have had problems inserting the Maerklin 7203 coupler into the NEM shaft. I have been able to install Fleischmann Profi and Roco Universal Couplers without any problem. I do not know whether the Roco shaft opening has become tighter or Maerklin's couplers have a larger shaft than before. I have been able to solve the problem by using the Roco Universal Coupler, installing older Roco coupling shafts from a spare parts supplier or swapping Maerklin couplers with older stock on earlier Maerklin coaches. This problem has not yet been attributed to a specific manufacturer.

Other than that, the only other problems I have had has been with Liliput-Bachman SBB UIC coaches where the design resulted in the coupling shaft being a little over a mm too short, causing coupling problems when using close couplers. I solved this issue by using Roco's Universal Couplers, which have a little added length vis-a-vis the Maerklin ones. The same solution was also applied to select coaches from LS Models, RailTop and ACME as Modern Gala was also slightly off from NEM norms in earlier models.

In the last 18 months, I have bought 3 Maerklin Hobby Loks, 8 Maerklin Loks, 8 Roco Loks, 1 RailTop Trainset, 2 Liliput Trainsets and 3 Hag Loks.

They all have their positive and negative points, but they are all integral parts of my collection and hold special memories of trips to Switzerland for me.

Next in line are the Roco Re 4/4II 11109 Swiss Express and the Maerklin RABe EC followed by the Maerklin Re 10/10 and Roco ICN in 2010.

Regards

Mike C

<font face="Verdana]Right, let's see where we stand. Only counting Märklin items that were listed as bought recently; starter sets and batches of C-rail were counted as 1 item, turn-out motors were counted individually, provided that exact numbers bought were mentioned. Instances were the owner accidentally broke off a fragile body part were not counted as defects, unless there were other problems with the model.

-Total # of items counted: 80
-Flawless: 59 items (73,8%)
-Technical problems: 11 items (13,8%)
-Cosmetic problems: 2 items (2,5%)
-Structural problems: 2 items (2,5%)
-Design problems: 6 items (7,5%)
-Total # of problems: 21 (26,3%)

On the Dutch Märklin site, an announcement has been made by Märklin that they will increase quality control, as a consequence of this delivery of new models might be delayed.

@TimR: the # of Trix items mentioned in this thread is too low to make a difference. And if Trix is included, then should I also include LGB? It's a slippery issue to I decided to stick with Märklin .

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Fixing items under warranty is always more expensive than better quality control overall.