casias

iTrader: (1)

If this is in the wrong place, feel free to move it.


Just the facts. I am sure the vendor will have a response, but I want to put down my side of the story to warn others.

Vendor is Bill at BP automotive. I found a few threads on here that he was reliable and built good wiring harnesses.

1) Spoke with him a couple of times before ordering the harness. Very nice. Spent 30 minutes or more on the phone twice. Gave me a lot of confidence.

2) Ordered wiring harness on February 1 for $1400, sent complete payment by paypal.

3) Waited, waited waited waited.

4) Contacted him in mid March, was told I needed to email him to ask when my harness was in line to be made. Then he spent another 20 or 30 minutes on the phone with me. We discussed changes that my tuner had suggested. he was resistant to the changes, but my tuner is very experienced with LSA swap on LS3, and knew which ECU he wanted. Bill didn't agree, but agreed to do the work I wanted. Still couldn't tell me even APPROXIMATELY when the harness would be made.

5) Waited, waited, waited.

6) Trying to be polite. Waited, but this is ridiculous.

7) Called April 22, told him I had found someone else who could build the harness, wanted a refund. No. No, he tells me. "Believe it or not, the ECU's were back-ordered and just came in today. That's what I was waiting for (really E-38 ECU hard to find?) Promised harness would go out by Saturday, April 23.

8) Nothing, nothing nothing. Called today, April 28. "What's up?". He gets pissed. Tells me he sent me the tracking number twice, and it must be in my trash. BS. Anyway, he gives me the tracking number and tells me it is going to be delivered today April 28. I verified this, it was sent on April 26. A little late again.

9) But now his courteous customer service is gone. "How dare you accuse me. I am busy. I have employee issues. I want everything to be right. I take as much time as I need."

Oh, and he still has to mail the MAF mounting boss because he didn't have any.....really? A MAF mounting boss? You had 3 freakin' months.

Just a warning to others.

casias

iTrader: (1)

I also work in a small business. I took careful consideration before coming on here and talking about this, but the phone call I had with Bill this afternoon created this. First, he told me I "received" not 1, but 2 notices of tracking in my email and said "You need to look in your trash or spam folder. That's where it's at". Again, bullshit. I received no email tracking.

Also, if I had a customer wait as long as I had, and had a customer who was as patient as I was, I would have made a 5 minute phone call the moment that item shipped.

Then, tonight, I receive this email. Note the date and time. Also notice there is no TRACKING NUMBER. The harness is laying on my shop table right now. 'Nuff said.

BP Automotive

iTrader: (3)

There are some things that I would like to address.

Brace yourself for this novel.

Firstly, I want to address the topic of this thread. Secondly, below that I would like to address the concerns of some members that have replied.

This customer first called us a while back wanting a swap harness for an LSA Platform. We always build LSA harnesses to utilize an E67 ECM with an appropriate OS for that application.

Some companies and tuners like to go other routes. Why we feel this is the appropriate approach to this application is because the E67 coupled with the appropriate OS is how GM Engineered this special platform to be ran reliably. GM spent millions of dollars to R&D this, and it is the best way to run it with the electronics that they offer.

So this customer states during our initial conversation his tuner wants to run it on an E38 because he just disables all that supercharger crap anyway. So I told him on the phone that you can run an E67 and disable what you want, however if you decide it is needed the appropriate inputs for the MULTIPLE barometric sensors and the TWO IAT sensors are there. The E38 does not have this.

He agrees, better to have it and not use it than to not have it and need it. That is why the order confirmation that he posted states in the notes that he is running an LSA on an E67 with the Two Speed Fan Option. Those notes are not something that I can change once the customer inputs those notes in the order. GoDaddy does not have that option.

For the record he ordered and entire kit for 1,400 dollars. New ECM, New Show Stopper Harness, New LS3 MAF, New O2 Sensors, New GM Pedal, and new O2 and MAF Bungs.

So, order placed and set to go.

About 6 weeks or so go by and He calls me. And at this point I have the harness finished except for loom. And he says he is going to run the E38. How much longer on the harness? Since He wanted to change his mind I told him it would be a week. I did not tell him I had completed the E67 Harness since that is moot at this point and he is becoming hostile on the phone, at that time I tell him I can refund his money, and he says that if its going to be done in a week there is no need to. He never asked me for a refund. I repeat, he never asked for a refund.

So that was early in the week, not exactly sure of the day. At that time I had committed to shipping the harness on Saturday.

Now on to the second change the customer made to the harness.

The LSA Platform has a special Injector/Coil/Baro harness that goes on each side of the Supercharger for each bank. So I called the customer and asked if he had them, he stated no. I took the time to get him the part numbers for them since the LSA Harness is built to accommodate those since that is part of this application. Just like the coil harnesses are part of the application on a LS1/LS2/LS3.

So he gets the part numbers and states, those are $180 thats too much. I want you to build it into the harness and that he will use ls3 coils/brackets/coil harness. This is Thursday. I tell him that I will take care of it even though it is not how an LSA harness is built and that it will add a day or two to ship date. Out of my control. He says ok.

So yet again I have this harness 95% complete and I have to take it all back apart (the entire harness) so that I can run the new wiring for the injectors and coils to be ran all the way to the actual injectors instead of the connectors at the rear of the supercharger.

All of these changes had cost me time and material. About 6-8 hours of time. I never asked him for any more money, in fact I saved him almost $200 for the sub harnesses all while costing myself money. I never complained to him about any of this.

So just like I said it would be delayed a couple days. The harness shipped on Tuesday. We ship using Ship Station, and the shipping emails are automated. It is out of my hands if a customer does not get a confirmation, because it can end up in a spam folder. This also happens occasionally to the emails sent from our website.

Now for the response about how the shipping confirmation that was received but did not have any tracking information.

On Thursday when the customer called me because he hadn't received the harness he was cursing at me. So obviously I walked over to the computer, go on Ship Station and gave him the tracking information. The customer continued to be rude and then hung up.

The shipping confirmation posted here was for the second package we shipped-it wasn't for the harness but for the MAF and O2 Bungs. It was only a shipping notice.

This was not shipped separately because we did not have it in stock, it was shipped separately because we left it out of the other box accidentally. Too much is being assumed.

We had to wait a couple days on a replenishment shipment of E38 ECMs as the customer mentioned when I informed him of that when we talked the second time at the beginning of the week. This was because he changed from an E67 to an E38 and we had not had an E38 allocated originally to his order.

That pretty much sums it up.

Now, as far as the communication concerns. For months on end out of nowhere we have done twice as much business as we have ever before. So we have been growing exponentially! This is great, but when you grow by leaps and bounds in a very short time it leads to growing pains.

I never had the man power or multiple phone lines to be able to handle such an influx of business. Unfortunately, there wasn't a heads up that this was going to happen. That makes things extremely hard to keep up with all the aspects of BP Automotive.

Before this change we would receive a modest amount of calls-maybe about 10 a day at the most. In the same aspect, a modest amount of messages and emails. Probably 5 or so day. There are days now that we get 50 plus calls a day! It is absolutely impossible to answer them all and get harnesses out the door.

I am working hard to implement multiple lines and getting employees trained to help with all of this. Unfortunately, with this line of work I cannot just go hire someone that knows all of the ins and outs of the LS Swap environment enough to be proficient in helping customers with troubleshooting or just simply helping them order the correct part!

I have been working 14 hours a day 7 days a week for months to get everyone what they have ordered.

I do agree that communication is important, but it is not number one.

Number one is getting the customer what they paid for. I love to talk to my customers on the phone. I get to hear about some awesome swaps and projects, but in the end I have to get them what they need-a harness. It is a double edged sword because while we are going through this spurt it does mean I have dropped the ball on some communication.

PLEASE remember that it is not by choice. We are just simply so inundated that there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything accomplished. For those of you that tried to get in contact to order a harness and couldn't- I am sorry! I would have loved to build you a harness, and hopefully when we get everything lined out we will get to help you if you do another swap.


Bill