I ordered $700 worth of suspension parts with the understanding that I needed the parts ASAP. First I ordered a phb, called back and ordered lca's , lca brackets and frame connectors, all roto joints.

Not a word was said that they don't have ANY parts on the shelf, they build to order, not a word. I call to check on my order an the guy says it will ship Friday and you will have it in Tuesday. Ok no prob, the HPDE is the 25-26th, which I stressed to him, he said no problem the parts will be there.

20 minutes ago my phone goes off with an email that my parts just shipped WTF?

I call naturally pissed, she explained there was two separate orders, no their wasn't I added to the original order.

What a half assed way to do business, I am now in a bind I have spent $450 on two HPDE days that the car will not be ready for.

If I would have known this I would have bought from Spohn as I will in the future.

 

Why didn't you just order everything at once?

Sounds like it was just a mix up with the ordering. I'm sure the fact that they didn't combine the two orders was a mistake or the person on the other end of the phone didn't understand etc.

 

Hello,

We do apologize for the delay and error on our end. Chris tried to explain the situation to you and the reason for the delay but your response was "I don't need any excuses, I will take this to the boards" and then a hang up. That makes it a little tough for us to try to explain our error and compensate you.

We do not build items to orders at all times. However here is our story. We currently moved to a new location 3 weeks ago, we moved to a much larger and more efficient facility. We had totally out grown our old building and location. During the move our machinery was out of service for two weeks and all orders were shipping off of inventory only. Over the two week time frame our inventory was depleted and now we are working non-stop to refill our shelf's and customers orders.... this is a very difficult task during the busiest time of the year.

During the move we experienced a few issues, CNC machinery glitches and we broke an element in our powder coat oven. Our powder coat oven was only running 50% the past few days waiting on the new element to arrive. Your order was built and waiting for coat when you had called... however like the saying goes, what can go wrong will go wrong. The last element in the oven went out forcing us to stop our powder coating and sit still until it arrived.

Finally the element arrived and the oven was back to normal, this is how we were able to finally get your order out today and why we weren't able last week. I do apologize and I know excuses do not help the situation.

In order to help, your package was upgraded to next day air and you will have it tomorrow. Again I am very sorry for the delay and issues it may have caused you.

Thank you,
Ryan

 

Customer did place one order only, we shipped a partial of what we could and the system generates two orders, one being for the balance. This sounds like a mix up on our end with the customer.

 

Ryan , I appreciate your reply. If all this was going when I placed my order why wasn't it disclosed AFTER I expressed the need inside a certain time window ??? And then when I called to check on the order I was told word for word that "we don't stock parts we build to order and ship in three days "?

And then, it will ship Friday and you WILL have it Tuesday?

This event came together very quickly, I work a lot of hours and only have two weekends a month off. I needed those parts when promised. I am driving an hour each way home every night to get the car ready and relying on friends for help.

When you spend money you should AT LEAST get the stuff when promised. I kept my end of the promise with on time payment.

 

Mix-ups do suck and are frustrating. So I understand to a degree where the OP is coming from.

That being said, what I quoted above is one of the reasons UMI will get my business over and over again. Regardless of a mistake being made, that is impressive customer response service.

 

We are very back logged right now so we are building many items to order now because of the above reasons. This usually isn't the case.

Your order was scheduled to ship on Friday when Lance mentioned that, so it wasn't an initial mistake, just one of those things that became out of control.

I completely understand your frustration. I have a quite a few things on order right now that I am waiting to come in. We also have quite a few back orders on items UMI buys to assemble into items, it can be the most frustrating thing sometimes.

 

You should be lucky that UMI is so friendly to you because not all sponsors here would respond to your attitude the same way. Sometimes stuff goes wrong and Ryan explained the situation.

It makes me appreciate UMI even more now the way I see the way they deal with guys like this!

 

Hell, you're even getting quicker shipping to accomodate the issues they were having... does that not fix your problem???

 

Wow.....its too bad that a more LOGICAL course of action would be to work with a reputable sponsor, as many of us know them. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity in working with them to resolve the issue, they are forced to spend their afternoon minimizing collateral damage as a result of sniveling thread and sob story in how you're entitled because you spent a little money.

Ever consider **** happens? Geezus don't build anything....

 

My attitude???? It would have been totally different if I would have called to order these parts and said nothing about the deadline I had, I was clear on that point. And they had no knowledge of the problems they were having in getting orders out.

But I did express the need for the parts in a certain time window and I was told no problem getting.g them to me with the the knowledge they did in fact have problems.

Get the money and worry about it later, this is becoming a common practice in business.

I would have respected them and done business in the future if they would have been honest with me.

Why are we so in tune with this being the norm when doing business?

 

Sometimes, "defication happens", and whether we like it or not, we have to roll with the punches. For example back in the mid-80s, a friend and I were putting an oval track car together. We started with a "rolling chassis" in our shop in early January, a full 5 months before the racing season started.......


Long story short, just about every supplier we had to buy from, was on backorder of normally "standard" race car stuff. Even Crane Cams was 2 months behind, as they had moved that year.......We made the last 2 shows of the season, in early September.

 

No to go off topic, but I don't know why you think you need any of that for a HPDE day. I don't see you benefiting from any of that for handling.

 

If businesses would do the simple things like deliver on time and the price quoted they would make a ton more money because there would be no fires to put out.

But it has become common practice to over promise and under deliver , we as consumers have become conditioned to do business this way.

Why is that?

 

JD

The car has all poly stuff in the rear,bought it that way. Good for drag racing, not for turning.

Hence the roto joints. Car is.lowered, it needs lca relocation brackets.

I don't want leaky t tops, it needs frame connectors.

 

Because in a "specialty driven" market like parts for 9-18 year old pony cars, there isn't HUGE $$$$ to be made, so they don't stock HUNDREDS of items. It's a VERY simple concept to understand, and as the US economy gets weaker, and people have less money to spend on "hobby" stuff like HP car parts, it's only going to get worse. Learn to deal with it NOW, and you'll live a longer, calmer life...

 

So your solution is to do business with Spohn?
Am I the only one who can hear the woo-woo of this train wreck?

My only comment about your situation is what were you thinking by making wholesale changes the weekend before an event?

What if UPS had lost your package? Or the neighbors stole it? Or the dog ate it?

Never, ever, never rely on things out of your control for last minute work.

I doubt you'll get much traction around here dragging UMI's customer service through the mud. "Hanging up and going to the boards" is a very effective way to solve an issue.

I don't see UMI doing ANYTHING dishonest here. People order stuff all the time and it's back ordered or out of stock. It happens.

 

Mitch you are exactly what consumers have become.

All the issues here were in UMI' s control.

 

That would be what....realistic?

 

Why not LPE? Us as consumers are satisfied "just to get our parts" whenever the business sees fit to send them AFTER they have our money. They lie to us to get the money "in house", after that its stall till we get our poop in a group...hell we got his money.

If UMI was so set on customer service like some of you say, they would have said "You know Mr Customer, we are having problems getting orders out at the present time, but I will call one of my MANY vendors that sell our products and find some on the shelf and get back with you. We realize you have a deadline and we want you to have our product". Did that happen, uhhh no.

I was gonna buy the stuff some Sam Strano,he seems like a good dude and has helped me over the phone, but he was off as said on his site. So I decided to go to the source, so much for that.

You know guys it's not like the delivery truck ran off a cliff, a tornado hit their building after they hung up the phone with me, THREE TIMES. They knew what was up, took my money and fed me full of crap.

The original order was placed on 3-11, I added the other stuff 30 minutes later with a second call. Plenty of time per the guy.

As luck would have it, I got the frame connectors tonight that I cant put on because I dont have a welder. A buddy 30 minutes away was gonna do it. I needed the rear suspension stuff tonight to install, put the frame connectors in the car drive it to work and on the way home go by his house(on the way) and weld them on.

But, well yall know already LMAO.

Will just be ran with no frame connectors. I wont be able to do another HPDE till the fall. PLLLEEEENTY of time to put them on LOL.