Heartburn with Classic Industries that ended well!

[Bart K]

I had out an order in with CI for a b-body front end rebuild kit and a set of 15x7 steel cop wheels. Both items went on backorder that day I ordered on 6/21/2016. I checked back on a couple of occasions and was informed that the vendor for the front end kit was having "tooling issues" and they could not tell me if I would wait a month or a year, so I cancelled that part of the order and got a very similar kit off of ebay in 2 days. Granted, I did not get the CI discount or free shipping, but I did get the part.

Last week, I called to check on the wheels and was told that they would ship by the end of the week which did not happen. I called back on Monday this week to see what was up and was told that it would be another couple of weeks. So Monday evening I contacted CI right here on FBBO. Ray Yager did respond the same day, he is the Merchandising Director and he did say he would look in to it. This morning, I called back to see if I could get through to Ray, and he was not in yet. The operator (Teresa) listened to my story and offered to put me on hold and see if she could get someone to help me. I only waited a minute or two and Mark Vogt came on the line and he is the General Manager for CI. He listened to my story and offered to personally call the wheel vendor and get back to me within one hour. Mark was good to his word, he called back inside 1 hour and informed me that 3 of the 13 orders for steel wheels were already in and the other 10 orders would be delivered Monday and shipped out early next week. He also said that Ray was already on the front end rebuild kit issue and he would get with him on it.

I have to say that although I was frustrated with items being on back order and not being able to get a firm ETA after waiting for a month, I am very satisfied with all the folks at CI from Teresa the operator to Ray and Mark at the management level to the numerous guys who answer the phone calls that I have spoken to. I am not as in love with some of the vendors, but Mark informed me that for certain items like steel wheels, there are very few vendors that make them, so they are somewhat at the mercy of these vendors who make these specialty items.

All in all, I am satisfied with CI. I would strongly suggest anyone having issues beyond the normal types of issues, contact CI here in this forum, they really do listen and they do want to keep their customers happy.

 

[Banzaiii67]

It's sad when we don't expect good customer service..

 

[Car Nut]

Use code JLY16 and get Free Ground Shipping* plus up to 15% OFF* onorders over $199! Offer ends on Wednesday, July 20th, 2016 at midnight PST.

 

[727]

About two months back I place an order through Summit for a big block wind age tray. It was on back order. They kept bumping the date on when it would be shipped out. This item was holding up my 440 build and I started to get agrivated by it. I picked up a used tray at Carlisle on Friday and called Summit to cancel my order. They said the item now has a ship date of mid August. My brother has a similar ordeal with Jegs for a Deamon Carb. It seems like all the big suppliers are getting squeezed by the Chinese.

 

[Kayo]

I don't know if this will offer any help, but in the last few months, I've ordered at least $8,000 worth of parts from various vendors, mostly from Classic Industries. I have not had any issues with CI, but I avoid ordering anything showing that it is out of stock. However, with a couple smaller vendors, I've gotten burned recently because they don't always show that on their orders. With a couple vendors I didn't find out items were backordered until I got partial shipments or I got email notifications, which is annoying. On one, I was given a ship date two months out on the part, indicating it would be shipped from the manufacturer. Within a day or so of the shipment, I still didn't have a shipment notification so I called the vendor and they couldn't get a date for it so I bought the part on eBay, cancelled the original order and had the eBay order in a couple days. That was just lucky because most vendors did not have the part.

On another order from YearOne, almost everything was backordered so I called to find out what they could tell me about it. This is good information for anyone looking for parts on back order. They told me there used to be a lot of manufacturers making repro parts so it wasn't hard to keep them in stock. Now there are only one or two manufacturers and they are located in Taiwan (this isn't for everything, but it sounds like most stuff). Everything from overseas comes via shipping containers. The shipping containers have to be full before they can be shipped and the ships have to be fully loaded before making the trip. They have no control over it and everyone is frustrated. Welcome to the new economy and thank the administrations who sent US manufacturing overseas because this wouldn't be a problem if we made these parts here...

 

[Bart K]

Kayo, thx for the information you provided above. The CI folks I spoke to about the wheels told me that the vendor for the wheels was a US company, so whatever the issue was around timely delivery for my particular issue, it was NOT because of overseas shipping. In fact, CI told me the vendor was only 50 miles from their location. No matter what, I will reiterate that although the delay in getting the part was frustrating, I am more than satisfied with the actions and efforts by the folks at CI once they were made aware of the issue at a higher level.

I was told that the wheels would ship early next week, so I will post here when they ship and when I receive them to close this thread out.

 

[Kayo]

I'm with you about CI--all my transactions with them have been very good. I just received ashtrays that were incorrect--listed as the correct ones for my car and I ordered them even though I thought they looked a little off. I didn't have either of the ashtrays from the car with me when I put in the order or I probably wouldn't have included them. It looks like C-body ashtrays were installed in this car and there's no reason to think the rear panels weren't OEM so it's a mystery. CI issued a return UPS shipping label and credit so it was no trouble to return the parts. It's the only error on either side of ordering from them--admittedly mine, but it's kind of an oddball situation. I've had questions about weatherstripping and they've been very helpful. BTW I'm in the midst of swapping out those rear panels so now I'm waiting to reorder the ashtrays just in case they're different again.

 

[727]

Kayo,
Just wanted to make one correction to the statements made above. It's true that a shipping container may not be sent out to the container yard until it is loaded. The ships however run on a set schedule and will sail weather fully loaded or not. If the run proves to be unprofitable, the shipping companies will readjust the schedule to extend time between port calls or drop the port call all together. There is a serious over tonnage of container ships in the Far East to US trade and several companies have pulled out of the trade lane altogether, which may be part of the problem.
727

 

[Kayo]

Well-Known--

I am aware of what you're saying. When I'm not depleting my bank account buying parts, I'm reading the alternative economic news at Zero Hedge. In late May of this year, they ran this article about the glut of cargo ships sitting idle in the Pacific.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-20/something-stunning-taking-place-coast-singapore

I don't remember if it was in this article or another, but I also saw pictures taken by someone on a commercial flight who saw a huge flotilla of them as they flew over the Pacific. It's pretty staggering when you think of it. Then add something like the big dock workers' strike on the west coast a couple years ago or bad storms at sea that cause containers to fall off ships and some parts could take a really long time to get here.

In my personal experience, prior to 9/11, I used to order goods from Italy. These were usually shipped air freight and I'd go to the international terminal at Philadelphia and sign for the shipments at customs (and pay the duty). There was never any issue, the timing was good and it wasn't very expensive. After 9/11, security restrictions required these shipments come by container so the first time was the last time. It took two months for a shipment to get to me. It came into New York and sat on the dock much of the time waiting for customs to sort out a problem with someone else's stuff that was also in the container. When I asked about the delay, customs explained that if the owner of the problematic goods didn't come forward to fill out some necessary paperwork, they might never release the rest of the contents of the container. That was the lesson learned for me. This would not happen with commercial auto parts, which would likely fill entire containers and not be subject to such a hold up.

 

[727]

China's economy has slowed as well. When times are booming there they get bodies from wherever they can. A lot of labor is drawn in from the farms and countryside. If there was a big layoff due to a slow down then there may be a shortage of labor in the factories. Another issue is Kids today no mater where they live are more interested in catching Pokemon on their cell phones than working a manual labor job. So labor may be hard to come by