unhappy with Air Ride customer service

[nacnac]

I ordered an air ride controller dec 21st from perry at PTS while air ride was having their december sale thing. For whatever reason (PTS or Air Ride), Air Ride didn't have any record of my order til jan 8-13. Thats what the Air Ride guy (danny) told me. First, is this normal for an order to come in over a week's time? Whatever. I was told my order was being drop shipped from air ride but perry kept in touch with me all along. Well, about a week or two ago when all this air ride/pts stuff blew up, perry told me that, my order did not go in to Air Ride until early january because they weren't taking orders the last week of december and the first week of january. If that's true, is that normal procedure for a manufacturer? Sounds odd to not take orders for any period of time, but maybe it's just me. Anyway, so i get a contact at Air Ride (danny) and they have my order, im told im waiting on a compressor. Fine. I express my displeasure (not my first trouble w/Air Ride--ask me why i waited over 6 months for my struts), and he says call back next week. Call back? Isn't it incumbent on him to call me??? I'm the customer that's been waiting 2 months now. According to Air Ride (bret) this rarely if ever happens. Well i guess I'm just lucky because I'm 2 for 2 with Air Ride. My main gripe is with how Air Ride's policy seems to be you call us if you want to know what's happening with your order. I talked to Danny about a week and a half ago and he hasn't followed up. At least call me to tell me something. Anything. Like i said, i could believe this was an isolated incident if it didn't happen to me before. I made Danny aware of the problems I had with them in the past but i seemed to go in one ear and out the other. The kicker to all this is, i'm not in any hurry for the controller, i just want a little customer service.

[bret]

Your friend Perry Price at PTS has given you incorrect information. Ridetech was closed completely on Dec. 26 and Dec. 30...the Monday and Friday of the week between Christmas and New Years so our employees could celebrate those holidays. The rest of that week we had at least two guys on the phones to accept orders and answer tech questions. We shipped only "emergency" orders that week as the shipping department and production department were doing our annual inventory. We returned to full normal operation on Monday, Jan. 4. Perry had no lack of opportunity to place an order.

About 2 weeks ago I terminated the PTS RideTech dealership because Perry was taking people's money and delaying or avoiding placing the order with us [and several other manufacturers]. I told him we would honor his existing orders ...if he paid for them. We were holding 5 orders at that time. Last Wednesday, February 22, we gave him until Friday to resolve this or we would put those products back in stock and attempt to contact his customers to get them taken care of directly. That deadline has now passed with no payment from PTS. Since Perry had his orders shipped directly to him and didn't share his customers contact info, these forums are likely the only way to contact his end customer to attempt resolution.

As for your AirStrut order from weeks/months/years ago…we still do not know who you are. Danny Coultas talked to you a couple of weeks ago as one of Perry’s customers, but didn’t get direct contact information. If you will give him a quick call back we would like to get your specific information so we can attempt to get your situation resolved.

Specifically…we are still waiting on compressors, and the resolution is still quite some distance in the future. Here is the letter that I sent to our affected customers last week: http://www.ridetech.com/qr/email/

You won't find a "little" customer service at my company. You will find a lot. At many companies you would have encountered an accounts receivable person who would have explained that they had no order from you…weren’t at liberty to discuss a dealer’s status…you will have to contact a dealer to place an order…etc. These situations [and even backorder situations in general] are rare enough that we do not have a “process” for them…we treat each case individually. It is my belief that if you have time to develop a “process” for handling backorders, you have time to resolve the backorder problem in the first place. Myself and my staff of 40 hotrodders take your order, and the support of it, just as seriously as you do.

I know the situation with PTS is a mess. I can only offer an apology to you for not identifying this problem sooner…before you invested your money with Perry. Now we have to identify who our affected customers are and try to get them parts. The fact that Perry has taken their money, but not paid us, has magnified the problem. I do not have a solution for that. Most people who are in this position will not necessarily come forward with that information on a forum because they are still trying to collect a refund from him and don’t want to jeopardize that activity. I can appreciate that situation…I have attempted to collect money for the last several weeks. That didn’t happen. Now all I can do is post some info on the PTS order contents and encourage those customers to call us directly to re-order. Look for that info shortly in another thread.

[bret]

I appreciate everyones support...and do not take it lightly. We would not have that support if we had not earned it in some context over the years.

As I have posted elsewhere, I am very allergic to airing one's dirty laundry in public, but my allergy is second to the need for accurate and relevant information. It pains me to see customers struggle to get parts they've already paid for, and service to get them installed and working correctly...especially from anyone who RideTech is associated with.

I also appreciate the scope of the problem that Scott, Jody, and the other moderators face with complaints and comments about vendors and manufacturers. As an opinion, I think these comments, when made by the affected parties, are useful, needed and should flow mostly uncensored. I also think they could be contained within their own section so those who do not want/need to see them don't have to be exposed to negative activity. [remember, this is fun, right?]
I further think that participation witin this feedback section should be limited to the affected parties...the customer and the vendor or manufacturer. Others chiming in does more to inflame the opposing party, and does not seem to help resolve these problems.
I've likely already said too much...I will now return to the task of finding compressors, building more shocks...and seeing if we can get PTS customers taken care of.

[nacnac]

Bret-
i called darren today. Left a message and haven't heard back from him yet. Is he going to tell me anything different from what you just posted?

[nacnac]

Bret if you want to call me, I left my number on darren's voice mail yesterday with my name and #. Tony Bicknell was my contact for my strut problem in the past, i understand he doesn't work there anymore but maybe you can find some records that way. The struts were part of a fatman suspension kit and were drop shipped by ride tech. Get back to me. Thanks

[bret]

Sounds like you and Darren have talked this morning. He indicated to me that when you get your money back from Perry that we will convert that order to your name and ship directly to you. We are filling compressor orders in chronological order, but I will have your order tagged with your original order date from PTS. That should get you a compressor yet this week, pending availability of compressors and getting your refund from PTS.
I'm sorry this is so hard...its hard for us as well. We'll all get through it. Thanks for your patience to this point!

[nacnac]

I went from being merely being unhappy to being absolutely livid. 2 weeks when I talked to danny I was under the impression that I in fact did have an order with air ride with my name on it. This morning I find out that I don't. And now I have to get my money back from perry at
pts, then if I want to re can do it direct. What happened t
wo weeks ago?

[camcojb]

I went from being merely being unhappy to being absolutely livid. 2 weeks when I talked to danny I was under the impression that I in fact did have an order with air ride with my name on it. This morning I find out that I don't. And now I have to get my money back from perry at
pts, then if I want to re can do it direct. What happened t
wo weeks ago?

I'm not going to speak for Bret, but it sounds like Perry never paid for your parts. I am not sure what his (PTS) deal was with Ridetech, but he may have been able to order your parts (compressor was backordered so they held the entire order) and when they shipped he had to make payment. That would be normal for a dealer that did not have an open account; pay when the order ships. In this case the payment could be delayed because they were waiting on parts to complete the kit. From your earlier post in this thread that was how I interpreted things; that PTS had placed the order but they were waiting on PTS to pay so they could ship. That is what Bret said in his response. So having an order for you and having been paid for it are two different things.

If so, that's a bad situation, but not Ridetechs fault that PTS took your money but didn't pay for your parts with it. We have other members waiting on thousands of dollars in refunds from PTS, so the entire deal sucks. I would think if Perry had paid Ridetech for any portion of your parts then they would send those, or credit you that money towards your order.

[nacnac]

paid for or not, they can send them because they don't have em. The point is moot now i guess.

[camcojb]

paid for or not, they can send them because they don't have em. The point is moot now i guess.

Let's give Bret a chance to respond. According to him Perry at PTS did not pay for any of your items. Bret also said that compressors were coming in this week, and he would give you your original spot in line, but somebody has to pay for the parts. I think he has everything else in stock.

[camcojb]

Here is Bret's reply:

The customer placed an order for a compressor kit with PTS on December 21.

PTS did not place an order for a compressor kit with RideTech until January 13.

PTS has not paid for this order. Although we are out of compressors at this particular moment in time, we could have, and still can ship the remainder of the order at any time. Since PTS has not paid for any of the order, we have not shipped any of the order.

RideTech has now terminated the PTS RideTech dealership and cancelled his remaining orders because PTS has taken customers money for RideTech products and not placed the order with us.

We have no capacity to recover the customer’s money from PTS. Only the customer can recover a refund from PTS.

Although all PTS orders have been cancelled, we will honor the original PTS order date of January 13 for this customer to put his order at the head of the line for compressors when they arrive. [Darren has a compressor set back for this customer now]

Another magnifying problem is that the customer cannot identify exactly what he ordered from PTS. Standard compressor kit? AirPod? 5 gallon AirPod? Because of that we cannot identify which PTS order might be his, nor do we know exactly what to send him.

We cannot ship product until it is paid for.

This customer has been in contact with Danny at RideTech, again through this forum, and then Darren at RideTech. This has not expedited the situation, it has hindered it. Now we have [at least] 3 people spending time trying to accomplish the same thing. More is not better.

At this point I am at a standstill until the customer offers a credit card to pay for the system. I can only assume that this will not happen until and unless he gets a refund from PTS for the money he sent to them previously.

[nacnac]

I went to my bank that issued my Visa card and filled out some kind of complaint form to get refunded from PTS. They (my bank) immediately refunded the money I paid PTS and I guess then Visa nows goes after Perry for the $1250. I don't know how that part of all this works, I just know my cc balance is $1250 less. I did this after calling Perry and leaving about 4 voice mails w/o a return call for a few days. He actually did call me back (friday night) to tell me that he had a problem returning my money by paypal because the original transaction wasnt made on paypal. I told perry to not send me a refund as i was refunded by Visa and i guess now Visa will do whatever they do to get the money from him. I have no idea. Whatever. I've talked to a few people on this site about Perry and it seems they've gotten refunds (at least the ones i;ve talked to). And i don't doubt he would have returned my money too. It's just that he was too late getting back to me and I went to Visa when i thought he disappeared.
And Bret-I told darren it was just a ride pro e3 with the remotes (part of the december sale), i didnt know your part # or wether it was a 5gal or 3 gal tank when i was on the phone w darren. I knew it wasnt an air pod. That's all.

[nacnac]

My problem with Air Ride goes back about 3 weeks when I talked to Danny at Air Ride and Perry on the same day when all this compressor delay talk was going on. Danny told me that I in fact, did have an order in at Air Ride and i was just waiting for a compressor. I talked to Perry the same day and he said I can refund your money today if you don't want to wait for the order. I said no (because i talked to Danny and was assured I had an order with my name on it) because i thought whatever issues Air Ride had with PTS were resolved for the few pending orders. Then two weeks later Darren at Air Ride tells me, no, i dont have any order with them. That's my biggest problem. What happened in the two weeks from when Danny told me he saw my order til when Darren told me, sorry, get your money back from PTS? THen i bacame irate because I had a chance to get my money back two weeks prior and i said no i still want the order filled and waiting wasn't a big issue. So, two different people at Air Ride told me two different things. That's where my displeasure stems. Not from Perry or when the order was ultimately placed or waiting on compressors. Two contacts, two different stories. Thats my rant.

[nacnac]

And weren't all of those december orders drop shipped because Air Ride was offering free shipping at the time? Or were they supposed to be shipped to the dealer then to the customer? Shipped two times and still no cost to the customer?

[camcojb]

Bret's reply.

It is amazing to me that the person/company (Perry Price/PTS) who has stolen a customers money, has repeatedly lied, and continues to be unreachable is held in higher regard than a company who had continued to try to get the customer their correct parts (RideTech). Truly amazing

I have nothing for this...I am comfortable in the fact that RideTech has done everything we can, or could have done. Since the customer has retrieved their money (forcibly) from PTS, I will consider the matter closed.

[nacnac]

I'm forever done with PTS and Air Ride. No transaction is worth this much trouble.