Customer Service

[Eric Seppanen]

It looks to me as though there is a consistently high level of screw-ups
with orders from Courtesy.  There are all kinds of excuses being tossed
around: they're busy, customers are jerks, etc.  Hey, I vote with my
wallet-- they screwed up my order so bad that I'll never order from them
again.  This story gets repeated and repeated (and my story is now a
year old), and if Courtesy isn't learning how to provide better service
by now, I hope everyone will consider whether they're doing the list a
favor by continuing to refer customers to a dealer that seems to have a
high number of screwed up orders.

Rehash: here are all the ways they screwed up in my case:

I ordered $1000 of stuff from them late April, make it clear that
everything was time-critical (racing 3 weeks later), and they screwed it
up more times than I could count:

1. failed to send order on the day they said it would ship, then
after calling back days later, claimed they'd send it out that day.
2. failed to send order out that day either.
3. finally shipped everything next-day, Saturday delivery... to the
wrong zipcode which caused Fedex to lose it for 8 hours.
4. also gave me a bogus tracking number, and insisted it was Fedex's
fault.  Took most of a day to get them to dig through records and find
the correct number.
5. sent only one half of a damaged, wrong-size main bearing.
6. sent the wrong chain guide.
7. sent an open box of piston rings with only 2 pistons' worth inside.
8. sent a dipstick when I ordered a dipstick tube (order made in
writing, so it couldn't have been mis-heard).
9. failed to return phone call when I called to complain about the
incorrect/damaged/missing parts, but then shipped out replacement piston
rings and another damaged bearing, even though it was due to arrive
after the race, too late to matter.

They did some things right:  Everybody there seemed nice, the prices
were good, they shipped next-day to try to make up for the screw-ups,
took back the wrong parts later without hassle.

I tried my best to make things easy on them: I was never a jerk on the
phone, I sent all my information in writing via email so they could deal
with it at a convenient time, and I called the same person every time.
Yet the order was still screwed up in _9_ different ways!

Now I have an account with a local dealer.  Those of you with racecars
might be interested in calling around.  If you buy >$1000 worth of parts
a year a local dealer will probably give you a discount.