William

I ordered Toytech 0-3" adjustable struts with Bilstein 5100 struts and new front springs to replace the old Skyjacker 3" fixed lift struts and factory springs. I also ordered Bilstein 5100 rear shocks (keeping the old Skyjacker springs) for my 2006 Tacoma TRD.

Before I start, let me say that I'm happy with the performance of the Toytec front struts. The ride is better, it handles well, and it doesn't nose dive on whoops and heavy braking like it did before.

And I also love the adjustability, which has extra adjustability so that when I add a winch bumper and winch later on, I can compensate for the extra weight.

That being said, when I ordered the struts and rear shocks early May 2013, I was told the rear Bilstein 5100 shocks (for 3-4" lift) were on back order from the distributor and wouldn't arrive until June. That was fine, because I wasn't planning on installing the struts and shocks until June. However, by the time that mid-June rolled around, the shocks were still not here.

So I contacted Toytec and asked when the shocks would arrive. At that point, they said they didn't have any idea when. So it went from being sometime in June to them not knowing when.

Herein lies the first problem: I got no word from Toytec later on, after I ordered them, as to the extra delay or when they were expected to arrive. So this forced me to have to take extra action, meaning I had to contact them, since they didn't contact me.

I was offered a refund. Which is fine. But then again, that's no different than any other online retailer would do. That's NOT good customer service, that's AVERAGE customer service. Why not give BETTER customer service and offer to find them and get them from another retailer if possible (there's only one supplier for these particular shocks) and have them shipped to me?

So once I found out they they didn't know how long it would take, and wanting to get my truck FINISHED by the first week or so in July, I found the exact same shocks in shocks in stock at Performance Suspension.

It took a lot of looking on my part, about 1 1/2 hour, to find someone that sells them and had them in stock. WHY should the customer do all the looking when it's something that wasn't the fault of the customer? Shouldn't the retailer stand behind the product enough to voluntarily do the looking?

What's the retailer being paid for when I order something from them and expect it to arrive within a REASONABLE amount of time? I paid good money for THEM to get me what I ordered.

Anyway, I contacted Toytec and told them who had them in stock and gave them the idea that they could get them from Performance suspension and have them shipped to me. They refused, saying they don't do that. Well I HAVE had an online retailer do that for me. So why can't Toytec?

So they refunded my money and I ordered them from Performance Suspension. Which is fine, because they ended up being a little cheaper. They had 6 in stock and got them to me quickly.

I replied back to Toytech telling them this and how they could have got them from Performance suspension and still made a little money. And how they didn't provide good customer service in refusing to do so.

I got a reply back stating how the refund they gave is indeed good customer service. I replied back, saying that's AVERAGE customer service, because ANY online retailer would give a refund, and that most likely, the law in every state requires that anyway. So how is that any better than average or mediocre customer service?

All Toytec was doing was justifying their actions. GOOD customer service is going BEYOND the legally required minimum and doing what most others WON'T do.

But that's not all...

I received a couple of derogatory and rude emails from Toytec. These emails didn't appear to come from the salesman, because they didn't have the sender's name at the bottom like the salesman's emails did. They had no name at all. But they DID come from Toytec's email address, and were in response to other emails I'd sent.

One of these derogatory and rude emails was in response to where I apologized about sending an email to Toytec that I had mistakenly thought I was sending to Performance Suspension. Accidentally sending the email to Toytec was my fault. But...here I am apologizing for my mistake, and I get treated this way in response?

Not only that, the salesman had already responded, kindly accepting my apology. So WHY did another email need to be sent to me, and a derogatory and rude one at that?

I forwarded both emails separately to Toytec, along with all previous emails that had been sent and received, explaining what happened. One was never answered, and with the other, they gave the excuse that they didn't appear to have came from one of their computers...

REALLY? Then where else did the emails come from? They certainly didn't come from my computer. And with the way they were written, they were written by a person that knew about my order, had read the emails, and knew about the shocks being out of stock, etc., and as if they were written by a person that works for Toytec.

Whoever replied back to me from Toytec about the 2 emails seemed to act as if the derogatory and rude emails that were sent to me were no big deal to them, as if I, a customer, doesn't really matter to them.

So first we have a company that doesn't want to give more than average customer service. That doesn't want to go the extra mile. And that didn't do their part in informing me about the status of my backordered shocks, requiring ME to take extra, time consuming, steps.

And second, we have a company that won't take extra, reasonable actions to keep customers returning, to keep customers happy.

And third, there's the derogatory and rude emails that they dismissed, acting like they didn't care. Wow...really?

So I'll NEVER do business with Toytec again. NEVER.

Greg_Canada

I'd hate to have a customer like you.

I'd take "average" customer service anyday over "bad" customer service. And to tell you the truth, from your story, that makes me now want to shop at toytec, knowing they are just honest folks.

William

Why? Because I tried to see if I could get them find another retailer to get them from, or at least one that I could get them from, saving the customer (me) a lot of time?

I bet you are also trying to justify the two unidentified emails sent to me by Toytec. And Toytec minimizing me receiving them, and Toytec not taking the emails serious, as well as them trying to deny the emails being sent from their email address, despite me providing proof that I received them. Right?

Denying the emails came from them despite PROOF is NOT honest.

On top of that, one thing I didn't mention before is that their website never showed the shocks out of stock. Who is to blame for that?

It sounds like you're being narrow minded, concentrating on just a small part of the story and not the big picture.

Toyota~Boy

iTrader: (2)

From what I read it seemed as if they were doing there part. They offered the refund. That's great. You should try getting a refund from some of those eBay sellers.

Now to another point.

Do you think you can walk into Advance Auto parts and tell them to go to Napa and buy some spark plugs so they can restock them. No there not. Neither will most other companies. That was kinda a stupid request that your mad about.

Emails: really! I'd have to agree with ToyTech on this one bud. Sorry but I see nothing more then a poor sport here.

William

Online retailers like Toytech aren't a national chain with big warehouses and numerous locations with parts in stock, like Advance is. And Advance has many suppliers for what it sells. So Advance isn't likely to need to do that anyway. But Toytec has only one supplier for these particular shocks, and they KNOW that. So since they know that, and since the only supplier that carries them didn't have them, WHY would it have been SO HARD for them to look elsewhere, to other retailers?

And like you missed reading, I have actually had an online retailer voluntarily get what they couldn't get from their supplier from another online retailer.

The emails I'm talking about weren't just simple replies from the sales guy. He was plenty courteous. He wasn't the problem. The emails were from someone within Toytec that sent them to intentionally be rude and put me down. And that person was scared to show who they were, because they didn't put their name on the emails.

You have somewhat of a point where you used Advance and NAPA as an example. But that's not the bigger issue. The bigger issue is the emails and Toytec minimizing them and denying they came from a Toytec computer. And here you are trying to justify the emails.
.

4wdriver

I figured I would weigh in on this since I am part owner of an electrical supply business. Since we are one of the smaller and newer electrical supply dealers in the area we cant afford to lose any business for any reason. There have been several times when we couldn't get what a customer wanted from suppliers and so we wuold order from a competitor and ship it to the customer to be sure the customer was satisfied and stays a customer of ours. I would be leery of a business that acts so high and mighty that they don't think they need to go above and beyond to keep customers. Businesses are more likely to survive in todays economy of they do go beyond just refunding money. We are small and it's been hard but we have managed to survive because of doing business like that.

4wdriver

Oh and if I had an employee send rude emails to customers I would go to any lenghts to find out who did it and fire them. I can't afford to lose business because of stupid stuff like this. ToyTec should feel the same way.

William

Thanks for putting it in a way that I didn't think of. I'm hoping that others here will fully understand your point.

When I was reading your replies, it reminded me of how I've ordered things like motorcycle tires, and when the tires came in, I've noticed a few times that the tires had a label on them with the name of an online retailer that was different from the one I actually ordered the tires from. So that's a good indication that there ARE online retailers that do things like that.

Discombobulated

I read to you got a refund and you expected them to go somewhere else to make you happy, k that's all I needed to read......don't really know what else to say besides agree with Greg on this one.......um not much else here.

William

No, I expected them to at least try to get them for me BEFORE having to resort to being given a refund. They didn't even try. Nor does it appear that they were in contact enough with the supplier to try to speed up the process.

Apparently you didn't read other pertinent facts, like how it took me 1 1/2 hour to find someone else that both sold them and had them in stock when I had paid Toytec good money, more than I ended up buying them for elsewhere, to find them.

Apparently you didn't read how the Toytec site never even said they were out. Had I known that BEFORE I ordered, maybe I would have taken different action to get them.

Apparently you didn't read how at first they said they would arrive in June, only to have that change to them not knowing when they would arrive. I initially ordered them from Toytec with the understanding they would arrive in June.

Apparently you didn't read how Toytec made NO EFFORT to contact me to let me know that I wasn't going to get them in June, as I had originally been promised. Are you going to justify them not notifying me also?

And you apparently didn't read about the rude and derogatory emails that I received from whoever at Toytec sent them, and how they had no business sending them. These emails weren't needed for communication, as all the communication was basically over with. That was really the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

And I guess you ignored everything 4wdriver said as well. It sounds like HE knows how to run a business.

ToyTec Lifts

William,

First off I'd like to say that we take pride in our customer service. I'd like to apologize on behalf of any individual at our company for any rude emails that you may have received.

Please understand that when we give a time frame "June" it is an ETA that has been given to us from the distributor. The next time we try to get an update they tell us they are having some issues and now they don't have an exact ETA for the shocks. We are at their mercy.

We buy shocks by the hundreds. I'm sorry, but it is not going to be worth our time to track down 6 shocks from another retailer like us who can't give us wholesale pricing. We only buy from distributors. I can assure you that we certainly checked with our two distributors who were both out of the shocks. Beyond that there were more than 3 customers in front of you waiting for shocks, so had we bought the 3 sets from the other retailer they would go to the customers waiting the longest. We now have well over 15 sets of these shocks backordered.

If you or anyone else has a bad experience with us, please call us and ask to talk to a manager. As stated above we take pride in having good customer service and do all that we can to make our customers happy while abiding by our policies.

4wdriver

I guess you guys must be either be doing good enough business or youre so full of pride that you don't think you have to go beyond what other businesses do to retain and please your customers. I know that in my business we can't afford to have that attitude. We have too much local and national internet competition to think the way you do. Even if I couldn't get enough of a certain part from other retailers to meet all my customer demand I'll at least try to get what I can to supply as many as I can. Even if I make little or no profit doing that I'm gonna do whatever I can withing reason to keep my customers because it's the other purchases that will keep our business going.

Discombobulated

83 trail rig

no you don't take pride in your customers you just said the little man means nothing to you they can wait for the scraps dropped from your big dogs who order hundreds of shocks that is no way pride in your customers and is no way to run a business
Remember this is a tight community word of mouth travels
With that being said my brother has a lift from you on his taco and loves it so you do good work