1969 Imperial progress thread

I ordered a new aftermarket product for my wife’s vehicle and it’s been over a year and still not delivered. Excuse upon excuse. I know that the product is new. This company apparently can’t plan or manage its subcontractors.
I won’t yet reveal the suppliers name. The end product is apparently very good.
Regardless, getting a product’s production plan set up properly is apparently a disappearing art.
I saw that with my brother in law’s Tesla windshield (his car took a golf ball sized one) - it took several months to get a replacement!

We shall see…
 
He told me he had a 12 month waiting list from the beginning and I was ok with that.
But after that year, I contacted him and he told me he just started with the mold making process.
I'm not exactly sure why the steering wheel is still not done 14 month after that tho.

But as I said before, it's not the time that bothers me.
I'm ok with waiting as long as the result is as nice as they say it is. But that's not an excuse for the lack of communication with your customers. A one-liner when starting a new step in the process for example hardly cost any time but the customer is happy because he is included in the process.
But even if you don't do that, in my book, it's not ok to ignore your customer for weeks even after they contacted you.

Anyways, thanks to Alan, I know he is still on it and apparently the steering wheel is done someday in the not to far future... I'm looking forward to it! :)
 
vdk2010 said:
He told me he had a 12 month waiting list from the beginning and I was ok with that.
But after that year, I contacted him and he told me he just started with the mold making process.
I'm not exactly sure why the steering wheel is still not done 14 month after that tho.

But as I said before, it's not the time that bothers me.
I'm ok with waiting as long as the result is as nice as they say it is. But that's not an excuse for the lack of communication with your customers. A one-liner when starting a new step in the process for example hardly cost any time but the customer is happy because he is included in the process.
But even if you don't do that, in my book, it's not ok to ignore your customer for weeks even after they contacted you.

Anyways, thanks to Alan, I know he is still on it and apparently the steering wheel is done someday in the not to far future... I'm looking forward to it! :)
Click to expand...
Good on you for monitoring and communicating with your vendors!
I remember ordering a power supply for a project that I was working on and it arrived a few months earlier than we needed. I had an engineer bench test it and it was defective. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a replacement in time for our lab mockup testing, so we took a different form factor unit to do the testing in the lab. We then carried a risk of the new, correct power supply . It all worked out, but we would have been screwed if I hadn’t asked that engineer to test the power supply, instead of letting it sit on the shelf. After the project was completed, that engineer told me that he was against my idea, but grateful afterwards.
Stay on your suppliers. You have the most to lose and they believe that they don’t have anything to lose (except their reputation)!
 
From my retired ex-business owner perspective, it looks like a lot going on.

In no particular order....

I see less importance on customer service. That may be for a lot of reasons... I think the Covid pandemic fiasco is part of the problem. The attitudes have changed and you can see it in restaurants and grocery stores. That person that answered the phone might not be there anymore... Getting good employees has been tough for the last 15 years or so. It looks to be even worse now. Some of that is "boomers" and now even some of the older Gen X folks have retired and their replacements don't have that same work ethic or experience. Now you have to pay them more or they can just flip burgers for the same pay so you may not be able to afford that person. Voice and email is cheaper than the that girl that answered the phone.... But the discipline to answer those voice and emails is tough at the end of a long day. I got an email back from one supplier that was sent at 10:30 PM on a Friday.

I've also been wondering if the Chinese business model of minimal customer service is catching on here.

A lot of these vendors I see are "Mom and Pop" businesses, part time, working off the kitchen table. A lot of them took on the business as a retirement job to make a little extra. Some are getting older and/or having health problems. Quite frankly, I thought about doing something like that myself when I retired, but decided not to as I've worked enough. LOL. That steering wheel resto service sounds like a money maker though...

You'd be really surprised how small some of these vendors businesses really are... Last I talked to the guy that runs DMT, that was a part time gig for him with a full time "real job".

Then there's the "back log" mindset. I saw that go away 40 years ago with manufacturing, but human nature likes to see a pile of work that will insure income for a while, even if the new customers stopped. That was always referred to as "job security" by the guys on the factory floor.

This might not have much to do with getting a steering wheel or a door panel, but I think it's going to be an issue in the upcoming years, if not now. That's the the aging of the hobbyist. No one is getting younger... '32 and '34 Fords were huge 30 years ago... and expensive. It "aged out" as their fans grew older... Muscle cars will be doing that in the not so distant future, so expect to see prices stop going up... And why spend $50k on the car that was fast when your dad was a kid when you can buy a new metric Challenger or Mustang that will smoke that old Roadrunner. So don't expect more vendors to step up with repop parts... That market is already saturated and the outlook isn't good. And I haven't even touched on the change to electric cars.

I could go on and on... The gist of it is that things have changed and I don't know if they are going to get better or not.
 
IMHO, recasting a plain steering wheel doesn't look like rocket surgery anyway. It would get trickier with the clear rim wheels, no doubt.



This subject was touched on at a recent 300 club meet I attended. One of the complaints about recasting steering wheels (besides lead time) was the clear rimmed wheels are yellowing after a few years. That would be disheartening to spend some serious $$ and then have it look worse as time goes on.
 
Big_John said:
From my retired ex-business owner perspective, it looks like a lot going on.

In no particular order....

I see less importance on customer service. That may be for a lot of reasons... I think the Covid pandemic fiasco is part of the problem. The attitudes have changed and you can see it in restaurants and grocery stores. That person that answered the phone might not be there anymore... Getting good employees has been tough for the last 15 years or so. It looks to be even worse now. Some of that is "boomers" and now even some of the older Gen X folks have retired and their replacements don't have that same work ethic or experience. Now you have to pay them more or they can just flip burgers for the same pay so you may not be able to afford that person. Voice and email is cheaper than the that girl that answered the phone.... But the discipline to answer those voice and emails is tough at the end of a long day. I got an email back from one supplier that was sent at 10:30 PM on a Friday.

I've also been wondering if the Chinese business model of minimal customer service is catching on here.

A lot of these vendors I see are "Mom and Pop" businesses, part time, working off the kitchen table. A lot of them took on the business as a retirement job to make a little extra. Some are getting older and/or having health problems. Quite frankly, I thought about doing something like that myself when I retired, but decided not to as I've worked enough. LOL. That steering wheel resto service sounds like a money maker though...

You'd be really surprised how small some of these vendors businesses really are... Last I talked to the guy that runs DMT, that was a part time gig for him with a full time "real job".

Then there's the "back log" mindset. I saw that go away 40 years ago with manufacturing, but human nature likes to see a pile of work that will insure income for a while, even if the new customers stopped. That was always referred to as "job security" by the guys on the factory floor.

This might not have much to do with getting a steering wheel or a door panel, but I think it's going to be an issue in the upcoming years, if not now. That's the the aging of the hobbyist. No one is getting younger... '32 and '34 Fords were huge 30 years ago... and expensive. It "aged out" as their fans grew older... Muscle cars will be doing that in the not so distant future, so expect to see prices stop going up... And why spend $50k on the car that was fast when your dad was a kid when you can buy a new metric Challenger or Mustang that will smoke that old Roadrunner. So don't expect more vendors to step up with repop parts... That market is already saturated and the outlook isn't good. And I haven't even touched on the change to electric cars.

I could go on and on... The gist of it is that things have changed and I don't know if they are going to get better or not.
Click to expand...
Good and valid points. May be best for this to be in a new thread, titled something like ‘Did we give too much to our children?’
 
Big_John said:
From my retired ex-business owner perspective, it looks like a lot going on.

In no particular order....

I see less importance on customer service. That may be for a lot of reasons... I think the Covid pandemic fiasco is part of the problem. The attitudes have changed and you can see it in restaurants and grocery stores. That person that answered the phone might not be there anymore... Getting good employees has been tough for the last 15 years or so. It looks to be even worse now. Some of that is "boomers" and now even some of the older Gen X folks have retired and their replacements don't have that same work ethic or experience. Now you have to pay them more or they can just flip burgers for the same pay so you may not be able to afford that person. Voice and email is cheaper than the that girl that answered the phone.... But the discipline to answer those voice and emails is tough at the end of a long day. I got an email back from one supplier that was sent at 10:30 PM on a Friday.

I've also been wondering if the Chinese business model of minimal customer service is catching on here.

A lot of these vendors I see are "Mom and Pop" businesses, part time, working off the kitchen table. A lot of them took on the business as a retirement job to make a little extra. Some are getting older and/or having health problems. Quite frankly, I thought about doing something like that myself when I retired, but decided not to as I've worked enough. LOL. That steering wheel resto service sounds like a money maker though...

You'd be really surprised how small some of these vendors businesses really are... Last I talked to the guy that runs DMT, that was a part time gig for him with a full time "real job".

Then there's the "back log" mindset. I saw that go away 40 years ago with manufacturing, but human nature likes to see a pile of work that will insure income for a while, even if the new customers stopped. That was always referred to as "job security" by the guys on the factory floor.

This might not have much to do with getting a steering wheel or a door panel, but I think it's going to be an issue in the upcoming years, if not now. That's the the aging of the hobbyist. No one is getting younger... '32 and '34 Fords were huge 30 years ago... and expensive. It "aged out" as their fans grew older... Muscle cars will be doing that in the not so distant future, so expect to see prices stop going up... And why spend $50k on the car that was fast when your dad was a kid when you can buy a new metric Challenger or Mustang that will smoke that old Roadrunner. So don't expect more vendors to step up with repop parts... That market is already saturated and the outlook isn't good. And I haven't even touched on the change to electric cars.

I could go on and on... The gist of it is that things have changed and I don't know if they are going to get better or not.
Click to expand...
You have good and valid points there and I understand that it's not like it used to be a few years back, but from a customer perspective, I can tell you I feel different about some things.
It's important to me to get feedback, especially across the pond. Here in Germany, I drive and visit people I work with because dealing with them in person is always better, but since I don't have that option with businesses in the USA I have to depend on long distance communication.

You don't have to deal with that late in the night after a hard day of work. Me personally, I would set a designated time for dealing with customers every week because I think it's part of owning a business to communicate with your customers!

I appreciate everyone whos supplying the car community with their knowledge and craftsmanship! Most of them are passionate about what they are doing and don't just want to make money. All I would like to see is a little more communication ;)
 
I run a Mopar parts business by myself so I can't blame anyone else if there is a problem.
I also take a vacation every summer for 3 months although this one currently is 4 months
in Vietnam. If the customer can't wait they can buy it from someone else or make one themselves.
I try my best to take care of my customers and respond as quickly as I can.

Over 42 years of this I have only had to blacklist 2 customers who made me crazy and therefore
I do not talk to them anymore. Sometimes I hang up on people. Only as a last resort but sometimes
you just have to. One happened to be a woman that wanted the part shipped that day. I told her I ship
on Friday. She was not happy and kept on badgering me to send it and finally I hung up. A few minutes
later she called back and wanted to talk to the owner. I told her "I am the ******* owner". Then she
said she would send me the money.

I've also learned to shut off my phone at night because there is always someone calling from far far away
with a 4-8 hour time difference and no I do not want my phone to ring at 3 AM.

Others want to see a picture of the part. That is not going to happen unless it is absolutely necessary
because of a design change or supersession of the part. Otherwise I'd be spending a billion hours taking
pictures of the stuff I have.

OH yeah...once I had a customer write to me: "I see that you are closed can you send this to me?"

So I wrote back "What part of closed don't you ******* understand?" I never heard back from them.


You can't make everybody happy but you can try.

And with the problem of getting something made speedily ... I have a 1975 Bally Wizard pinball machine.
My wife and I play it everyday and it is electro-mechanical. Digital came in 2 years later. Things break.
The flipper buttons are plastic and at the end is a C clip that holds it into place. The ends have broken off
2 of them where the clip attaches. I got some used ones from a friend that repairs the machines.

So I decided to get some made of aluminum. I have a friend that has a machine shop making brake kits
for him specifically brackets. So I gave him one and he got a quote and a date for completion. They said
2 weeks and that turned into 5 months. Now this was not critical as I was still able to play the machine.
He told me the company was shorthanded and had way too much work that was more important.
 
Last edited:
marty mopar said:
I run a Mopar parts business by myself so I can't blame anyone else if there is a problem.
I also take a vacation every summer for 3 months although this one currently is 4 months
in Vietnam. If the customer can't wait they can buy it from someone else or make one themselves.
I try my best to take care of my customers and respond as quickly as I can.

Over 42 years of this I have only had to blacklist 2 customers who made me crazy and therefore
I do not talk to them anymore. Sometimes I hang up on people. Only as a last resort but sometimes
you just have to. One happened to be a woman that wanted the part shipped that day. I told her I ship
on Friday. She was not happy and kept on badgering me to send it and finally I hung up. A few minutes
later she called back and wanted to talk to the owner. I told her "I am the ******* owner". Then she
said she would send me the money.

I've also learned to shut off my phone at night because there is always someone calling from far far away
with a 4-8 hour time difference and no I do not want my phone to ring at 3 AM.

Others want to see a picture of the part. That is not going to happen unless it is absolutely necessary
because of a design change or supersession of the part. Otherwise I'd be spending a billion hours taking
pictures of the stuff I have.

OH yeah...once I had a customer write to me: "I see that you are closed can you send this to me?"

So I wrote back "What part of closed don't you ******* understand?" I never heard back from them.


You can't make everybody happy but you can try.

And with the problem of getting something made speedily ... I have a 1975 Bally Wizard pinball machine.
My wife and I play it everyday and it is electro-mechanical. Digital came in 2 years later. Things break.
The flipper buttons are plastic and at the end is a C clip that holds it into place. The ends have broken off
2 of them where the clip attaches. I got some used ones from a friend that repairs the machines.

So I decided to get some made of aluminum. I have a friend that has a machine shop making brake kits
for him specifically brackets. So I gave him one and he got a quote and a date for completion. They said
2 weeks and that turned into 5 months. Now this was not critical as I was still able to play the machine.
He told me the company was shorthanded and had way too much work that was more important.
Click to expand...
You communicate with your customers. Perfect! You also set boundaries for your customers to get access to you. More perfect!
 
Many, many years ago after buying my first parts from Marty, I thought, What an ornary prick. :rofl:
But seriously, Marty has been very good to me .
 
Last edited:
marty mopar said:
Over 42 years of this I have only had to blacklist 2 customers who made me crazy and therefore
I do not talk to them anymore.
Click to expand...
I remember the first customer we "fired". My partners and I looked at each other and not only had a sigh of relief, we realized that we could officially call the business successful.
 
ornary prick. I take that as a compliment thanks!

ornery is correct though

If you describe someone as ornery, you mean that they are bad-tempered, difficult, and often do things that are mean.
[US, informal, disapproval]
The old lady was still being ornery, but at least she had consented to this visit.

you may not know this but in my inventory I have a bunch of fake parts that sometimes catch people off guard

like what the hell is this?

if you google some of these you will see them in all their glory

google them this way:

4009999 mopar

a few more........and there are more but this should do it

1604590

1607801 this would be for the La Femme

56058123

4406899

4332023

1473103

FG992LK

and years ago I had this in my literature for sale section........

I had a brochure titled "Selling Lesbians the New Plymouth"

Nobody ever said anything about it and since I sold all of my literature this gem is long gone..........
 
Last edited:
marty mopar said:
ornary prick. I take that as a compliment thanks!

ornery is correct though

If you describe someone as ornery, you mean that they are bad-tempered, difficult, and often do things that are mean.
[US, informal, disapproval]
The old lady was still being ornery, but at least she had consented to this visit.
Click to expand...
 
marty mopar said:
I run a Mopar parts business by myself so I can't blame anyone else if there is a problem.
I also take a vacation every summer for 3 months although this one currently is 4 months
in Vietnam. If the customer can't wait they can buy it from someone else or make one themselves.
I try my best to take care of my customers and respond as quickly as I can.

Over 42 years of this I have only had to blacklist 2 customers who made me crazy and therefore
I do not talk to them anymore. Sometimes I hang up on people. Only as a last resort but sometimes
you just have to. One happened to be a woman that wanted the part shipped that day. I told her I ship
on Friday. She was not happy and kept on badgering me to send it and finally I hung up. A few minutes
later she called back and wanted to talk to the owner. I told her "I am the ******* owner". Then she
said she would send me the money.

I've also learned to shut off my phone at night because there is always someone calling from far far away
with a 4-8 hour time difference and no I do not want my phone to ring at 3 AM.

Others want to see a picture of the part. That is not going to happen unless it is absolutely necessary
because of a design change or supersession of the part. Otherwise I'd be spending a billion hours taking
pictures of the stuff I have.

OH yeah...once I had a customer write to me: "I see that you are closed can you send this to me?"

So I wrote back "What part of closed don't you ******* understand?" I never heard back from them.


You can't make everybody happy but you can try.

And with the problem of getting something made speedily ... I have a 1975 Bally Wizard pinball machine.
My wife and I play it everyday and it is electro-mechanical. Digital came in 2 years later. Things break.
The flipper buttons are plastic and at the end is a C clip that holds it into place. The ends have broken off
2 of them where the clip attaches. I got some used ones from a friend that repairs the machines.

So I decided to get some made of aluminum. I have a friend that has a machine shop making brake kits
for him specifically brackets. So I gave him one and he got a quote and a date for completion. They said
2 weeks and that turned into 5 months. Now this was not critical as I was still able to play the machine.
He told me the company was shorthanded and had way too much work that was more important.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you are doing exactly what I'm asking for. Communicate with your customers. That's the only point I initially talked about.
I never said anything about how stupid or annoying customers can be.

And the pinball knob machine shop as well for that matter. You said they told you it will take longer then expected and even told you the reason. Fine with me, we are all just humans.
But saying it takes 2 weeks and then keeping your parts and not respond for 5 month, that's not ok.

I hate feeling that I'm the annoying one by asking the same question over and over again without getting an answer because a business is not responding.
I would rather prefer to get a short answer the first time and don't have to call or write them every two weeks because I can't get them on the line...!
 
vdk2010 said:
Sounds like you are doing exactly what I'm asking for. Communicate with your customers. That's the only point I initially talked about.
I never said anything about how stupid or annoying customers can be.

And the pinball knob machine shop as well for that matter. You said they told you it will take longer then expected and even told you the reason. Fine with me, we are all just humans.
But saying it takes 2 weeks and then keeping your parts and not respond for 5 month, that's not ok.

I hate feeling that I'm the annoying one by asking the same question over and over again without getting an answer because a business is not responding.
I would rather prefer to get a short answer the first time and don't have to call or write them every two weeks because I can't get them on the line...!
Click to expand...
I've always been pretty good at getting back to customers. Yep, even if I did it with a late evening email... But that's not the point.

The issue is, and I've gone through that with a couple of our employees, is being reluctant to give bad news. Delays and problems often don't go over well. Since we were doing tool calibration, it was often that we would have to call or email the customer and tell them their equipment was faulty. If the customer was doing things right, this would start a chain of events, up to recalling parts or double checking existing inventory. Point is the person on the other end of the phone or email probably wasn't going to be happy.

It's tough... An irate customer can ruin your day. I preferred emails because you could set the facts down and there was no "he said, she said" after the fact. Once in a while, those emails would be responded to with a phone call from some pissed off person in the quality department.

This wasn't with the general public. Usually everything was professional and the "hot head" on the other end of the phone had to answer to someone if they got too nasty on the phone. Doing a CC to their managers was often my tactic with known difficult people and a BCC to my quality manager (my partner) gave him a "heads up" if the call was going to be to him. Dealing with the public is a lot different... You never know what you are dealing with and how they are going to react. Watch some YouTube videos of McDonalds customers going nuts for examples of the worst case scenarios.

Point is that it's human nature to not want to tell someone things aren't good. It's not right and if you are truly business savvy, you'll know that people want honesty even with bad news. It's still tough to pick up the phone sometimes. It's not right, it's frustrating, especially with someone like me that has had customer service training, but we are all human (last I checked) and that is just the way we are.

I've even told vendors that "if it's bad news, tell me, I'm an adult" when I can feel there's something wrong. They tell me and usually we have a good conversation about how we're going forward.. And I might tell them "I'm not happy" but keeping the emotions out of business gets you so much further.

I have some pretty good customer stories though...
 
Do
Big_John said:
I've always been pretty good at getting back to customers. Yep, even if I did it with a late evening email... But that's not the point.

The issue is, and I've gone through that with a couple of our employees, is being reluctant to give bad news. Delays and problems often don't go over well. Since we were doing tool calibration, it was often that we would have to call or email the customer and tell them their equipment was faulty. If the customer was doing things right, this would start a chain of events, up to recalling parts or double checking existing inventory. Point is the person on the other end of the phone or email probably wasn't going to be happy.

It's tough... An irate customer can ruin your day. I preferred emails because you could set the facts down and there was no "he said, she said" after the fact. Once in a while, those emails would be responded to with a phone call from some pissed off person in the quality department.

This wasn't with the general public. Usually everything was professional and the "hot head" on the other end of the phone had to answer to someone if they got too nasty on the phone. Doing a CC to their managers was often my tactic with known difficult people and a BCC to my quality manager (my partner) gave him a "heads up" if the call was going to be to him. Dealing with the public is a lot different... You never know what you are dealing with and how they are going to react. Watch some YouTube videos of McDonalds customers going nuts for examples of the worst case scenarios.

Point is that it's human nature to not want to tell someone things aren't good. It's not right and if you are truly business savvy, you'll know that people want honesty even with bad news. It's still tough to pick up the phone sometimes. It's not right, it's frustrating, especially with someone like me that has had customer service training, but we are all human (last I checked) and that is just the way we are.

I've even told vendors that "if it's bad news, tell me, I'm an adult" when I can feel there's something wrong. They tell me and usually we have a good conversation about how we're going forward.. And I might tell them "I'm not happy" but keeping the emotions out of business gets you so much further.

I have some pretty good customer stories though...
Click to expand...
dgi the truth is an eventual disaster, period. Truth = success. While it may not always materialize immediately, it will.

We had a group of engineers, managers, technicians who thought they had the only game in town, including unionized employees. Well, most of their work has been outsourced, and the union work is gone. I see that situation as one of them ignoring customer focus. This sort of attitude is prevalent in many companies and a shame.
 
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