Post
by KentuckyKITT » Sat Sep 28, 2013 8:37 pm
I don't participate anymore in this hobby much mostly due to work and my car is pretty much complete except for needing a new paint job, dash electronics and a few switches here and there. I ended up putting smoke tinted plexiglass panels in the openings to give my dash a finished look for car shows. Honestly, I don't ever see myself getting a set of dash electronics unless I buy a used set or bite the bullet, take a gamble, and buy a ready to go set from an Italian vendor on Ebay. I will not wait more than a year for dash electronics, it's just not going to happen. Honestly, no one should have to wait more than 12 months unless you are having a complete turn-key conversion built.
I remember people used to say order the dash electronics first when you start, then do everything else while you wait. That's good advice if it's only going to take a year to get them, but 2, 3, 4, 5??? No. Unacceptable. You could get a 2 year electronics degree and build your own set in that time frame. I've read and "heard" about a lot of dealings lately with getting dash electronics, but these two responses below bug me:
"30.01.2011
I have you a set complete but I'm waiting on your overlays to be completed...
Shouldn't be too long.
Brenon
16.02.2011
Yes Sir they are here and I'm getting your set together now. I'm checking thru
everything to be sure all is ok then I will ship in a day or two.
Thanks
Brenon"
If those two emails are true and they refer to the dash electronics, then it looks like they were "finished" and ready to ship back in 2011. Like Matthew said, we don't see the complete conversation, but if those are true copy and paste responses referring to the dash electronics, then that's a problem. I'm sorry to see these problems are still happening even after I've been out for over a year. Honestly, I thought I might be able to order electronics by now and get them within a year, but that still doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe I'll try again in 5 years.
I would suggest for future replica builders, you should really have a binding contract drawn up between you and the seller outlining the completion date, price, and a late fee paid to you for every day beyond the completion date. I think for far too long we've been too eager to just send money with nothing in writing and no "fire under the seller" to get it done in a timely fashion. Thankfully, I've always had good luck in this hobby. I've sent money to vendors and got my products when expected and if the time frame went over a little, I was informed for the most part. Not everyone has had a good experience though. I don't know any of the details of this particular transaction other than what's in this thread, but those two emails above should concern anyone (if they are true).
I'm not suggesting that the following is going on here, but if you look at numbers for example: if 40 people send a vendor $1,600.00 for dash electronics, that's $64,000.00. It's too easy for people to forget what's important when they have that kind of cash and the ones who sent it are miles away and usually only known as a screen name on a message board or an email address. Once you open that door, it's too easy to walk through it over and over again and then you are out of money and keep taking more and more orders.
Some vendors need to realize their actual capabilities and become more specialized by only taking so many orders, manufacturing so many sets per year, each year. It is quite obvious that if a person has to wait more than one year, then this is what needs to happen. This is a very specialized hobby and I think most vendors could calculate how long it takes to put something together and how many per year they can realistically handle and just stick with that. How hard is that?? You'd have far less complaints and threads like this if people knew exactly what to expect and I'm sure it would be much easier on the vendor's headaches as well. So, I'm going to agree with the original poster and say he deserves a refund. Even if he has contributed to it taking this long in some fashion, still, it's bad business either way. At some point, you just have to realize the whole business transaction is a complete failure. Refund the guy and move on to the next one.
"KITT, if this is just a toy factory, I'm Peter Pan."