American Muscle..

[steedman07]

Not sure this is in the right section guys..

I will try not to make this a novel..i ordered some 17 " bullet style rims for a customer of ours from American Muscle...they came in with 3 different center caps..Not the end of the world, but it took 3 weeks to get the right ones..With the correct spec tires on the rims according to the Am website and the AM personnel, my Ford dealership, where i am the Sales Manager and a local speed shop who specialize in high end bling bling rims and stuff could not get the rims to stay balanced. The shimmy was unbelievably bad, even with brand new tires..After many conversations with AM, they basically said there is no way that their rims could do that...My service manager and I had to fight with them to take them back, we payed the shipping to get them back, and let them look at them themselves..they say the rims are fine...shocker..I personally drove the customers car and they clearly had a problem, cuz when we put the stockers back on, problem solved, not so much as a slight movement with steering wheel, at any speed..End result, they charged 20 % re-stocking fee, but they said "Well, we cant re-sell these rims now.. Why cant they re-sell them if there is no problem with the rims according to them?? And they charged the shipping back to us for the original "free" included shipping costs..Bull****

I and my dealership will personally NEVER do business with them again....period...I would NEVER treat my customers like this...period
__________________

 

[Ice Hawk]

Wow. I don't even know what to say. It amazes me sometime the audacity of some people who own or represent businesses. You would think that they would want to do all in their power to PLEASE the customer, not tick them off. Nice to know though. Sorry for your horrible experience.

 

[gashog]

That's really too bad. I've bought several items from them and had only positive experiences. Its stories like these that tarnish their name, they really should have stepped up for you and dealt with the problem.

 

[highvolts]

I wonder if AMNick will reply to this thread?

 

[m4a1mustang]

That's too bad. They got a lot of my business when I still had my '03. I always remember them to be really kind and courteous... Usually put my orders in over the phone and had them the next day. Perhaps the increased sales volume over the years has taken a toll on customer service?

 

[dro]

/devil's advocate

These guys have been around for a while and people have ordered a lot of stuff from them with no problems. With the standpoint of being the middleman do you really think they make those rims in the back of their pissy little shop/warehouse or whatever they have? They are a middleman just like you and i bet their hands are tied on those rims as well...

Granted their distributor of those rims didnt stand behind the product i think they should find someone else to do business with in getting rims. And i just pulled it up and i bet those are from wheel replicas.

/devil's advocate

But at any rate from your post i think you got it straightened out, so it wasnt a total loss. But that right there is reason #1 why i have never bought any wheel replica.

 

[bluecar]

A few years ago, I saw a set of Y2K Cobra R rims on a 2001 GT. Well, the chrome was peeling off and the aluminum proudly showing itself below. It did have the AM center cap. From then on, I would not even look at a rim with their logo on it and I would caution any prospective buyers beware.

 

[steedman07]

/devil's advocate

These guys have been around for a while and people have ordered a lot of stuff from them with no problems. With the standpoint of being the middleman do you really think they make those rims in the back of their pissy little shop/warehouse or whatever they have? They are a middleman just like you and i bet their hands are tied on those rims as well...

Granted their distributor of those rims didnt stand behind the product i think they should find someone else to do business with in getting rims. And i just pulled it up and i bet those are from wheel replicas.

/devil's advocate

But at any rate from your post i think you got it straightened out, so it wasnt a total loss. But that right there is reason #1 why i have never bought any wheel replica.

If they sell a product whether theybuild it or not HAVE to back what they sell...period..there is no arguement for that...They sell some piss poor products, they need to not treat customers like this...period

 

[69mach1-409]

A problem with AM... go figure!

 

[CBus 06 GT]

Question for the OP, did you ever put a bare rim on the balance machine to see how bad the rim itself was out of balance? Maybe the rim wasn't that bad, but coupled with the heavy spot on the tire lining up, it created a problem that could not be corrected? I can see why they would charge a re-stocking fee though. Once a tire has been mounted, they can no longer sell it as new, even if it turned out the rim was within specs for balance.

 

[steedman07]

Question for the OP, did you ever put a bare rim on the balance machine to see how bad the rim itself was out of balance? Maybe the rim wasn't that bad, but coupled with the heavy spot on the tire lining up, it created a problem that could not be corrected? I can see why they would charge a re-stocking fee though. Once a tire has been mounted, they can no longer sell it as new, even if it turned out the rim was within specs for balance.

i did not buy tires from them, we purchased brand new ones here, which we got screwed with...These rims would not stay balanced, even with out the tires on 2 different machines..

 

[TGJ]

I am going to add my $0.02. I bought 17x9 Bullit Replica rims from AM for my Mustang. I only bought 2 because I wanted them for my racing tires, and it is a good thing because I ran into a similar situation as the OP did. For ****s and giggles, I had the wheels balanced and we did eventually get them balanced, however it took a lot of weight to do so. That was with no tires on them. When I had the tires mounted, we took the weights off.

 

[blacksheep06]

I have black deep dish bullitt rims from AM and the quality was so bad I almost sent them back. They looked like used rims because they had what looked like scrapes in the black paint like you get from rubbing curbs etc. I just hated having to fool with sending them back and then waiting for another shipment (yes, I'm that impatient)

Luckily they balanced out easily and ride good so no problems. Just sucks to buy something new and get that type of finish but maybe that's what you get with a set of 18" rims for less than $600.

 

[AMNick]

I spoke to our Customer Service Manager to see if he had heard of your situation, and he said that he actually spoke to you in regards to this matter. We keep detailed notes on every customer interaction for both our protection and the customer's protection to make sure they have received a quality service experience. The following are what I have gathered from the notes on this order and talking to the CSM.

1.)Customer contacted us regarding not being able to balance all four wheels. We explained to him that while getting a bad wheel can definitely happen, but getting four bad wheels was extremely unlikely.

2.)We offered to take the rims back and place them on our Balancing Machine to test them. If they were indeed bad, we would definitely replace them at no cost to him. You can ask anyone that has ordered a part that ended up being defective from us, we always replace them free of charge.

3.)When the wheels arrived all four tested fine on our machine, requiring very little weight to balance perfectly and well within the industry standard tolerances of 6oz.

Wheel 1: 1.75oz Wheel 2: 1.0oz Wheel 3: 0.5oz Wheel 4: 2.0oz

4.)We contacted the customer with these results and offered to send them back to them, but the customer chose not to take the wheels back. We informed him that there would be a $40 per wheel charge to cover to cover original shipping charges and to offset our eBay costs since we cannot sell a wheel that has already been mounted and balanced as new on our website.

5.)The customer agreed to this fee, and we kept the rims. Keep in mind that we bent our Company Policies that are listed on our website by taking the wheels back, as we do not accept returns on mounted and balanced wheels except to exchange a defective part.

As always...there are two sides to every story. If a wheel or any part is defective we will replace it period. There is no benefit to us for you to have a defective part, or for us to claim a part is not defective that really is. That makes no sense and would be bad business, and we are here not only as a business, but also fellow Mustang owners.

-Nick

 

[*FasterMustang]

/devil's advocate

These guys have been around for a while and people have ordered a lot of stuff from them with no problems. With the standpoint of being the middleman do you really think they make those rims in the back of their pissy little shop/warehouse or whatever they have? They are a middleman just like you and i bet their hands are tied on those rims as well...

Granted their distributor of those rims didnt stand behind the product i think they should find someone else to do business with in getting rims. And i just pulled it up and i bet those are from wheel replicas.

/devil's advocate

But at any rate from your post i think you got it straightened out, so it wasnt a total loss. But that right there is reason #1 why i have never bought any wheel replica.

Lessen learned don't by cheap *****, you get cheap service whether its from the vendor or the manufacturer. You get what you pay for

 

[steedman07]

I spoke to our Customer Service Manager to see if he had heard of your situation, and he said that he actually spoke to you in regards to this matter. We keep detailed notes on every customer interaction for both our protection and the customer's protection to make sure they have received a quality service experience. The following are what I have gathered from the notes on this order and talking to the CSM.

1.)Customer contacted us regarding not being able to balance all four wheels. We explained to him that while getting a bad wheel can definitely happen, but getting four bad wheels was extremely unlikely.

2.)We offered to take the rims back and place them on our Balancing Machine to test them. If they were indeed bad, we would definitely replace them at no cost to him. You can ask anyone that has ordered a part that ended up being defective from us, we always replace them free of charge.

3.)When the wheels arrived all four tested fine on our machine, requiring very little weight to balance perfectly and well within the industry standard tolerances of 6oz.

Wheel 1: 1.75oz Wheel 2: 1.0oz Wheel 3: 0.5oz Wheel 4: 2.0oz

4.)We contacted the customer with these results and offered to send them back to them, but the customer chose not to take the wheels back. We informed him that there would be a $40 per wheel charge to cover to cover original shipping charges and to offset our eBay costs since we cannot sell a wheel that has already been mounted and balanced as new on our website.

5.)The customer agreed to this fee, and we kept the rims. Keep in mind that we bent our Company Policies that are listed on our website by taking the wheels back, as we do not accept returns on mounted and balanced wheels except to exchange a defective part.

As always...there are two sides to every story. If a wheel or any part is defective we will replace it period. There is no benefit to us for you to have a defective part, or for us to claim a part is not defective that really is. That makes no sense and would be bad business, and we are here not only as a business, but also fellow Mustang owners.

-Nick

I appreciate you responding Nick..Trust me, the last thing I want to do is take up man hours with my service dept and yours as well as mine and of course my customers time..
..I purchased 4 brand new tires for these rims which i cannot return..I tried to get your rims to stay balanced with our balancer SEVERAL timeshere at my ford dealership, and went as far as to try them at a very reputable shop that deals with race cars and 22" pimp mobiles SEVERAL ..No luck..I personally drove my customers car and could very easily see and feel the shimmy and vibrations..When we put the stock wheels and tires back on, there was no issue at all...These people drove 45 minutes each way about 5 different times when we were trying to make these rims work.A 30 year Ford MAster Certified tech, who is now our service manager and several others could not get these to work..I got the impression that you guys were basically calling me, my service manager w/ 30+ years of Ford experience, my customer, A Hunter state of the art balancer, and another pro shop liars..Do you really think we would go through all this trouble? Do you really think my customers would drive 45 minutes each way if there was no problem with your rims? We spent alot of $$$ with man hours, new tires, gas for our customer trying to make these work. Why wouldnt your company just send us 4 new rims? Not to mention they charged us back the free shipping and $40 per rim...I believe if you wanted to make this right you could have done so very easily...

 

[timeless2]

Might want to take this thread's focus to Private Messages or email from here. I don't want to see this turn into something it's not intended to be.

 

[steedman07]

PM's are not really needed, imo..The damage has been done..I had alot of explaining to do to my owner about why we were out the amount of $$ we were, and why the customer was soo pissed off at us.We lost a customer for life, we spent alot of $$ trying to remedy the problem, and recieved NO help from the vendor...period..To say i am dissatisfieed would be an understatement, as I am the General Sales Manager for my dealership, which means i am overall responsible, good or bad...

 

[AMNick]

We have no reason to lie, nor are we calling anyone else a liar. I simply posted up the weights we have recorded for balancing the four wheels without tires on them when they came back. I am sure your tire technician is just as experienced and certified as ours are, so you must look at it from our stand point too, especially since your 1st post was more on the hostile side. I understand that people come here to vent, but we did allow you to return the wheels even though our policies clearly state that we only accept exchanges on wheels once they have been mounted and balanced. Which if they were defective we absolutely 100% would have exchanged them. Our policies also clearly state on customer choice returns, they will be refunded fully minus the original shipping costs, and if the merchandise cannot be sold as brand new, a restocking fee.

I have no intention of getting into an argument on here, to do so would just be us beating a dead horse back and forth. I would definitely like to keep this civil, as it seems you would like to do too. I will talk to our tire technician again and also the CSM that you talked to and then get back to you. I will get back to you next week and see if we can't reconcile something.

-Nick

 

[steedman07]

OK...