Mine went out a month late and missing a lug nut kit..So whats that 1 in ??
I wouldnt of been pissed if I wasnt being stringed along and telling me one thing and having wind blown up my A$$. I shouldnt have been the one making all the calls tracking down where my stuff is. I shouldnt of been the one to find out after all this mess that you sent the tires off to the wrong address again...If it wasnt for me I would still be waiting on my wheels. I also want to thank you for telling me that I would receive my lug nut kit today..Im sure fed ex or UPS dosent deliver after 8pm..So I guess once again I get a song and a dance..thanks. Just mail me back my money. Im only posting this because as usual I get no response to emails or phone calls...

Perfect example of a guy that should be banned. I don't care if he is 100% right, this is not the way to handle this crap on this site. It reminds me of fighting with my little sister when I was a kid. I mean seriously??????

This is what I was talking about, no matter how you do things someone will be pissed about something and no matter what you do they wont be happy and they will bash.

As the person who started the "Prodigy experience" thread, I definitely have some thoughts on this topic...

I'm not going to pretend to have a 'good' solution to the problem that the moderators of these sites face. But I feel that it is a problem that needs to be addressed in some way. When I was making my purchasing decisions, I couldn't find much "real" feedback on any of the vendors that I was considering. Lots of "he's great" or hearsay, but rarely any constructive real-world experiences. I ultimately considered only vendors that sponsored the forums that I visit when selecting who to purchase from though.

I'm also one of those people who doesn't post a lot (and thus have a low post count) on the various forums that I frequent, even though I've been a member at most of them for a very long time. I do, however, consume a ton of information from them, and I am appreciative of the people that are behind the scenes to support them.

When I chose to post my experience here, I did so consciously choosing Lat-G instead of PT. Why? Because it's been my experience that threads like that generally are handled in a more mature manner here. If I had posted that same thread at PT (which I did want to do since I'm also a long time member there as well), it most likely would have been locked immediately. At least that's my experience between the two sites.

Having a way that customers can express a negative experience without feeling like they will be chastised is important. I don't mean to pile on with this post, but more than one person contacted me privately with a "me too, but I was afraid to post" type of PM. If multiple people are having bad experiences but are avoiding posting for fear of being criticized, then the 'feedback' system, or sharing of knowledge that these forums are all about, is broken.

And to the vendors that read this, I can see how it is frustrating when people lash out publicly without trying to resolve their situation in private. Hopefully you can also see that while that one customer may be only 1 of 100 that you are dealing with at any given time, to that customer, you are often the only person that they are dealing with. For the money that we often spend with any given vendor, we want and expect a 'quality' experience. Admittedly, a customer publicly complaining about a "missing lugnut" is petty on their part, but if that customer has tried and tried to get their missing lugnut with no luck, that's an experience that perhaps others might want to know about.

Unfortunately we all have different definitions of what is considered "acceptable" levels of performance/execution during these transactions. And while it mostly goes smoothly here at Lat-G, those different definitions are why we can't truly be 'self-policing'.

As to how to actually address the problem:

I'm not personally in favor of a "voting whether the OP is a dumbass or not" mechanism. I don't see how that's all that helpful. The words in a thread should speak for themselves. I think most of us here can read threads and know who is offering up valuable feedback and who is just "piling on" or criticizing with no real facts to back it up.

I'm mixed on the idea of hiding a thread until a moderator approves it. The comment that someone made about a moderator shouldn't be in the position to make that decision if they have business experiences with the vendor in question is very valid I think. But this is perhaps the best method to keep out the people that try to bash over little things.

I don't think that it's the moderators responsibility to intervene in a dispute either. If they happen to have a relationship with a vendor and can help, then fine. But they don't owe that to anyone. It is prudent for them to want to have sponsors for their site that are stand-up / responsible to promote good will and generally better the community we have here.

Sorry for the ramble. I obviously have lots of thoughts on this topic, just not very well organized. :)

Yes I agree with both, for us we don't have as many bashes over there but that is because we don't get the guys that really hate us going on about how we did something wrong. Its what Jon was talking about and that it what the issue is

I think its simple for both sides here if vendors want to sell things call them up and see how there phones are, we have 4 people that answer the phones everyday and if someone says we dont pick up they are not calling, or shoot us an email it may take a few days to get back to you but we answer them all. Sometimes its just not fast enough for people

Its as easy as that we answer the phones so we try and help everyone but we do get busy. I hate the he said she said and that is why I have issues on this site because I call people out and they dont like that. We try to please everyone but you know that you cant always do that but we try.

Why should he be banned? Yeah his post was not in the spirit of the discussion, but hell its the internet that happens every other thread.

Sorry, but seeing a vendor post comments like banning a user over a post like that just makes me less interested in doing business with that vendor. The price of the internet and doing business is how I see it. This tit/tat is example of why feedback forums can be tough to administer everyone on the internet is 50% bolder than they are in real life and as such less likely to throttle back their words.

Emotions & a keyboard = deadly duo, heck i have edited my post to account for emotions that ran thru in me about seeing the ban him post. perfect example.

I agree that his rant is childish and more emotional than necessary, but he is not happy about the service he received and is expressing his frustration in a not so adult manor. That is not a reason to ban him or to suggest he should be banned. However, those are the kinds of discussions which should take place between the two parties involved and no one else.

So now even this thread is turning into a bitchfest......and yes, I know my part in that.

It seems that emotions get the best of us all at times.

But the focus of this particular thread was how to deal with vendor/customer complaints.
Its getting off track. There is no easy, simple solution that will please everyone.

Scott has had our input, opinions, advice, random thoughts......

Let's see if a section is created. If it is, great. Maybe then we can modify as needed depending on how well the threads adhere to some basic rules.
Try a "rough draft" for a comments section. See how it goes. ??

Whatever you do don't moderate it like Pt.com does. I work for an automotive aftermarket manufacture. We don't retail any of our products, but a few of the vendors here do.

There was a post on pt.com that was about quality and customer service or lack there of these days. I put together a very long thought out reply. Basically I just said that people need to take pride in what they are doing. Every part I test/inspect at work needs to be good enough to go on my car. If I'm not happy with it I'm not sending it to one of my customers. After finishing the reply it said that it needed to be reviewed by a mod before being posted. My post never made it into the thread. Neither I or the op dropped vendor names. It really made me want to take time out of my work day to contribute information in the future...

With that said Big thanks to Jon and Justin at Driverz Inc. for taking their time with me on my Fiske order. After a couple months and multiple phone calls I finally pulled the trigger on Monday.

deleted.

I have to say that I do like what Larry and the boys have done over at PT.com in regards to the vendor/customer feed back forum. Meaning, only allowing the vendor/customer and moderator to comment on the thread. To me, it's another case of pure poltics. Everybody has an opinion on a matter they know very little about except for the story from two people that have their own best interest in mind. The problem I see is it's all negative. How professionally a vendor keeps his cool is important, but one bad apple can really hurt a good vendor.

I think I would prefer not to see the political bull **** at all, but I'm a big boy and I don't have to click on the thread. (Can you make it no pop up in the new posts?) I think politics tend to suck everybody in naturally. I know it does me on occassion. :unibrow:

Look at this thread de railing already.

Scott, you built a monster here and I think you have to rule with the gavel. My personal vote is still to have a thread removed until a moderator can make a determination and it can't be hear say. Prove it to me, when was the part ordered, photos, etc.... A vendors track record will eventually catch up to them. Let's keep the site clean and you dictate the sponsors as you see fit.

I agree

Scott,

You know I have had personal experience with the issues at hand in the past.
After exhalting my efforts, I came to you and John Parsons at PT to help with resolution. All and all I thank both sites for helping out.
If I recall it was dicussed privately with the moderators prior to posting.

Now my question, Do you plan on setting this up for sponsor and non sponsor vendors? And would there be different criteria between the two if so? There are several "parts" suppliers and shops that frequent here often that are not supporting vendors that we as the consumer deal with. Nothing wrong with that at all, there are alot of builds going on here that are by non sponsor shops. What Im getting at is that this could be ENDLESS if you know what I mean.
As I mentioned in my first paragraph, if the moderators had the time for legitimate grips I feel it would be best suited privately prior to public.

sounds like it'd be easier to just go back to the "no vendor bashing allowed" and call it a day.

Amen.

Nearly every forum I've been on over the years without a feedback section like this always has a knee-jerk reaction to addressing a big vendor bash thread.

At the end of the day, this rarely even happens out of hundreds and hundreds of threads.... the status quo is pretty damn good I say.

Here's a proposed solution from left field. Perhaps the bleachers? :lol:

Ban all rants about vendors and collect hard data instead and come up with a vendor rating/score produced by the forum's members.

As an example, here's my data from all the vendors I have used for the build of my car over the last year. I had a positive experience with those vendors in green and a thumbs-up. I would do business with them again. Those with thumbs down and in red I had a negative experience with and probably would not do business with again.

:thumbsup: :
Prodigy Customs
Best of Show Coachworks
Michael Castiglione
Turn Key Engine Supply
Detroit Speed and Engineering
Marquez Design
Hurst Drivelin
Vintage Air
Wilwood
Classic Industries
Electro Tech media blasting
American Autowire
AMD
Fesler Built
Ron Davis
Flaming River
Spaghetti Wiring
Billet Specialties
Driver's Inc.
Jegs/AutoMeter
Summit
Ring Brothers
SoCal Desert Classics
Eddie Motorsports
Anvil
Clayton Machine

Budnik Wheels :thmbsdwn:

Part of my motivation for posting this is to show what I suspect is the norm. I don't think my experience is unusual. There are a lot more :thumbsup: than
:thmbsdwn: .

I suspect that when a particular vendor is truly going south the mods are aware of things. Stuff goes on behind the scenes and off-line so to speak.

So, take the he-said he-said emotion out and simply give members the opportunity to cast one vote for each vendor they use. Over time the cream will rise to the top. EOS.

Mods...good luck tabulating the data. :D

So far as I can tell, the P-T way now is to resolve the dispute, while totally protecting the vendor from any public negative feedback. That helps the vendor and may help the OP, but does little to protect the next guy to send a vendor hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, other than to provide a place to air his grievance when the vendor doesn't deliver.

Expensive aftermarket parts have become so prevealent in our builds these days, that it seems to me it's as important to have reviews of vendors as it is to have reviews of parts. Why shouldn't I be able to research vendor perfromance the same way I research part performance?

A well run and moderated Vendor Feedback forum, I think, would serve our community well.

Good feedback from everyone. Many points to digest. I'm going close this for the time being and will revisit when we get a clearer vision of what we may want to do.

Thanks guys. :cheers: