Frank, If you have charged a credit card for parts and have not delivered, then you have the guys money. If you have his parts, and you haven't shipped you still have his money. If you charge a guys card and wait months to order, you still have the guys money. If you charge a guys card and make excuses about why you haven't ordered, you forgot, you are growing, you are sleepy, you are on vacation, you stay at home all day and watch soap operas, you still have the guys money and you owe it to him in the form of either his parts or his money back. Again, when the customer gives you his hard earned scratch, it it fully your responsibility to make every thing right from that point forward.

The only thing "sticking" here is what you, not me or anyone else on this board that has commented in either direction, just you, are being perceived as right now. One last time, if you charge for parts and don't deliver for months, you have the guys money. When he has the parts you are square. Period. You simply refuse to hear those simple words. If you charge for it and it isn't delivered, you are in the wrong and you have to expeditiously make it right.

I'm not trying to re invent the wheel here. You have some serious issues to address. The first is what the difference between perception and reality is. I wish you well.

Jeff, charging the cc at order time is fine and dandy if the customer is informed. The problem we are experiencing form members is the parts are not ordered until way later. And given the runaround until the customer plays detective and finds out and informs us because we allow that business to be represented here.

Bottom line guys.

I agree with this.

From Frank's perspective, if his customer calls to place an order for wheels, custom everything, 4-6 weeks delivery, he HAS to charge the customers card, even if the wheel mfg does not charge him at the time of order. If the customer has no skin in the game, that person can bulk when he needs to sack up. As long as the customer knows, it is a fair practice for custom parts.

In this case, it appears the customer places an order, card is charged, and no product ordered from the other end. Completely different issue.

Darren

Ah, no, I'm not wrong about MY experience. You may have had a different experience, but that would be your experience, not mine.

This subject of charging CC has come up in the past. I would like to address it out side of the context of the issue being discussed here. I say that because I think it is importand for everyone to understand how the system should/must work inorder for everyone to be happy.
When you call to order parts from a vendor and supply your CC# you are agreeing to have your card charged for the amount agreed upon at the time of order. be it for a spark plug or custom one off wheels. Now before you hit "reply to " and start ripping me a new one, IMHO here is where it gets tricky.
IF the vendor is also the manufacturer........ then i think the parts should NOT be charged for untill they are about to deliver. I say "about" because if I run your card and it is declined, for any number of reasons then I am not going to ship the parts. The other senerio is this, if you order 5 parts and one is B/O then I am going to call and see if you want the 4 and I am going to charge your card for the parts and ship them when the card is approved.

IF the vendor is NOT the manufacturer here is where it gets tricky.
Mr. Customer orders 3 parts a,b,c, all need to come from different manufacturers, at what point does the Vendor charge the customer.
When Mr Customer orders the parts or when the manufacturer ships? I think the customer needs to pay at time of order???
take Wheels, ALL manufacturers (that we deal with) are 100% prepaid prior to building. so that means everyone pays upfront customer and Vendor and waits 4-6 weeks. no biggie it is industry standard.
The Vendor MUST keep his risk to a mimimum especially these days with CC Fraud as rampent as it is, and that still does not protect against charge backs. now who's problem is that??

I am not trying to defend anyone......... I just think that if this forum is here to help and inform as it does very well than this is a topic that should be talked about. prior to there being a problem.
I think if you ordered from AMAZON OR god forbid EBAY(who by the way does not give advise or answer their cell phone) you click "Buy Now" enter your CC# and hold your breath.
but that seems to be ok??
Obviously there is a REASONABLE amount of time to wait, and that time varies depending on the product, a custom built twin turbo motor should take longer to deliver than a master cylinder.
I think everyone customers and vendors need to communicate what the expectations are.

just my thoughts

Stuart,

I was never informed that it was going to be charged in full, the next day. I went through the same thing with Frank, back in February 2009 when I bought some parts. Well, I contacted Hector at Rick's, and he informed me that the part was never ordered. Then I had to go back to Frank, and actually found out that the fuel tank was in the custom shop. Although, I never asked Hector when it was ordered. I had several emails, and phone calls to Frank. It was a bit annoying, but basically you call them enough.. They get annoyed, and you get your parts. The CC though was charged back in February in full, but I didn't get the parts until late May. You shouldn't charge the CC unless you have that product on hand. Most industries that do custom work, like construction for example. They base it on 50% down for material and then 50% at when the construction job is finished. Although, I do prefer this contractor that I hired to pour a concrete driveway. He gave me a price, and completed the job. So, I had to hunt him down to pay him.

Jeff

I have no skin in this game, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I do know a thing or two concerning customer service...

If there is a delay on your end, it is not up to the customer to call you, it is up to you to call the customer.

You have their money or their order. You are the CSR (customer service rep) and a customer rightfully expects his CSR to keep him aware of what is going on with his order.

You keep giving all sorts of reasons, etc, but those are about you. This conversation is not about you, it is about your customer. Keep all you replies about your customer, and you will become the hero of the conversation. Keep them all about you, and you will continue to loose ground.

Shiny Side Up!
Bill

Frank, I understand the idea of charging a guys card up front for a custom set of wheels, an engine, etc. As long as the guy knows this up front with an estimated time of arrival that's fine. And I also understand that if the engine builder or wheel company doesn't deliver on that schedule that it isn't your fault, but you need a system in place to stay on top of it so the customer is informed of any changes to the estimated delivery date of his items. For example, Summit won't charge my card on a back ordered item until it ships. They give me an estimated ship date and it usually arrives earlier. If for any reason it doesn't make it on that date they send me an e-mail or postcard telling me it's still back ordered, do I want to keep it on order or cancel. I love this system.

What I would appreciate you addressing (I apologize if you have, but keep seeing it brought up without a response) is how you take payment in full up front but do not order the parts until much later, up to six months later by some accounts.

I understand in the case of a group buy where you need five orders of wheels or three engines to get the extra discount. In that case you need their credit card info up front but you should not charge it until you get that group buy together and actually place the order with the manufacturer. Charging their card in advance (could be weeks or even months) is not right. Since you have no money going out until the group buy is called in then their card should not be charged until that order goes in, and you should contact all the customers to tell them it's a go.

I would like an answer in the other cases though, where you charged a card or received payment in some form on a non-group buy purchase yet held up ordering for weeks or months. For an example I'll use the set of wheels and tires we ordered from you for my friend Don last year. The money was in your hands in early October with a quote of 3-4 weeks, yet the wheels were not even ordered for over two full months (wheels finally ordered mid December). I know this as a first hand fact from talking to the wheel company directly, and not to just a sales guy but someone who would know. Though he protected you and would not directly answer me as to when the order was placed, he did confirm that their build time was three week MAXIMUM for the entire time the wheels were on order. My friend and I were hearing that they were behind, that they're in-process, will go out next week; this was before you'd even placed the order!

Since this is not an isolated case (I have other personal friends I've sent to you that had the exact thing happen and verified by calling the manufacturer that the product was in stock and on the shelf, and had been since before they paid for it, and they had no order from you for that part). I want to know how this is happening. This has come up several times in this thread in addition to several pm's and e-mails to myself and other staff members. If you could explain how this particular sequence keeps re-occurring and what you are going to do to eliminate it in the future, I think it will help your business immensely.

After reading thru this thread it would seem that if Frank is going to be in the business of selling a multitude of parts on a volume basis.....he needs to get some software that is designed to monitor and track the orders, billing, and delivery's...............It's not Rocket Science..........If you are going to be in this business, .....do it correctly.........Just my $.02

Ken

<philosophical rant on>

I've been thinking about a reply to this thread, not directed at Frank in this case, but as a general philosophy towards the issue of vendors' ability and right to charge customers. The above comment goes against my position, so I'll try to explain how I see this issue... (warning, this might get long.)

Here is where I disagree with your statement... As a vendor, you have accepted the tradeoffs associated with running a business: the risks (non-payment, manufacturing defects, unhappy customers, etc), and the rewards (profits from the business, flexibility in lifestyle of being your own boss, etc). If you didn't understand those tradeoffs when the business was started, you will certainly learn the lessons over time. My father ran a business for 35 years, and I inherited and ran if for 6 months after he passed away. I got to see firsthand the issues on both sides of this coin...

In my opinion, it is wrong for the vendor to justify putting the risk on the customer. There are many reasons that I feel this way, and this thread has highlighted several related to customer's opinions of the situation. One other reason is that businesses actually have a way to recoup losses incurred by a bad customer (one of the reasons to / advantages of starting a business, part of our federal tax code). But a customer often has little recourse or ability to recoup losses incurred due to a bad business. When taking over our business, I learned that each year we wrote off between 1 and 2 percent of our income as bad debts, customers that we serviced that never paid us. In many cases, we even had legal judgements against customers and still couldn't get paid. But at least as a business, we had some amount of recourse through tax writeoffs (not that you get everything back, but at least it's better than nothing).

As a customer, I can 'hope' that I have some protection if my purchases were made through a CC. But that's not guaranteed. If I don't get that, then what, I can try and pursue the matter legally? How likely is that to happen anymore given that the majority of transactions of these types are with companies half way across the country?

Taking an extreme position (and I'm NOT directing this comparison at Prodigy or any other vendor, just trying to present an analogy), what if a company comes up and offers really great deals for a while, offers a few GP's, collects up a bunch of money by requiring the charges up front, and then disappears with everyone's funds without ever shipping the first product. One could argue that it was a poor choice on the part of the consumer to make that purchase, but one could also argue that the people who invested with a Bernie Madoff should have known better too. He took money from some of the best and brightest minds in the country! But in a worst case, it could happen with any vendor. Most of us on sites like these have never met any of the vendors that we deal with, so we don't know what their personal situations might be. As paranoid as that sounds, it can and unfortunately does happen that good businesses sometimes turn bad... So why even give customers a reason for this fear to ever enter their minds?

So you could then argue that the middleman (the vendor) has to pay the manufacturer up front, so they should be able to charge up front. I will again disagree, and for similar reasons as above. The vendors (or to use my term, the middleman) have generally built established relationships with these manufacturers. They are much more likely to know the state of the business and the people they are dealing with, as they have day to day dealings with them. It's a very different dynamic than the customer that comes to a vendor for a one-time purchase. That's not to say that something couldn't go wrong between businesses also, but the likelihood of that happening is much lower. And additionally, the vendors do have the right to charge at the time of shipment, so they should be able to arrange things to work with the manufacturers to 'approve' shipments after payment has been received. That's a detail for businesses to work out with each other, not a detail that should ever be apparent to an end customer.

Customers expect, and have a right to expect, a certain level of customer service. That encompasses the entire customer experience, from pre-sales, to appropriate processing of their payment, to delivery of the goods and service. If you were a local company and your customer service was poor, there would be reports to outlets like the BBB and other places where people could go to get some insight. In that example, if I, as a customer, didn't do a little homework before dealing with a local company, I could share some fault for making a poor purchasing decision. But in this ever increasing web-connected society, it's harder in many cases to find good feedback about these types of transactions or to truly understand the 'real' underlying reasons for the delays. I can't walk in the doors of a remote vendor and get face to face with someone that has my money and owes me something. All that I know is that a person that I may have had a few conversations on the phone with charged a large sum of money to my CC, and I'm left wondering why I don't have the goods or services that I paid for...

Ok, enough of my philosophy... I don't pretend to have an ideal solution to how all of these transactions should be handled either, and I probably tend to be a little too optimistic that people are going to come through and honor their end of any transaction. But I do strongly believe that businesses need to accept a high-level of responsibility and respect for how they handle their customers' money. At the end of the day, that is going to define how they are perceived likely moreso than any product or other service that they provide...

<philosophical rant off>

As I stated before, hopefully some of this dialog will help both customers AND vendors going forward in a constructive way...