Mutt; that's nothing.
Read the below, which I posted to the XL forum earlier this year in a review of good and bad companies:
45 Parts Depot/Flatland Motorcycle Company -- This one was the mother of all "WTF" this winter. I ordered just under $1000 in parts at the New Year. At first, Wendy (the wife half of the husband and wife team over there) was very nice and responsive; we had some fun email conversations and I was genuinely enjoying the transaction. But it got weird fast. The first communication was to let me know they'd "consider" letting me use a credit card to pay for the parts. Normally, they will only take an EBT for parts orders that size to avoid paying excessive bank fees.
Seriously.
That is NOT my problem as the customer -- that is your problem as the business. And, no, I'm not directly transferring you cash. What's my recourse if you flake?
Eventually, they let me pay by PayPal . . .and I'm glad I did.
First, my parts shipment was delayed 4 weeks waiting on a set of connecting rods. The first message said the rods were in transit from New Jersey and held up due to the snow storms. Then, they were "in Tucson" but not delivered to the company for a couple of days. Finally, they were shipped with the rest of my order.
When the rods arrived, they were not in a box -- just wrapped in wax paper with bubble wrap. Hmmm, that's odd.
Went to check out the rods and found they were .010 oversize. Yep, the races were ground 10 over and the supplied crank pin was 10 over as well. I don't even know who makes a 10 over crank pin. But the pin was so poorly machined it was laughable. The threads were so rough I couldn't even thread the nuts on without serious binding and the surface finish was just terrible. We won't even talk about the supplied bearings and cages . . . junk is a nice word.
It took two text messages, two voicemails, and three emails before I suddenly got an email back from Kurt -- the husband half of the team. He swore up and down these were the same rods they'd supplied for years but that their vendor had gone out of business and sold the inventory to another company. Well, that's a different story than the "in transit from New Jersey." The story kept changing slightly as I pushed -- just enough for me to know something was up -- especially when Kurt refused to refund me until after I shipped the rods back to the company THEY BOUGHT THEM FROM. That's right, they didn't want the rods back. WTF?
I eventually got it sorted and when he sent me the return shipping label (no way I was paying shipping on this steaming pile) -- the label was for Castleland motorcycle parts in Batavia, Ohio. I went online and Castleland is selling these rod sets for just over 200 bucks on ebay
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Harley-Big-...dUNDmk&vxp=mtrwell, actually, if you look Castleland sells them for two different prices . . .
Kurt and Wendy charged me $528 for a "superior set of rods made in Japan."
Right after my exchanges with Kurt their website was updated to say the rods were back ordered and they've also upped the price to over $600:
http://www.flatlandmotorcyclecompany...-Prodview.htmlNotice that the bottom of the site says these rods are made by the same company as their 45 rods and they've sold 100s without a problem . . .
When I confronted him about it -- the excuse was that "I was told these were the rods we used to sell." He then went on to say "I didn't see the rods . . . so I can't vouch for them -- Wendy just shipped them out." No apology for seriously ripping me off and misrepresenting what I was getting. The only "apology" was that he's working on new rods and they'll be better. I don't mind mark up -- it's part of the game, but buying a set of junk rods and selling them to me for more than double the retail price you paid --- that's just plain wrong.
At least they refunded me. If he'd just come clean from the beginning, I wouldn't even be writing this. I'm still debating posting it on the AMCA forum -- but I know he'll just go nuts on me and swear up and down it wasn't his fault. Well, I've got a bunch of emails with this all laid out. And, I think you all can tell I have an ability to type.
The biggest problem is that Kurt goes NUTS on anyone who criticizes his business and blames the customer every single time. If you search some forums, AMCA, S&S, etc, you'll see this time and time again. His common line is: "how am I supposed to improve quality if the customer doesn't contact me and just posts on line?" Well, I contacted him and he told me to fly a kite.
I will never, ever do business with him again and because he was such a butt hole to me, I DO hope they lose business. They are nothing more than a glorified outlet for Eastern, V-twin, and Colony. I've got access to all three through much better, kinder, and responsive vendors.
It seems folks like these "protect" their reputations by crushing true reviews of what went wrong and labeling the customer as difficult.
I am NOT difficult -- I'm one of the most easy going people you'll ever meet. But I don't suffer fools and when I'm putting mortgage payments out there for parts -- I expect what I paid for; not some trumped up junk.