Suzuki Club UK

Time to start a review on my purchase from RS Manufacturing.4 days later.

Contacted Rob by phone on 6-25-12. Actually got a hold of him the 1st try. Rob told me that he needed to get me the additional shipping cost for a final payment. Rob said he would send me an email with that info. The email did come that day with the total and a note with a 3-4 day processing time.



Since there was no other bad experiences noted in the thread. (Except him being hard to get a hold of and takes his time shipping parts out). I decided to place the order since I did talk to him and the email he had sent. The order was placed on 7-2-12 early in the morning.

Sent a note along with the payment through Pay Pal for him to acknowledge the payment. Included in the note was: Let me know when you plan on shipping item and would like the tracking info.

(Strike 1 for me).
Got a reply the same day that he had gotten the payment and he didn't have any shipping info until the item was shipped.


(Strike 2 for me).
It is now the 4th day and have not gotten any info from him. Not really surprised because it seems like all the merchants tend to give misleading info when you place an order.

Sent an email reminding him of the 3-4 day processing time. Also asked when he thought that he could get this order processed and get me the shipping info.


I will see if he sends me back a response in a timely manner with the info I requested this time.


(This would be Strike 3 for me)
If that does not happen I will call the credit card company and cancel the purchase.



To Be Continued

Well I hope it doesn't come to that and he gets them shipped out in good time. As I have mentioned he can be a bit slow on shipping but I'm sure the quality will make up for it. You would think that when someone has spent that much on an item he would be a bit quicker with the replies though.

Yes Scott,
I did take your comments about him taking his time to mind before making the purchase.


This info may help others if they have the same situation with a merchant that has a reputation of not following through with an order.

1. I give a merchant a bit of time to make it rite with correspondence email or call. Let them know they have gone beyond the time frame that was posted when purchase was made. to please let you know when this will be sent out.

Most important:
Be polite and don't point fingers make the email short and to the point.


2. If there is no good faith on their part to get the merchandise out in the timely manner then I go to the next step.

3. When using a credit card for payment (Which I Recommend) they require the merchant to get the purchase to you in a reasonable time, after you have made an attempt to get the merchandise.

This will give you piece of mind and should help speed the merchant in getting the purchase to you.

Purchase Update:
Sent an email to RS Manufacturing late 7-5-12 asking about shipment. Because it has gone beyond the 3-4 day process time he stated on the purchase.

7-6-12 RS Manufacturing sent me an email asking for a contact phone number that seems to be needed by the shipping company.

Just me but this should have been asked when verifing the payment on the 1st email on purchase date.

To be continued

Just got an email from RS Manufacturing with a tracking number. Howerver he did not tell me which company he used even though I have asked this 2 times now. Sent an email back asking for that info.

I know it's not a UPS number by looking at it, probably DHL.

Keep my fingers crossed for the gears to get here next week and a good shipping experience from over seas.

To be continued

Busy day for updates today

Got home from lunch and had a message from FedEx saying they had a package delivery for Sat 7-7-12.

Got on the FedEx site and sure enough Rob sent the pachage out today. Since airmail is the only option from the UK to the US. FedEx also delivers on Saturdays so I should have the gears tomorrow.

As I mentioned earlier (in rule 1) it helps a lot to send a polite email asking about the delay of shipment. Also to give a reasonable amount of time for the merchant to correct the problem. Sometimes it pays off.

To be continued

Brilliant news don't forget the pics when they arrive.

Got the gears this morning.

Guess that it is time to do some rating: (1) worst ---- (10) Best

Start off with FedEx shipping. (Score 10)
The packaged arrived from the UK in less then 24 hours with no damage. That was a surprise for me because I have had very bad experiences with FedEx in the past.

Packaging of the items: (Score 7)
The gears were wrapped well with bubble wrap and had no damage. The seals that came in the packed however had not been wrapped which caused them to be bent and damaged and unusable.

After unwrapping gears: (Score 5)
Gave the gears a quick once over to see if the gears had any rust, pitting or defects.

The lager gear had been blasted to clean it up.
The 2nd largest gear had surface rust on both sides of the gear.
The small gear on the shaft had some lightly pitting rust on the gear.

I have a machining background so I would probably notice more on these gears then others. The light surface rust on the 2nd largest gear is something that anyone would notice though.

Will get some PB Blaster and spay on them and let them soak for a final cleaning. I will also set up a bore gauge and make sure that the bores are all the correct size.



Overall rating with purchase from RS Manufacturing break down.

Communication when Rob felt like doing this was: (Score 6)
Rob is very polite on the phone and email correspondence. Although the info that was given before purchase was a bit misleading. Rob is a hard person to get a hold of.

Processing time for the purchase: (Score 7)
You will probably have to contact Rob a couple of times to get it out to you in a timely manner. Once Rob has committed in the shipment time he seems to follow through with it

Since this happened to be the only place I could purchase the 24% high gear reduction gears this was why I went though with the purchase. These gears are also much more expensive then any of the ones offered in the US. I am a bit disappointed in the rust issues on the gears. Don’t really need anything else that Rob offers so there will not be any further need to make any purchases from RS Manufacturing.

You have read the experiences that I have documented in this thread. I will not give an overall rating; this will be left up to you.

I will add that I have had worse experiences with a few US merchants when parts were purchased, parts not being shipped when promised and very poor shipping experiences with all the leading shippers.


BTW Camera is at the shop so there are no pics at this time.



Please feel free to add your comments.

Terry

Well although you had to Chase a few times that was certainly a quicker turnaround than most people get shipping items over here from the US. I'm pretty amazed it only took a day

That's a bit of a shame about rust being present on the gears though, I really wouldn't have expected that. Hope it cleans up well and doesn't cause any issues.

ScottieJ wrote:Well although you had to Chase a few times that was certainly a quicker turnaround than most people get shipping items over here from the US. I'm pretty amazed it only took a day

That's a bit of a shame about rust being present on the gears though, I really wouldn't have expected that. Hope it cleans up well and doesn't cause any issues.

Yes Scott I was surprised as well. Rob did mention that it was easier to ship to the US then ship in the UK. When I order something from Lowrange which is located in Nevada it takes 5 days to get to me in Florida.

You would have to wait until it shipped to Tennessee that is the overseas destination hub for FedEx. Then fly to the UK import hub. Go through customs then get delivered to you. I can see where that would take a couple of weeks.

Not unhappy with the purchase just tried to give an honest evaluation or the product that I received.

Wanted to share some info that I had gathered with some difficult situations after reading what chris410 had experienced and the slow shipping from RS Manufacturing that was mentioned earlier. The info posted was to give a guide line to give some peace of mind with an internet purchase and show how to get the merchant to get the purchase to you.

I would say that getting this all wrapped up in a week surprised everyone. These steps that were pointed out do tend to work most of the time. Took 10 years of trail and error to get something that does help most of the time.

Wanted to thank everyone personally for posting their experiences and info on RS Manufacturing. This definitely was a big help and made me feel comfortable in the decision to purchase from Rob.

Terry

Here are the pics that were asked for. I went over to the shop and measured everything and gave everything a good looking at with a 20 power magnifying head set.

As you can see by the pic RS Manufacturing only gives you the gear set, (2) gaskets and (3) seals. I will have to get the additional items that come in the US version of the kit to do a good rebuild with new parts.

These additional items are a shaft and 2 cage bearings, thrust washer and o ring seal for the larger gear install.

There will also need to be another thrust washer for the other shaft assembly.

Additional items needed:
With the Toyota drive gear I will need 2 larger front and rear flanges for larger drive shafts.

Replace the lager cage bearings in the center gear,

Transfer case rebuild kit.(Bearings and Seals)

Upgraded Transfer Case output shaft and bearing



Before I go any further I will need to get a hold of Rob tomorrow to see what he is going to do with the center gear with the oversize bore. I have overlooked some things on this purchase so far. The oversized bore will need to be addressed.

There always seems to be something with this build. These types of set backs makes it hard to ever now when you will complete you project. Glad that I don’t need to get too many more parts.