BesTop... WorsOtherThings?

[Rahkmalla]

@Bestop,
Man, do I love your sunrider for hardtop. it's 1 of 2 items i consider absolute must buys for any gladiator owner with a hardtop (the other is doorless mirrors)

But man, you gotta work on some other stuff. I am so wildly frustrated with the two (so far) manufacturing defects i've discovered in your granite sildersteps.

I called and spoke with CS about the first one (bracket holes not aligned properly with nut plate holes and my vehicle's frame, assumption from me being the nut plate was drilled incorrectly), was offered a return with restocking fee (for a defective part?) or a discount if I am willing to modify it myself. I do very specifically ask what happens if i take the mod/disount route and other things are wrong. "that wont happen, we've never had a single complain about this product"

Would you like to guess what happened next? I discover not only are the nuts on the plate incorrectly spaced, but one of the nuts welded to the plate is off center from the drilled hole it's welded above, enough to block a bolt from reaching the nut.

Between wrench time, dremel time, and phone time, i've spent 4.5 hours on this project so far, and the only thing I have to show for it is my factory rock rails are uninstalled and i've done a portion of the dremeling required to get this to fit. Now my concern is by the time i've dremeled off enough to line it all up, what's the strength of the remaining steel going to be?

I am extremely frustrated.

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[Rooster31]

They discontinued many parts of the granite series this week, have a feeling you aren’t the only one with these issues!

 

[Rahkmalla]

They discontinued many parts of the granite series this week, have a feeling you aren’t the only one with these issues!

Support confirmed those products are discontinued which is why they weren't able to offer me a replacement unit

 

[jeepers29]

Sorry you are having trouble. Mine went in fine, even with a bad shoulder and bad back. Hope you get it figured out.

 

[Rahkmalla]

Delivery and problems happened the last day before i had a vasectomy, so i had to wait to finish the install. Was feeling good today, so out i go to re-dremel and deal with bullshit... BUT! missing nut plate for the driver's side!

Called bestop, NOW they want it back with full refund (i tried to give it back 2 weeks ago but didn't want to pay 20% because of shoddy manufacturing) but i have to drive it to a fedex store myself? Absolute BS. I spent 6 horus on this project now including 1+ on the phone with them. I'm not driving an hour round trip to a fedex store with a large package because their product design and manufacturing tolerances are garbage. After enough fighting, they are finally picking it up.

My saga with Bestop is over. Still love my sunrider, but i was previously considering a softtoper and bestop is now 100% out of the running.

terrible customer service policies. Get it together @Bestop

 

[Rahkmalla]

Final update. FINALLY lucked upon a customer service employee who understands the concepts of "customer" and "service".

@Bestop never sent me the tracking number for the return, so I had no way to schedule a pickup. Emailed them on a Friday morning "hey where's my tracking number". No response.

Monday my wife calls me and says "why is FedEx ringing our doorbell?" Since i couldn't schedule the pickup, they just showed up when no one was home. Oddly, they marked the package picked up even though it very much wasn't. BesTop had emailed me to confirm that the return was picked up, i responded no. After no response for quite a while (especially considering they still hadn't answered my Friday email) i gave up and called again.

Well this time Leticia answered the call. Understanding, interested in finding a solution, just overall appearing to care. She read through the ordeal in my case history and offered to let me field destroy the unit while giving me a full refund. I wasn't interested because it's 130# worth of scrap metal that doesn't fit in my truck bed and driving it to a dump would have been more of an ordeal than driving it to the "local" FedEx. BUT, she didn't make it difficult on me, she said she understood and would absolutely get the steps picked up. She took action. Said she would talk to FedEx and call me back, and just flat out handled my problems without making me pull teeth.

THIS is customer service. If i knew if I had a problem I'd be dealing with a Leticia, I'd absolutely view this is a @Bestop win. Unfortunately... every other time I called i did not speak with Leticia, or someone of her caliber.

 

[Scott1972]

Sorry to hear about your experience, that would be extremely frustrating.

Leticia helped me with my issue, she is definitely a great customer service contact.

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