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 did 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.

 

[Rahkmalla]

Absolutely ridiculous to me that this situation didn't even warrant a single response from @Bestop. Guess it just goes to show how little they care about their customers.

 

[kennyglm]

@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.

There probably selling cheap chinese garbage for top dollar.

 

[Bestop]

Absolutely ridiculous to me that this situation didn't even warrant a single response from @Bestop. Guess it just goes to show how little they care about their customers.

@Rahkmalla Sorry, there are some days I don't make it on the forums. I can assure you that Customer Service cares about their customers and does whatever is within their means and Bestop's policies and procedures, to make sure they get them taken care of.
My apologies for the inconvenience that you experienced and that you feel like they don't care. I feel that they offered you a good deal, considering the Granite Series products went on sale because we were/are discontinuing that line.
With that being said, I'm glad Leticia was able to get everything resolved for you.

~ Crystal@Bestop
www.bestop.com

 

[Rahkmalla]

I feel that they offered you a good deal, considering the Granite Series products went on sale because we were/are discontinuing that line.

If you feel continuing to sell cheap out of spec crap with numerous complaints for the same reason a good deal, and then threatening me with a restocking fee for garbage that never should have made it past your quality control department in the first place a good deal, i really have no words for what your company stands for.

A good deal would have been accepting the return in the first place. a good deal would have been having a QC department that never let it get to customers before that.

What you call a good deal, i call hours of aggravation filled with lies and deceit ("we've never had a complaint about this product" my left foot, i've read nothing but complaints about this product).

Sorry, there are some days I don't make it on the forums

This forum has a "last seen" feature. Anyone who cares (and in this instance assume it's safe to believe I do and have checked) can see when you last logged on. You've been on this forum numerous times since over 3 months ago when i first made this post. That is a sorry excuse and it frankly a dishonest one.

 

[DailyMoparGuy]

Rahkmalla from the top rope!

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Reading complaints online isn't the same as people contacting their support and complaining.
Case in point is people who come to forums, maybe flag a name, complain on the forum but don't actually call or directly contact the company.

We see that a lot - complaints on forums or fakebook, maybe the company is "flagged" in the forum, but they've never been called to discuss it directly.

Maybe there are a lot of complaints online to be read - but did all of those people just vent on the web, or actually contact via phone?

 

[Jefe1018]

Maybe it’s good their bumper sold out before I got one?

 

[Rahkmalla]

Reading complaints online isn't the same as people contacting their support and complaining.
Case in point is people who come to forums, maybe flag a name, complain on the forum but don't actually call or directly contact the company.

We see that a lot - complaints on forums or fakebook, maybe the company is "flagged" in the forum, but they've never been called to discuss it directly.

Maybe there are a lot of complaints online to be read - but did all of those people just vent on the web, or actually contact via phone?

I understand your point, but my anecdotal experience is referring to people claiming they called for resolution as a part of their complaint.

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