I order some SS pistons for my S calipers on Monday morning from Pelican.
I tell the dufus I need them by Friday.
I pay 2nd day Fedex.
I get a shipping tracker Monday....which leads nowhere.
a couple days later it tells me that the pistons "typicaly"
get shipped in 3 days.
They get my address wrong (they have the correct addy on file) but the Fedex guy overcomes this & I get a partial order. No pistons.
I call the sunzabitches again. The customer service wench hasn't a clue but spouts pablum nohow....I may have gotten rude.....tough nuggies, darlin'.
Near as I can figure, I might get the parts Monday....unless they send them to the wrong address.

I think this the way Geroge Hussey got started on my shit list.

i buy those direct from Stomski, who I think makes them for just about everybody anyway... (there are probably other suppliers too...). he's close (to me, but FedEx is close to everybody) fast, makes good stuff at good prices.

Yes, I'd have checked with you first, but the club was down....which was Bush's fault.

Liberal

I'm having a similar problem right now. Ordered parts that were "in-stock" 9 days ago. Amex charged within an hour. Called 2 days ago. No returned call. Called again today and got, "As far as I can tell those are on back order. We don't know when they'll be in." Gee thanks, maybe you could have told me that 8 days ago. Now my car's all torn apart and might miss Hershey. .

Then the guy tells me they have some of the parts and can send those. He tells me what they are and they are not even the ones I ordered (headbangagainstbrickwall).

I didn't expect that from this vendor. Sorry for the hijack. Rant over.

not Pelican in my case....don't want to bash them unnecessarily.

Not to start a vendor-bashing thread, but I'll just say I no longer order anything from Pelican that I actually need badly and/or anytime soon.

Several years ago I got some stainless caliper pistons from Stoddard. Not sure if they are still a source, but I was always 110% pleased with their service and products over the several years I did significant parts-buying from them.

I have ALWAYS been impressed with GPR and Dave that works there. He is very user friendly and gets me what I need when I need it or sooner. It feels good to say something nice

I tried GPR first.
Dave's not here, man.
The guy there (a non-club member) couldn't help with the pistons, but got the other shitage that I needed.

PP has notified me that the pistons are further delayed....I canceled the order & will get em' from Eric.....which I woulda done in the first place iff'n I knew he had em'....and would have gotten my effin' car done in time for the next AX.

I have had problems with them as well, hey have a day for the check in, then a couple of days to put it in the box etc..... so when you pay for 2nd day it still becomes a week.

I have better luck with Dave@GPR and yeah lately he is tough to get ahold of so I leave a voice mail. He returns my calls and ships stuff out quick. He located a 4 pin TPS for me and I had it fast, so now the Black 914 is nearly ready to fire up.

By all accounts, Dave is great....which is why I ordered from him. No doubt he has bigger fish to fry than me, and that's no problemo...except that he is now vapor and the other guys over there are having problems ...um....focusing?...and making outgoing calls. Try dialing "9" first guys.

I just wanted to either have the stuff within 10 days or simply know I wouldn't be getting it. I'd have been all smiles either way. Me and my type A personality. . Now I'm like a homely teenager waiting by the phone on prom night. .....like I need to go through that again.

I don't mean to throw water on your fire JP and I do understand your frustration but, I ordered parts from the "big bird" on Wednesday, I was told they would be to my house by Monday, and they arrived Thursday.
They have always exceeded my expectations.
I have had GREAT experiences with Rich Bontempi. Not very often you can call a vendor and say I need... and have him tell you that you don't and why... and then say he has it if you insist that you do.
GPR has a terrible website but great service.
My only complaint is that idiot FedEx driver who keeps putting delivered boxes right in the middle of my driveway instead of getting out and walking up to the door. I actually have to get out of the car to move the box so I can pull in! Probably Bush's fault.

1:

Conservative

I think it is Jimmy Carters' fault

I would just call, pm, or email Wayne when his sales droids screw up. He's always eager to make things right.

That GPR site sucks majorly, and the mouth breathers they have working with Dave are not worth my time as they can do nothing. "What kinda car was that fer again? A poorsh?"

Still, I needed a special trany bearing and Dave had already sent me the stock one. I called and had the other to me the next day, free and didnt charge me twice. Just asked that I return the other bearing.

Since my car does not run, I am hardly in a hurry so PP works in a pinch.

Dave at GPR is still dealing with a divorce and kids and two exes from hell. The mouth breathers are from the local San Luis Obispo area....dumb as stumps....what ya expect?

A couple years ago I ordered some stuff from GPR right before xmas, including a slot car track setup and several additional cars for me and the boy to play with over the holidays.

A couple of the cars I had chosen were backordered or NLA...Dave took the time to call me personally on Sunday evening to tell me that he couldn't get those ones to me by xmas, and gave recommendations for similar (if not better) cars that he could ship right away. Then IIRC he overnited the stuff even though I had paid std shipping.

Oh, that explains it. I thought Dave had been a little hard to get ahold of lately.

Pelican. I never order anything from Pelican that I must have to make the car run before the next weekend from them...

I will throw some gasoline on this fire... I have always had good luck with Pelican, but it seems to me that lately I have had to wait for parts they should have on hand, and that whole free shipping BS COME ON! If you say free shipping on a group of parts then because you cant keep your inventory databases synced, I have to then PAY shipping on the parts that I have to wait for? L A M E!

Not having plug wires, rotor or cap is just wacky in my opinon! I can ORDER them from FLAPS and not PAY shipping
GRR
yeah, I orded from PP twice last week, and since I need fog light seals, I will be calling George and using a funny voice to disgues myself!
dho!

I gotta admit, Wayne did his best to make this right.
He had the parts and said he would ship them here by tomorrow.
Unfortunately, this was after I got them coming from Eric, so I had to refuse his kind offer.

OK, so now I'm the dufus

To reduce inventory costs.....they are now drop shipping a lot of stuff.....it also can result in double shipping for one order if multiple vendors are involved....

I hear they are trying to fix it.

It's been discussed on on the Pelican BBS where I post with people who care about tail draggers...

Nobody is perfect and there are decent suppliers and for shit suppliers.....the good ones get big and degenerate to decent and hopefully stay there while bouncing upward or downward.

Btw....RUMOR HAS IT .....that the two partners.....Wayne and Tom are/have split ways. Tom is gonna bail.

Hi folks. There was indeed a problem with this order - it was supposed to be shipped directly to JP from the supplier, but there was a mixup and the parts showed up here instead. As JP mentioned, I had Monica call him and offer to ship them out to him via Next Day Air for Saturday delivery, but as I see here, he's already got them direct.

As for delays in shipping, I think that most of you are reflecting on the old Pelican (from 2005), when many items would sit waiting for one or two to fill a package. We took about 10,000 customer surveys, combined them together, and statistically analyzed what our customers were looking for. Pelican has always been about carrying the hard-to-find parts that you don't typically find elsewhere. These parts need to be stocked, or drop-shipped from specialty suppliers.

But, on the other hand, our customers were also asking for things like same-day shipping and FREE shipping. So, what we did was take our catalog and combine the two together to make a compromise of the best of both worlds. On very common items, we offer FREE shipping and same-day delivery. On specialty items like accessories, we offer a huge selection. It is not possible, economically, to offer FREE shipping on everything, as some of the specialty and hard-to-find items already cost a lot just to get here. We feel that this compromise gives most of our customers the best of both worlds - the ability to obtain same-day shipping on common items like clutches, ignition parts, etc, while still giving our customers access to the harder-to-find items as well.

So far, reaction to our new system (only been in place for 3 months) is very, very good. There are only a few people who have complained about it (either because their order got confused on our end, or they didn't understand exactly which parts qualified for free shipping). A quickie analysis of the surveys shows a 42% increase in customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, we cannot get it right 100% of the time as JP discovered today, but when mistakes do happen, we offer to make them right (as we tried to with JP).

As for Tom Gould, the rumours are true - today was Tom's last day with Pelican. I purchased his interest in Pelican last year, and he's been staying on to help with the transition. 2006 has some great new quality improvements in store, as we are focusing on all of the small, little errors that occur and how to adequately fix them so that they don't happen again. Call it fine tuning the two-liter to get that last 5% horsepower.

On a side note, I think that 2006 will finally be the year that I get my 914-6 conversion back on the road. The engine used for the Engine Rebuild book was the one that was in the 914, and had pulled all of the head studs. I recently aquired this Porsche factory prototype engine (see photo), and perhaps this might make an appearance in the 914 for a while. It's a 3.6 with MFI and an RSR twin-plug distributor. It would be very fast in the 914...

I hope that helps to answer some questions posed here. We're constantly working hard to improve the experience of shopping and trusting your orders to Pelican. If you haven't ordered from us in 2006, you might want to try it out - it's a vast improvement over the antiquated system we had in 2005.

Thanks again

Wayne R. Dempsey
CEO, Pelican Parts

[quote name='dinomium' date='Apr 14 2006, 04:19 PM' post='658883']
[quote name='kdfoust' post='658849' date='Apr 14 2006, 03:33 PM']
[quote name='!' post='658711' date='Apr 14 2006, 01:06 PM']
Not having plug wires, rotor or cap is just wacky in my opinon! I can ORDER them from FLAPS and not PAY shipping
[/quote]

I checked your order - The order you placed on the 4th - 1/2 of the parts shipped out that afternoon (same day), and the next shipped a day and a half later (website estimated 3 day ship time).

On this latest order, I apologize - our supplier on the Magnecor wires is really making my life a bit difficult - I'm picking up the phone right now to give them an earfull!

Thanks for your patience,

Wayne

OK, Wayne, send me the motor and we'll call it even, K?

Thanks for the response Wayne.....

Z

I'm callin you out JP!
Ga Ga poo poo whinny itsy bisty baby didn't get his way. Get over your self!

Thank you Wayne!

It is refreshing to see an owner of a company getting invovled and doing the right things.

M

and you are?

i think the self help - bitching forums can be found on google.com

If they actually CHARGED your AMEX versus AUTH'ing your AMEX for the dollar amount, then call AMEX. I believe that to be in violation of the rules.

AUTH = basically check your card to see if it has available room for the transaction (kind of like reserving space).

CHARGE = actually perform the transaction.

They are supposed to AUTH your card and then SETTLE after they have shipped all the products ordered.

Way ta go Wayne

Sure beats the responses we've gotten from "other's" aaround here

Good luck with the biz and tell Tom we'll miss him. He was always a great guy to deal with there.

Also, please send me the motor for the RS clone... Thanks in advance.

E.

Uh...Sarcasm?

No, that's not entirely correct. You can charge the card and then you have 30 days to ship. In our case, if part of the order is shipping out that same day, we charge the card for the full amount. In the near future, we'll be implementing partial charging, so if you get 4 shipments, you'll get four charges. Although I'm not 100% certain that this is a better solution, as it may cause a lot of confusion in the long run.

-Wayne

Pretty cool piece of machinery, huh? It was supposedly built in Germany for one of Vasek Polak's 908 cars that he was purchasing (missing the engine). Well, the purchase never went through, so the engine never quite got used. I don't have any specs on it, nor do I know what's exactly inside, although I'll probably talk to the builder (he's in Germany) in a few weeks...

-Wayne

Wayne:
I have NEVER,NEVER,EVER had a problem with shipping from your company,thats why you are my primary,go to parts supplier. The changes should make good even better. Thanks Dave

THIS is why Wayne and Pelican Parts is above the rest! I complained, THE CEO of the company responded here and sent me a personal email explaining the whole thing. I cannot ask for more than that! I feel sorta like a whiner after reading the response, but I do want EVERYTHING NOW!

I retract most of my prior rant
carry on

Have you guys see what this jackass over on PP has been saying on our 914 Club Offline Thread? Who is this guy, does anyone know?

-Britain

you should see where he stands politically

Must be Alfred