gotta rant somewhere.



I dropped my car off for a paint job on june 4th. the guy said it'd take about 7 days for a hand sand and a spray job (mazda pure red) problem is my drivers side fender is totaled. the guy said he'd check the local junk yards and whatnot and see if he couldnt muster me up a fender.



june 18th (thats 14 days) I called the body shop. he said he couldnt find a fender. also said he lost my phone #'s area code thats why he didnt call me to let me know. bullshit. I called the local junkyards and "certifit" to no avail. I called the mazda dealership. they had 13 of them! that made me mad, I stormed down to the body shop to raise hell, (because the car should have been painted by now) but on the drive there my roomate (who has to haul my lame *** around while the car is getting painted) brought it to my attention that if I scream, hollar, throw things and pound on desks my car's paintjob wouldnt look very good. so I didnt.



I decided to order from black dragon online, their fender was only $150. (as opposed to $350 from the mazda dealership) plus if I ordered $1000. worth of parts the $100 shipping charge for truck freighting the fender to me was knocked off the bill.



so I also ordered a set of poly suspension bushings, left and right front tokico illuminas (figured I'd get the rears later when I had more money), and a set of eibach springs to bring the total to $1068.00. yay me!



3 days later (june 21st) the money is still in my account. called to see why and they told me that they had to verify my address. no prob, consider my address verified.



3 days later (just 24th sunday) the money is still in my account. called to see why and they told me there was a hold, but I gotta wait till monday to find out why. appearantly the company outsourced to india to cover the phone answering in the off hours



monday: they told me that I had to verify my phone #. see, since its truck freight they cant deliver to my apartment. they'll call me when the parts get to town and I can have my roomate drive my car-less *** to meet THEM somwehere they CAN deliver to.



3 days later (today june 27th) the money is STILL in my account, I called to find out why and they told me that there is another hold on my order, now they need to verify my credit card information. (but I gotta wait till tomorrow to do that) now I'm absolutely ******* LIVID!!!!!!



think I'll cancel. $350's not bad if I get the damn fender right NOW!



oh and I'm supposed to be moving in a week. I'll probably be car-less then too.

 

Ouch!

 

I'm pretty mcuh to the point where i dont buy online unless i absolutely have to. I'd rather pay a few bucks more and have a place i can walk into and bitch face to face if need be. Online places know they will never have to deal with you face to face, half the time they are some box in a mail place and you don't even have their address.



That said, i'd say it's pretty obvious the painter doesn't want your business. Take it somewhere else. If he's too lazy to track down parts to get the job started and too lazy to plug one of the 3 local area codes into your remaining 7 digits how lazy is he going to be when it comes to actually painting the bitch?

 

Shoot. I'm exactly the opposite. Brick-and-mortar retail is D-E-A-D dead. They've shot themselves in the *** with lousy product selection, high prices and lousy customer service.



Just try finding a wideband A/F gauge or a set of drag radials in a store. Or a tool other than a wrench or socket. I can't count the times I've packed up the kids and driven 20 miles to a store I was sure would have what I needed only to find that they "don't stock that." **** 'em. It's not just car parts--it's sporting goods, fasteners, tools, toys, etc., etc., etc. Anything other than the mass-market crap that everyone else buys.



I have had by far more good experiences shopping whilst sitting on my *** in a comfy chair than I have had driving to a store, dealing with idiot salespeople, and standing in some godawful line at the one open cash register waiting to pay too much for not-quite-the-right-item.



I have never had a bad experience buying from Jegs, Summit, Racing Beat, Mazdatrix, Amazon, or any of a dozen other reputable online vendors. Online shopping rocks! Just buy from companies you've heard good things about.

 

wtf are they doing with 13 of em?

 

maybe they meant 13 left in the country from mazda?

i dont see it to be possible that one dealership would stock 13 fenders of one side of a 20 year old car.

 

wow, welcome to the world of modifying cars ****.



youve been waiting what not even a month? ive waited longer then that for a couple bolts before.



**** this is hilarious.



kevin.

 

I walked into a Napa on monday, I snagged two front rotors for a 2005 mazda tribute, pads and two rediculously obscure diesel fuel filters, if i got home and they were the wrong ones I would have had the right ones within an hour.................... if i ordered them and was shipped the wrong ones i would have had to email the placce i ordered, then they could call the drop shipper, then maybe i could return them.



Even if I have to wait 2 days for a shop to order the parts, it s quicker then waiting the same for a company to ship the parts and i have someone to deal with. the local merchants' time is coming back around.



Granted in a market as select as the rotary is, dealing with a reputable internet dealer is oftern your best bet. If i were in the market for a specialty item i would definetely seek it from one of the online vendors i know and trust.



But then again I refuse to buy **** made in China and that's getting harder and harder to acheive.

 

well, I'll never go through black dragon again. I've had 50/50 experiences with online buying. corksports good, apexi was good, rx7store.com sent the wrong stuff, and rick (on this forum) has never let me down. but like the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. next time I'll buy parts from someone over the counter, theres a few performance shops in town.



I'm sure by 13 fenders though that they mean in the US. either way, the fender will be paid for tomorrow (friday) at 9am and by 6pm my fender will be in. go mazda!



this wouldnt have been so bad if this wasnt my daily driver. I figured I'd be out of a car for about 2 weeks (me and my roomate commute to work anyways) but this is just getting stupid. lesson learned: dont drive your project.

 

bodyshop rule #1: the car always takes 5x longer than they say it will.



bodyshop rule #2: "i'm not in a hurry" = you will NEVER see the car again, EVER



bodyshop rule #3: they will tell you you dont need that fender, they can fix it. they are wrong, buy both fenders, and the doors too.