Are all vendors hopelessly behind?

I had to return them before they charged me another $1.4k for their own mistake

 

For any DIY guys (bed bars especially) aluminum is in stock everywhere and often 70% less than the price of steel now.

 

Bummer haha, totally woulda did the same thing. Thanks for hitting me back

 

What gears are you looking for?

 

5.29 for an E locker third gen.

 

SDHQ is showing them in stock currently.

 

Emailed them.. Not available.

 

This has been the most frustrating part of looking for suspension parts. Because they just drop-ship from manufacturers, many suppliers have everything listed as, "in stock," and then they can't deliver.

 

I completely agree!

 

Caliraised sliders are better looking and we’ll built. (Tight specs even lineX-ed).
Mine took a while, but reasonably as estimated.

RSI smartcap - back ordered from South Africa - yes, lead to lime was long. But advised on purchase. Shipping delayed a bit. - just as all things shipped by sea / air currently.

Lead times for many types of equipment are extending…

Vendors should work on material deposits only - not full payments. (Labor costs are not incurred - only material costs.

I believe a (very) small cancellation fee would be acceptable - if customers walked. This would be only to cover admin cost.

With such backlog, Fab shops can sell whatever they have on hand without risk of excess inventory.

hanging on to customer’s cash for long periods is not good behavior,, or good business.

 

You have to love the 20% cancellation fee they try to charge, even though they're 100% going to sell that item, at full price, to the next person on the list.

 

Mobtown sliders ordered Nov 8 2020.
Email they shipped Aug 6 2021.

Everything is very messed up, and probably not getting much better soon. I am connected with manufacturing so I know the pains and world supply chains twisted in knots.

Agree with that principle if vendors cannot guarantee delivery they should only charge their upfront material costs until the labor takes place.

The CBI bumper and skids were better at Black Friday to end of March

 

I haven't ordered any fabrication parts lately, but i've purchased some smaller items within the past week, including new wheels from SCS, and they've all shipped within 2-3 days.

 

Day 22 waiting on my Softopper to ship.

 

I just counted 41 ships stacked high with containers sitting off the beach waiting to come in to LA/Long Beach port. As it would seem the port is overwhelmed. probably the same on both coasts in every port.

 

From a vendors prospective.

Keep in mind all of us are fairly small companies, and the big influx of orders made for longer lead times. That combined with lack of labor and raw materials has really shot up. It's been a constant balancing act for the last year and half. The largest problem is labor, we use to put an ad out and get 20 people knocking on our door, now we get like 3 and they all want top dollar to move from where they are at. The problem is that cost is directly passed onto the customer. Raw material is an issue as well, along with the whole supply chain. Our laser cutter use to have a 1-2 month turn around, now we are at 4-5 month minimum. That's if they get the material to show up. We are currently at a stand still with shipping out a finished product right now because powder coating ran out. Our powder coater even saw it coming and pre-ordered a bunch but it wasn't enough and now we wait. We've also had bolt shortages, light shortage, turn signals you name it, it's been in a shortage at some point this past year and a half. We've even ordered way more products than we normally do but now we have extra's of some and not enough of the other. We've had DO Tacoma bumpers in-stock for months, but and FJC bumper orders right now are 4-6months out.

Customers canceling orders doesn't help anything either, we end up having to shift stuff around and try to find someone else that's been waiting for a similar product. Some times that order could have been changed to what someone else wanted but now it's already made a certain way. We started offering customers a while ago to just do a deposit. Which is fine with us, but then you end up with all these parts being ready and customers that ghost you because they spent the money, but you have a deposit so you have to store it. But hey that's business

Just know (and I don't speak for everyone but I assume) none of selling you stuff (vendors) are bad guys, some of us get in over our head, some of us make promises we can't keep, most of us do it with the best intentions and are doing the best we can to get things out in a timely manner. Every time we get a call for "where is my stuff" we pick up the phone and do the same thing to our suppliers. And for the record we are all FULLY aware we live in a world where Pelfrey, RST and a few others have burnt down enough bridges to make everyone rightfully so very cautious of us. We have taken steps to help with that fear that a lot of people have.

Feed back like these post help us though, and I like to come in and explain (not make excuses) to what's going on. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

 

hi,
Thanks for your perspective, but what are your thoughts here:

• Customer places an order | 16 week lead time, Customer pays a deposit
• 16 weeks later vendor says bumper is delayed, no ETA because material are not available and no idea when it’s coming in.
  
• 20 weeks from Original order date, customer calls again, still no ETA on material. customer request a refund it is informed about a restocking fee. How do you restock something you’ve never stocked?
  
• 24 weeks from original order date, vendor no longer returns calls, presumably because there isn’t any worthy updates. So what are your thoughts here? We’re just little people just like vendors that are spending our hard earned dollars. If you can’t fulfill the order within a reasonable time, refund the money and both parties walk away from it.

 

Seems like if a vendor is so busy they can't keep up with incoming orders, then offering a refund should be no big deal.