What happened to Pelfrybilt??

Well that’s not good news.

From reading your posts, that may be the best course of action for you to take. You were awful quick to throw the accusation of fraudulent business practices out.

This is unfortunate news and I truly wish the best for them and the business. I’ve been a paying customer, as well as a friend of Satin and Tyler, and they have always had the best intensions. Things do happen though.

 

That's a pretty half assed answer for people who have orders in, I'd be furious if I had an order in and that was the response to excessive wait times. I'd be doing everything I could to get any money sent to them refunded. To be perfectly blunt, it sounds like they are going to implode.

 

That what I was thinking. They weren't in last shop all that long before moving the the current facility which is significantly bigger. Having been to the last shop several times the place was almost always packed with ready to ship or in process items.

 

While their recent communications have not met their previous levels and what news has been given out is certainly concerning, I think those who have had their estimated lead times expire without order completion and/or communication when it will happen, would be cause for a claim or some level of action, but whoever is in charge said to wait. Give them the benefit of the doubt. You trusted them to buy their products by paying in advance, let's get the facts and go from there. If they don't follow through, then that's a direction with few options, unfortunately.

I'm waiting on an order as well.

 

I feel like everyone posting that they have had great customer service in the past have never worked in the customer service industry. That's not how it works. You can't just bank off the fact that you've been good to your customers in the past and just start treating your customers like shit one day. That immediately ruins your reputation and discredits any good service you've provided previously. You don't see chick-fil-a just randomly being ride to guests one day and nice thet next. The good service has to be consistent, zero excuses. That just shows they don't truly care about their businesses reputation and their customers.

 

As a neutral person in this matter being as I have delt with Pelfrey a few years ago on bumpers and experienced good customer service but not actually close to them being on the East Coast, I’m feeling for my two local buddies @chad_chinchilla and @Tom mike who just got into the game and with excitement jumped on the preorder list for the 3rd gen dual swingout rear. They were told 6 weeks after payment production would start.. here it is 11 weeks later and no production has started. And still suppose to be 12-14 weeks additional lead time once production starts.. Even to the fact that their sales rep emailed them in response to their “hey how things going” email a few weeks ago that the rear is getting a redesign, they didn’t like how the body lines matched up with the truck, now seeming like a delay tactic with all this going on. At this point they are bailing, if I was in there shoes with almost $3k tied up and lack of information I would as well. @DoorDing I kept encouraging them to hold out for the facts over the last few days but its being drawn out with generic non factual informational post. Pelfrey has to understand that a working class person with a couple thousand dollars tied up in something that now appears sketchy and nothing to show for it will feel uneasy. Luckily my buddy’s have charged the order and are looking into refunds, but I read people using a debit card and even paying cash with orders from as far as 2017 and nothing to show for it. It’s at the point with the money involved out of pocket from the the potential buyers that those individuals deserve answers and facts. It’s been more than a couple days wait for most of them....

 

at the end of the day nobody fully understands whats going on behind the scenes, for all we know this could be the best thing they can do for the costumers at this moment

 

You have to understand this company has grown immensely in the past few years. Before they blew up I was adding custom touches to my orders.. There is no custom work on their product anymore. I wasn’t emailing a sales rep either.. The bigger something gets, the more people are involved, the more complicated it gets. You can’t compare now to everyone’s past experience and think it’ll be exactly the same.

 

Agree as well. My buddies have only been concerned with receiving the product they paid for in a timely manner and if delayed to be kept in the loop. They haven’t written anything more than questions bout their order directly to Pelfrey, unfortunelty continuely unanswered.

 

This has been my experience so far. Emailed about the lead time on 8/9 (ordered 7/26), no reply. They did ship out on 7/30 a 'swag' pack.

Also,

Come on folks. Have a heart.

 

The problem is “We’ll be able to update EVERYONE in the next few weeks”. That does not concern me.. It does concern everyone with orders. Even if personal, this is a business. I firmly believe every individual with an invoice and only them deserve to be contacted with something more than the general public gets in a post update.

I’m really not gonna say much more. I hope this gets better before it gets uglier.

 

Wonder if the recent steel and aluminum tariffs have had an impact on the bottom line.

 

As much as I feel for them and hope everything is well because they are good people, a “personal” problem doesn’t really justify shutting down an entire business that generates tens of thousands of dollars. If it’s just between them they could say there’s a delay or give a notice rather then shut down the entire operation while also having it so even representatives for the brand have to also go silent.

 

This is from August 10 on a group buy thread that is running waaaaay behind schedule.
Personally, I don't think an excuse like that can justify anything with the lack of support for their paying customers.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...eybilt-group-buy.537503/page-12#post-18444943

Or maybe they're getting into the flower business..

 

We work with a lot (read: TONS, we have a flatbed deliver weekly for our own needs) of stainless here. Steel is up, obviously, due to Trump. I'm wondering if they've actually underpriced their production cost on a large batch of orders and when they went to buy materials they realized they were underwater on all the orders that they don't already have material on hand for.

If you're running close margins on something and your costs are essentially the raw material (steel) and labor, and the material goes up 25% and your labor doesn't actually comprise at least 25% of the cost, you're going to be selling items at a loss just on raw material, let alone your time to build it.

 

It doesn’t have to even be initially under-priced for this to be an issue. When you run a significant lead time and are still accepting orders, you’re basically setting your price on what the current cost of raw materials are, not what they will be when you go to build it. You almost have to look at the futures to get an idea of what the cost could be. Running long lead times can be financially risky.

 

That's a likely probability, and I don't have all the fill ins for the blanks. Most industry is selfregulated, more materials will have to be sourced. Which will probably lead to a unpopular scenario, if it hasn't already.

 

Here's steel prices over the past 6 years. Steel has cost more than it does now

 

Anyone looking at this objectively know this is a red herring. You proved it.

 

I wanted an aluminium bumper, even the Coors brewing company claims their canned beer costs more do to the price of aluminium.