Wilco Offroad Totally Sucks Now That It's been Sold

Wow! Wilco Offroad has really gone down hill since it got sold. The new owner Brad Grisham is really, really terrible. He has no concept of what it means to stand by a customer, and his employee Jake is completely ineffectual.

I'll be sure to never buy their products again.

 

If you exsplain your side, we might understand what you are talking about..
More specific than "Really,really terrible"

 

Well, this isn't surprising. Had a terrible experience with them recently, but disputed the charge and got our money back.
Never received any product or communication at all. It's too bad to hear....

 

It’s a very long detailed story that probably can’t be fully reproduced here but here, at least, is the basic gist:

I wanted to order a Hitchgate Solo with various accessories. The vendor I chose, Leonard Accessories, did not have everything I needed, so I decided to place two orders – one of which included the main item from Leonard (who are great BTW, thanks Victoria!) and the other accessories directly from Wilco.

Because Wilco makes it clear that there is a 3-4 week lead time on the Hitchgate products, I made sure I placed the Wilco order for the accessories well in advance (at least a week earlier), so I’d have them when the main unit arrived from Leonard. I placed the direct Wilco order in late June. I placed the Leonard order first week of July and waited. So far, so good.

On July 16 I learn that the main (Leonard) order would arrive the next day. I then realize that the Wilco accessories order never arrived. I call Wilco to find out what’s going on with my order, and I speak with Jake. He says something like, oh yeah we’re out of those. I asked why I never got any notification that they were out of them (I would have had plenty of time to locate them elsewhere). Jake basically said something to the effect of, yeah I guess we should have told you that.

I express how upset I am that they totally left me hanging, as the main order is about to arrive the next day. Jake puts me on hold. He comes back and one item magically appeared, and the other he’ll order elsewhere. I ask Jake if they can get them to me overnight so they’ll arrive when the rest of the stuff arrives. He puts me on hold. At first he says no it’s too expensive (at least for one of them), but then he goes back and gets the ok.

I get tracking info from Jake. The next day, one item arrives. The other does not. I check to see if it’s arriving, and the UPS website has no departure or arrival scans and no indication that it ever went anywhere. I call UPS, and they say they never got it. I tell Jake, but he insists that it will arrive that day. I assure him that it will not, but I stay at my office until the 8:00 p.m. delivery cutoff anyway. Of course it did not arrive.

To cut to the chase, this went on for several days. I tried over and over to make it clear to Jake that the order was not going to arrive. He kept insisting that it was. Of course it didn’t. He kept making excuses and saying its coming “tomorrow.” It wasn’t. This went on for several days, each time Jake insisting that it will arrive and me assuring him (correctly) that it would not. I asked him to please just send another one in its place. Each time, he refused to send another one, insisting that the original one would arrive the next day, and of course each time the item did not arrive when he said it would. He agreed not to charge me for the item, but that really wouldn’t help if I never got it. (I’ve abbreviated this considerably and left out some of the most aggravating stuff.)

Bottom line: Obviously, I ended up having to get it elsewhere, after wasting an enormous amount of time with Jake, UPS, and others. I cannot afford such a waste of time. The item he had originally tried to send overnight finally arrived a week after it was supposed to arrive and, get this, it was the wrong item anyway, after all that.

I asked the new owner to call. Brad called me and was utterly unsympathetic, mainly just making excuses.

I don’t know about you guys, but in my business I cannot just leave my clients hanging and flailing about in the wind. I have to make sure they are taken care of, and if something goes wrong, I have to be relentless in fixing it or I’d have no clients.

Jake was ineffectual and simply didn’t take the obligations to the customer seriously. If it had been me, and I learned that I had not notified the customer that we were out of stock, I would have been mortified, and I would have moved heaven and earth to make sure it got fixed, and I would not have rested until it was complete and the item was in the customer’s hands. That’s how I do business, and I guess that’s what I expect of others I do business with as well. Maybe it’s unreasonable of me to expect high quality treatment from others. There were so many different way to fix this, and Jake chose the absolute worst and weakest approach.

And Brad’s utter indifference was disgraceful, and him being the new owner, it is a sure sign that I never want to deal with them or their products again.

 

Thinkin' Jake was the khaki wearing type....

 

It does seem this place is going in the toilet, the guy Erik I used to deal with was awesome. He left a while ago, and since then it has gone to shit. Sorry you are going through this, wish there was more I could do for you. I used to have a great relationship with them, but now even my emails go unanswered.

 

The hero in this, BTW, is Victoria at Leonard Accessories. She ended up getting the thing for me, and she's a real problem solver - a pro!

 

@ramonortiz55

 

Not sure why this thread was just brought back to life.... but i heard similar things on InstaGram about Wilco. I however have had the opposite experience. Less than a month ago i contacted Wilco about needing some replacement bushings for my MAX. They were sent to me free of charge with no issue. I have had very good luck with Wilco so hopefully they Continue to improve as the new owner learns.

 

I have had to contact them many times for people on this forum due to crappy Customer Service, etc. Hopefully they get their shit squared away. I no longer recommend them on here as the awesome guy I dealt with Erik left a while ago. I used to rep for them, give a discount code. Now I could care less if anybody but from them. There are other places out there that carry their stuff that actually care about Customers.

 

Glad I saw this. I was between these guys and Leitner for a bed rack. Looks like I will be taking these guys off the table...

 

Leitner all the way.