Ben

I'm creating this thread because often there is a lot of confusion about our agressive price matching policy.

Our website www.bulletproofautomotive.com and our business model is designed to sell only the highest end products. We sell no knockoffs and no cheap quality mods. Since we represent the highest of the high end in tuning, naturally our prices arent cheap.

HOWEVER, we have always taken every effort to ensure that our prices are the best in the industry so that our loyal customers can continue to purchase from us with confidence. Because of this, on nearly everything we sell we offer a price match policy. This is represented visually by a money icon on our website.

What does this mean? whether you email one of our reps or fill out the price match form on our website we will seriously evaluate your price match request. Historically over the past few years doing this we've honored roughly 95 out of every 100 price match requests.

The big thing that people get confused is that we accept price match requests on group buys. Even group buys that have a minimum # of buyers, we very often will match the price with no minimums so that you can buy at the best market price with ease.

How most of our cusotmers look at it is that we'll be competitive on the price and that (aside from the disregard for gb minimum order #s) we also ship much faster than the competition. Our ocean freight containers depart from Japan every two weeks at a MINIMUM, regardless if they are full or empty. We spend a load of money on shipping so that we remain the fastest importers in the industry. As our reputation for freight speed grows we import for many other companies in the industry. Some of the US offices for the top brands you might have on your car, use our shipping to get their parts from Japan to LA.

Point being, we want to be competitive on everything we sell, regardless if it's a group buy price or otherwise. We feel that if we can offer the best price, we know that we can accompany it with the best service in the industry (both speed and professionalism). This is why we've been so successful over the past 6 years and why we continue to grow and improve every day.

So I leave this thread open to questions, with the intention of making sure everyone understands what we offer and what we do.

I must give this caution however: we only price match on like terms. This means for example: if the price isnt including importation to the US, our price wont be either. If the price is for a pre-order, we will not price match on something we have in stock. If the price match doesnt include insurance on shipping, you will pay more for shipping with us (we ship everything insured).

Also, I must note that we are a legit company and that we do charge CA sales tax. I understand some companies drop the tax, however we can not. You'll pay the 8.25% in CALI but with that, you get the security of a stable, well funded company with a solid foundation that wont dissapear or put your hard earned money at risk.

Thanks for all of the support over the years. We'll continue to do our absolute best for the s2ki community and our clients.

Ben

Ben

I should note that the group buy price match only works with brands that we regularly sell.

Also no...you cant just start up a group buy at an insanely low price and have us match it...it must be legitimate.

Sr2oD3

wow, that's very commendable!

Harpoon

So if there's an exhaust for sale for $1,500 shipped in a group buy with a different company, and you have that exhaust in stock, you will not match the $1,500 shipped price? You would, however match it for the exact exhaust coming in several weeks/months?

spoon us

for ben highly recommended

NFRS2kSi

also,

you mention above, you get a shipment every 2 weeks. however, you still haven't got j's FX exhaust that was pre-ordered since May. do you guarantee shipment date? cuz.. I heard a lot of story Bulletproof lacks shipment time.

just wanted to give heads up.

jonathanschley

Well rumors are rumors. Everything I have purchased from Ben has always been delivered on time or early. What you have to understand is that with the very high end product Ben delivers, a great deal of it is made to order, so he can only give approximations of shipment time because Bulletproof has no control of when their suppliers produce these products. However, like I said, everything with Bulletproof is always on time or early. Furthermore, not just Ben, but as a whole, Bulletproof has one of the most helpful staffs of any shop I have dealt with. They always make the time to help you, even when they don't have it... even if it's just to chat about ideas. From me, Ben and his staff come highly recomended.

Ben

As for lead-times go, we ship our containers every two weeks. If you want to come by, I have records I can show you of my invoices for our contianers every two weeks. If a supplier cant get us the parts fast, there's nothing we can do about that.

We simply focus on what we can influence:
1. Paying the supplier on time to initiate orders (currently we have about $50,000 on account at various vendors in Japan to avoid slack time of bank wires)
2. Communicating with suppliers - our Japanese office manager Mr. Hiroki Naba is in contact with our suppliers to ensure accurate communication.
3. Shipping two containers a month (if not more in some cases), regardless of how full they are to ensure a consistant incoming stream of product.

If a supplier takes longer to produce or gives us unreliable service, things take longer. Such things happen. Our containers come in regardless.

So, will we guarantee product lead-times...no. Will we guarantee our shipments to arrive at our stellar pace, yes.

Ben

Secondly, people can spread rumors all they like about Bulletproof. All I will say is this:

We've been selling parts to the S2000 community since before S2ki started. It's easy to find examples of slow delivery times when you have a history of 6 years of importing to sort from. Just think about it as stats go. If we imported 10,000 orders and 2% of them were later than our estimated lead-time then there are 200 people out there who are dissapointed with the speed of their order (for whatever reason that may be). If another company has only imported 500 orders and they somehow ship as fast as us then they only have 10 people dissapointed with their speed even though they performed the same statistically.

All I'm saying is that because of our size and long history, you'll find more dirt on us than on other companies. You'll also find more happy customers with us than those same other companies.

The sad reality from this is that when an order goes well, customers dont post on s2ki about how they got their parts on time (or ahead of time). However if the part comes late, the odds of seeing a post on s2ki is 10x more.

We've had parts arrive slower than expected and we've had them arrive faster than we've expected. Over the past year, more than 50% of our customer's orders have arrived FASTER than the fastest scenario we've quoted for lead-times.

That's been our goal is to under promise and over deliver and it's working. We typically quote 2-3 months and more than half the time we get parts in faster than 2 months. That leaves quite a good impression on our customers I think. There are always those who will harp on a couple of bad experiences out of hundreds of great ones and try to make a statement that everything is equally slow as the worst examples...with the speed of our shipments that simply is not justifiable yet people will keep saying it and there's nothing I can do to stop them from voicing their innacurate opinions.

Ben

FYI, I have some FX exhausts arriving mid this month on a container currently in transit. Email me for an accurate estimate, I do all estimate updates in writing by email to keep a paper trail.