Pilot,

What would you do? What else is there to assume? I have listened to many defenses of BRP, but the first hand experience has spoken volumes. I am a patient and very understanding person, but how else can you interpret one's intent? At this point, all I can (and hope) to do is inflict (ass)pain because they deserve it... Tell me why I shoud not... There are other people who may give their money to this company, and I think they should be well informed about the company to which it is going. What is the "real" reason that explains all of this away???

 

I believe this to be the case too. Unfortunately, business is business and the customer should be the #1 concern. The more $$$ involved, the less sympathetic people tend to be. The only reason why I have more tolerance with this is because I know this is not their normal ops. I understand where the concern is coming from though. I just spent $500 on gauges from Alamo Motorsports, which is a fairly well known, "reputable" company, and almost 3 weeks went by before I sent them an email asking them where my order was. A few more days went by and they finally got back to me and said that the gauges were backordered and they were waiting for them to come in from Blitz. However, my CC was charged from day one and now we're going over a month. It would have been more comforting to have gotten an email right from the start to tell me it'd take a while. So now the, "Am I getting ripped off?" is going through my head too.

 

What I would do is irrelevant because I've got a more biased tolerance of this than you do and as I said above, I understand that. What I am concerned about is the fact that a great company (I realize unbeknown to you and most other S2k clientele at this point), who unfortunately is going through some growing pains and has really become a victim of their own success over the past 6 months or so, is getting their reputation flushed down the crapper because you haven't gotten your refund yet. It seems as though when the crap hit the fan a BRP, it really hit the fan.

Doing a search for "BRP" over at Miata.net brings up a few pages of threads. There are very, very few threads complaining about poor service. There are a recent threads about delays and the lack of communication, much like we have been experiencing over here, but most of them rave about their customer service. I even read of a time where Brant flew up to Canada, at his expense, to help a customer with a problem (granted, a regular customer who had spent loads of money). Has Comptech ever done anything like that?

In one thread, on July 25th, Rob @ BRP writes:

[QUOTE]The standard batch system we are now using to get our prices lower only relates to the kits themselves, not the blowers. Our kits are assembled in large batches, and our blowers arrive from Magnuson. We then add the upgrades as ordered (ELF, IC, ETC) to complete the order and then ship the kit. If any part is missing or delayed, the kit cannot ship on time. The truth is, just about every order in our system is already built (from a hardware standpoint), and just awaiting blowers to arrive so we can complete the orders. Our blowers are purchased in batches of 5, 10, or 25 depending on current demand, which explain the shipment batches that appear on our site. In total, we have dozens of suppliers for various parts and many are the only available supplier for that part.

Chuck, if you go and find the post you're referencing, it's the NC kits we've been waiting on, not the S2000. I don't think you grasp the complexity of a cogged pulley. Typically, all our prototype work is done in house by hand, ever since our first M45 Coldside was hand milled from two pieces of billet aluminum. Controlling all process of the prototype stage is very important; however we simply don't have the time or the skill to make the pulley in question by hand. We had no choice but to farm it out to a local shop. Unfortunately, they got swamped with orders and we got bumped. The pulley is finished now, and should be here today.

As for our increasing lead times on orders, I am deeply sorry for all customers that have been affected by this. Honestly, I've tried to avoid the sob story but I can see that many of you would like an explanation. Several months ago we took on two new big projects, the NC and Hotside S2000 kits. We also had several big projects in our shop, and several smaller projects in the works such as intercoolers, ELF's, instructions, etc. A month ago the Mini project fell in our laps, and now we're down one employee because Bill has gone back home to New Orleans. To make matters worse, people are waiting on all of these projects, so we felt obligated to keep them all moving forward. The problem with that is any delay pushes everything back, hence our increasing lead times. In addition, Stage One evolved as a necessity to keep BRP alive. We found we had nearly priced ourselves out of the market, so yet another project developed to simplify things for us and to bring our kits back into the reach of the Miata community. In the past, we've been known to close down for up to a week when we got overloaded, however that has always caused more problems. We knew that we needed to be available as much as possible and maintain high levels of service and support. Thus we added live chat, new phone systems, e-mail servers, and everything is linked to our personal cell phones so we are better able to serve our customers. Because of this, we spend most of our day answering phones and e-mails, and most of our nights working on everything else.

The truth is, we've all been working 12+ hour days trying to dig out of this hole. Unfortunately, life tends to interfere. Brant was out for personal reasons much of last week, I had a trip that could not be canceled last month, and Joe is on vacation this week. That said, we've canceled everything we could and have been burning the midnight oil at every opportunity. Our local customers know we've canceled our trip to the Gap this year, and I slept at BRP 4 nights last week. We're trying as hard as we can to get everyone taken care of and to minimize the delays. We're currently working with a few people to help take even more of the load off our shoulders. We've closed down our shop, and are not taking any more new projects for a long time. I can't tell you how sorry we all are for the increasing lead times and any problems that our customers have had. You guys have been so awesome to us, and we

 

[QUOTE=PilotKD,Aug 3 2006, 12:19 AM]What I would do is irrelevant because I've got a more biased tolerance of this than you do and as I said above, I understand that.

 

http://www.brperformance.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc
IF they are in there working ? How hard is it to write a few ? refund check

 

PilotKD,

I understand why you would defend them, they do have a good long standing reputation. I was a forced induction Miata owner back in the mid 90's so I met Brant before/right as he started BRP. A good friend I race with still also has a pre-production MP62 on his car today. I think it may be the first, if not one of the first MP62 kits BRP did. He still thinks the world of Brant.

However, some of what they (BRP) are doing now has reached the unacceptble point in my opinion despite the fact that Brant really is a good guy. They can't timely fill their core orders (Miata) yet they are taking on S2000 projects/money and now Mini project/money when they have no idea how long it may take to even finish development of those kits. Without knowing the facts it sure does look like they are using "Peter's money to pay Paul" here a bit. That's a tough hole to climb out of once you start.

Being understaffed is one thing. Continuing to take orders you know you can't fill/develop timely is another. Hopefully they'll get things back on track soon, because Brant really is a good guy and they do deserve the good reputation in the Miata community they've earned . I just hope they don't destroy their reputation in the meantime, that would be a real shame.

 

Good question, if being busy or understaffed were the issue, how were they able to so efficiently process my payment (the same day)??

 

i dont own a s2k but i do own a 95M miata that on 06/26/06 i placed a order and i wanted out on 07/24/06 and i have been fighting ever since that day for my money back... if you want to know details send me a pm.


17 days of fighting with ignored emails and phone calls that are not returned....

 

sundaysbest,

Your experience sounds all too familiar to me. I know of at least one other than me in the same boat. I saw your timeline on the BRP site. If your charge was to a credit card, I would recommend issuing a dispute as soon as possible. I may need your info depending on what happens with the Consumer Complaint division.

 

Off the BR Performance site front page:




August 4, 2006



BR Performance & Stage One Tuning will be closed for approximately 2-3 weeks starting today. We are doing this in an effort to catch up on our back log of orders, finish up our S2000 and NC project and re-organize the company in order to improve our customer service. During this time we will only be available via email for tech support and customer service issues. We will not be accepting new orders during this time, but we will continue to ship orders that received prior to 8/4/06. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.