germantoy

your customer service and or standing behind products are is tiring and lame. I know it usually comes down from the higherups and you the "minions" are told what to say, but advertising warranties then telling the customer oh hey it lasted 30 days this couldn't of happened our welder welds **** for NASA hahaha right must of been the challenger then.

Now all this customer service **** happened to me after you guys F'd up huge sent the wrong parts that we're horrifically fabricated and then tried to blame INSTALL! after recieving 20 pics showing just how poorly the fit was because you guys sent the WRONG part. Causing a week of downtime etc etc after waiting a month (and constantly being lied to about arrival times etc etc) for the product that i was charged for the day i ordered it.

I love what you guys are doing, but your seriously ****ing lacking in taking care of ****, that was made poorly and caused by either rushing or not seeing things through QC, shipping recieving etc etc.
Its sad that you have such a good thing going then grow to fast, cut corners and people who spend thousands of dollars with you walk away.

Hell at the recent audi gtg in CT the general consensus was not really what you want to hear if your a buisness owner.

nate @ 034MOTORSPORT

We've got plenty of people using these harnesses without issue. The only issues that regularly crop up are cooked coils here and there. Hence the lean towards coil failures with the information I had at hand writing that last post.

If yours truly is a harness problem, and I'll take you for you word based on your trouble shooting, then we'd be happy to supply you with a new working harness, just like the hundreds of others that are out there and working regularly. If you don't want to do that, again, your choice.

nate @ 034MOTORSPORT

but you insisted you needed the car immediately on the road so it couldn't be sent to us for repair. So you took it to a local shop and wanted to hold us liable for the repair costs. Am I recalling this correctly?? If so, those were all your choices, and of course we can't cover other shop costs, there's no way. There's also no other manufacturer out there that would do such a thing to my knowledge for 'warranty' work.

Again, been a while, and I'm sure I'm missing some details here and there, being a minion and all, but thats the gist I've received.

germantoy

to ship something back to a incompetent crew that couldnt guarenty me a turnaround time, and would have the same person who horribly welded it in the first place (no penetration) "fix it" then cost me another 80 bucks to hopefully get it back in a decent amount of time? No Way especially since your
twenty something welder needs another 40 years of expierience to be as good as the locals we have here and cost me a little over what it would of cost to ship to you.

Heres the kicker this was AFTER you guys so eloquently ****ed us on both lying about the time the manifolds would be done and shipped, lying about the mock up on a c4 chasis (the fitment pictures dont lie) then us calling another customer who had the downpipe having him send us pics of his which was so different it made us lose all confidence in your company as a consumer. Oh ya you guys had no problem crediting us for damages/time/gas/cost of having the downpipe completely refabricated.

germantoy

were fed the same bull****, specifically the rs2 replica manifolds. A couple of people i consider friends were told oh ya this is tested tons of people running without incident. Theirs both failed
the excuse they were given wasnt that the welds failed or that it was poorly engineered and quickly put out to be sold, no it was oh we must of got a bad batch of stainless. (warping onto someones head for example!.

Now for something that was tested and hundreds out there why has it been pulled from the site? Was it one of those limited production pieces? I mean this is race proven stuff your pumping out right?

nate @ 034MOTORSPORT

Please stop reading into information that isn't there.

The RS2 replicas were pulled because we've got a better (though more expensive) product coming along. There was a rash of busted wastegate towers that was likely due to bad material (as we hadn't had this problem before that batch, and the material itself is what was failing, above the welds) and lack of bracing. We've had a number sent back to us and we've replaced that piece and added bracing for those customers.

That said, yes we have a large number of customers with the RS2 rep that haven't had a single problem with it. Either way, this wasn't at all the product I was referring to, and you're fishing again.... *sigh*

SilberUrS6

I made a choice after realizing that 034 was in no way going to help out, other than trying to get another $300 out of me for the H.O. coil set up, or "test" the existing harness.

Yes, I made all the troubleshooting steps I have outlined. I actually did a few others as well - all dead ends that were not ever the source of the problem.

Here's the funny thing - if you guys actually wanted to make good, you could have simply apologized. I would have accepted that in good faith, and chalked it up to no human being 100% perfect. We all make mistakes, right? So we apologize for our screw-ups, and move on. An apology to me, even in private, would have closed the book on this issue. I wonder if Nick would have been so pissed off if you guys had offered him an apology for an obviously defective product.

I can't send the harness back. It has been used as a source for connectors. The rest was thrown in the trash. It was an expensive lesson, but sometimes those are the most fruitful. I have made my choice. I choose to warn people away from 034 unless they cannot get the product elsewhere, or are purchasing a "pass through" type product - one in which 034 is only involved in via resale. I shake my head wondering how it is that the idea was completely developed for you, and you still managed to turn out not just one harness that was defective, but multiple defective units (as evidenced by my inbox). I wonder if you even ever bothered to thank the person who actually developed the thing from concept to working model?

What really sucks is that I completely applaud your devotion to AAN development. I know it's a minor part of your business, which is why it gets so little customer service attention. I suspect that if you dropped your AAN stuff, you'd hardly notice the lost business. And that sucks for everyone. Which is why I'm so incredibly disappointed with your indifference to customer service, for those customers who might not have had the best of luck with the products you've developed in-house.

I appreciate the time you've taken to write here, Nate. I wish you folks good luck in the future, and hope that out of this, some good happens.

MiniMan

has been pulled. Email me if there's anything else you recommend we specifically look at while it's out.

Nate, it really isn't any of my business, but you folks should look into expanding profit margins/increasing sale price to offer greater post-sales support. Whether it is good or bad support right now is not my business (so far you guys have been pretty good to me), but the increased revenue from the additional sales that result would most likely account for the additional expenses incurred.

Regardless of why a perception exists, it does in fact exist. Perception is reality for those people; those people being potential and/or previous customers. A small increase in total expenses (5% +/-) could result in a large (10%+) increase in gross sales due to increased confidence in 034, which could give you a competitive advantage. Depending on profit margins, the increase in gross sales would not only decrease R&D's percentage of total expenses, but also found a larger customer base with increased confidence to buy more products, not just products that "only" 034 offers, outweighing the additional expenses incurred.

nate @ 034MOTORSPORT

It's definitely unfortunate, how things apparently unraveled in your case with your harness. And what even worse in my opinion is that many people assume first that we aren't the same enthusiasts you guys are in this market. Yes, we're doing it for a living now, but we'd be building and making all this stuff on our own as well. When something goes out of here that isn't up to a customers expectations, that sucks, and I do take that personally as does everyone else here. No we don't have huge margins on any of our parts, but we are certainly willing to work with anyone who purchases our parts to get what you've paid for. This isn't a walmart style return system where you can just return anything anytime you like, but we _are_ committed to getting the expected product to the customer.

In your particular case that seems to have not come across, from whatever communications occurred previously, I don't know. But you've got my sincerest apologies, no questions asked, you had them the first time the harness caused any problems at all. I don't know what other words or convictions I can state here that will sway your thoughts, but we definitely stand behind what we offer, and if there's any question at all, pick up the phone and give us a ring. I can't tell you the number of times a customer has done that, been much better able to explain the situations back and forth and get things straightened out and everyone's happy. Even though they called steaming because they made lots of assumptions before talking to us, or emails didn't convey what was going on properly.

One thing, very common on this forum in particular, unfortunately, is that people come here first, before ever talking to us. They bash us here, or in private gossip circles, thinking that will motivate us into action. Then, maybe, they talk to us, hoping to have a half dozen 'Yea, you go, take the big man down' posts at their back. They've already made the assumption we wont help at all, and start out on the offensive. I've talked to a couple of friends that say 'oh man, you guys sure are getting a bad rap'. This usually leads to a couple hour long conversation about who they talked to, and what the problems were. In almost _every_single_case_ the unsatisfied customer never even came to us for a resolution. The posted something snide on some obscure forum, and that was the end of it. We never got a chance to make things right, or figure out what expectations weren't met. Then they talk to their friends about it, sharing their side of the horror story without us having any chance at a resolution. This regrettably puts me(us) on the defensive in a big way here, and can make my posts come off perhaps a little more abrasive than intended as I'm trying to be damn careful about what I say. There's lots of people with nothing to contribute that just like to light fires to see what will burn, and take many things out of context and contort any situation into an attack. That unfortunate, but seems to be human nature, for whatever reason lots of the 'big guys' need to be bad and given that persona.

Wow, this got long. I guess all I'm really trying to say is we're damned proud of what we do here. We all started out wrenching in some parking lot on our backs and pushing the envelope with whatever we had. We're the same enthusiasts you guys are through and through, and we're here to give you guys the jump-start at making crazy power for these obscure, potential laden, cars that'll dust most anything else out there on the streets today. So, if there's any question about us, our motives, our passions, or what I've had for breakfast, shoot me an email, give us a call, whatever. Just communicate, be a rational human being, and we'll do our best to do the same.

Keep the tires lit guys.