Wed, 8 Apr 1998

[GM] I had a bad experience with Simpson Racing over the past few weeks and want to relate the details to fellow listers.

I decided to install the Dali harness bar (GREAT product!) and 5 point belts in my car. I ordered the belts over the phone from Simpson's HQ in Texas and paid with a credit card. I was told by the woman I ordered from that they would ship in 14 - 21 days. Nine days later I received a delivery notice from UPS that my package from Simpson was COD and to leave a certified check for delivery.

I phoned Simpson that night (Friday) but their message said they were only open weekdays. On a lark I phoned the next day -Saturday- and was pleased to speak to a sales rep. They had no knowledge of my order. They had erroneously sent me a drag racing product but had no record of that shipment either. A man's name was on my invoice (attached to the drag product) even though I ordered from a woman. My invoice was marked paid but their rep said invoice numbers mean nothing to them - they track orders by phone number. After some time they found enough data to realize the mistake. They were supposed to fax UPS a release form allowing the COD package to be delivered without payment on Monday.

They never faxed this document to UPS. Monday I arrived home to no belts. I phoned Simpson again. They agreed to fax UPS the release form that night. After telling me everything was fixed they failed to fax this document for the second time. UPS phoned me back to say they had not received anything but by that time Simpson was closed (see below).

I phoned UPS the next morning hoping they had somehow received Simspon's fax overnight. No joy. I phoned Simpson and started yelling. I was again told they would fax UPS. They tried to blame everything on UPS. They told me it would take 8 hours for UPS to reply to their fax and I would not get my order that day. This was not true - after receiving the fax UPS called me within 30 minutes, radioed their truck driver and I finally received my belts.

At no time did Simpson ever say "We're sorry - we made a mistake." If they had I would have taken a completely different attitude. Every time I phoned Simpson I was put on hold - once for 22 minutes. Often a rep would come
back on the line saying "Who is this? I'm working on 4 customers and forgot what you wanted". The shortest time I was put on hold was 8 minutes which is a long time to be on hold! Their constant attempts to blame UPS did not sit well with me.

From my experience Simpson's office cannot track an order or run a fax machine, but they ask us to trust our lives to their engineering and manufacturing departments. I think they make good products but I would search a long time for alternatives before using them again. In fairness friends of mine have received good service from Simpson so maybe this was an unusual occurrence.