I finally got round to calling Scoobymania today and I was a couple of hundred quid lighter in about 3 minutes.... but it took three weeks to "sort" it out, phone call, request for e-mail, wait for e-mail, get fed-up of waiting for e-mail to come, ring back and confirm stock.... and ordered today for Friday !

Sorted,

DunxC

P.S. Sorry you sounded so "rough" on the phone...nasty cold I guess ?

P.P.S. I did mess JB at Scoobyclinic about last Saturday, said I wanted a pod, but found a carbon one at the same price, which would you prefer ?

 

I dont think you can go far wrong with any of the major players on here; API, RCM, SM etc etc They have all been helpful to me in the past and if they havent got it in they usually can get it pretty quick for you.

 

Not necessarily the case, The one that all of us ' specialists' resist is the

" I've just bought a gearbox [ or whatever ] from so & so, can you tell me if it will fit my car ? "

What's in it for us? how long can we spend on the phone advising someone how to fit something, knowing that he is never going to spend a penny with us? Hoping for an order is one thing and any amount of time is invested in ensuring that the customer understands what and how much.

Knowing that you won't get any business tends to make conversations quite short.

OR we spend an amount of time working out combinations of; I dunno? , diff, gearbox or clutch, or turbo upgrades etc., etc., and we tend to nominate how we would do it and advise that you need an XYZ turbo and abc injectors and this exhaust and that induction only to read on the forums that he has bought it off the internet and had it fitted elsewhere.

We're all in business to make money and we take the rough with the smooth.
so losing business if you are uncompetitive for price is a fact of life. We live with it. We recognise that we have to build a relationship with a customer in about 5 or 10 minutes on the phone so that he wants us to do the work.

As said many times above, we are all busy and thus cannot possibly complete all the work that we quote for.

I and I am sure others, will have offered quotes to a person who is known as a regular customer of another well known tuner. We hope to get an order and thus take time to explain and quote. All that is happening usually, is that the regular is price checking to make sure that his supplier is competitive.

We accept that as a fact of life too. Believe me there is no better feeling than nicking a job off one of your competitors. In the end it evens out and I talk to RCM and the Clinic and Zen and Subaru-4-you et al and we have no problem with each other. We support each other and trade with each other , it's called business. But just 'cos one of us nicks a job off the other does not make us deadly enemies.

Any amount of time, however long it takes, to ensure that a customer is convinced to bring his pride and joy to you is an investment. Investmenst can go down as well as up .

Not replying promptly to phone calls or emails is never going to get you business. I try to do it as soon as possible. Occasionally emails go astray and never arrive. We all know that problem.

I sent myself one the other day to test something out, it took 4 hours to arrive and went straight into the junk folder. With the amount of cr*p floating around the net these days most people have firewalls of some sort and mail goes astray.

All I can suggest is that if you haven't had a reply from the tuner of your choice by email in 48hours ring him and ask why. Perhaps he never got the mail.

Good Luck all, David

Agents for Simtek, the most exciting new Ecu for years

 

There have been some interesting comments since I made that first post a couple of weeks back.
My initial moan remember was not about the actual supply of parts but the fact that too many organisations could not be bothered to respond to an initial e-mail request for pricing information.
Now it may be a very old - fashioned attitude but I was always led to believe and still do follow the premise that ANY sales enquiry was valuable because you could never tell what it might lead on to. I just cannot get my head around the 'we are too successful to reply' idea at all, or the 'timewaster' element. How on earth do you tell from an e-mail request asking about the price of a ?????? whether it is a genuine request or not, surely you have to answer it ? If you have set up a business to sell items over the www or by 'phone then you should never be too busy to respond, and yes, I would accept a 'can we call you later reply'....as long as they did.
We'll see what happens next time !!

Cheers

JBL

 

Try me ! and activate the " the sender has asked you to respond to this email " button. Then you know if the receiver is not replying or possibly not received the mail.

David APi

 

Ok ok, I worded my reply badly...

I'm talking about emails such as can you supply such and such, will you be able to fit a ___ for me and how much.

Not can you give me free advice

I email for quotes.. you have the time to tell me over the phone, whats the difference with email... you just dont need to response straight away with email with a call you have to drop what your doing to talk to me !

 

I didn't think that you had worded it badly at all. I just thought a considered reply from our side might shed a bit of light.

I usually come in to 40 plus emails on a Monday morning and it takes a while to get through them, as they are quite often looking for guidance for the next stage and " now that I have got this, what do I do next ? " is a regular question.

I have committments on a Monday elsewhere, every second month or so. Then I will have 75 on the Tuesday. But in the meantime one of the staff here will have checked my mail box and sent 'holding ' responses to enquiries advising why they haven't had a reply just yet.

David

 

Thanks David for taking the time to add to this thread....

Any sign of my fuel rails

I would like to thanks Scoobyparts for their excellent service with delivery in less than 24 hours !

But sadly Area 52 (Scoobymania) lose a point for sending me a Defi with a piece of the kit missing..... but still managed to deliver within 24 hours too !

Duncan

P.S. David can you supply me with an "adaptor" to fit a Defi oil temperature sensor into the block ?
I believe around cylinder number 3 (? ? ?) where there is a bung ?

 

Duncan, Your rails are with the specialist who does our silver soldering. I will give him a kick today. More later.

We supply an adaptor block that goes between the oil filter and the engine block. That gives you several locating points for any number of gizmos. Made by Ultralite the wheel people, it sells at about £30.00 from memory.

We find it the easiest way to get oil temp and oil press gauges onto the engine, as all the upper block side locations present problems with location etc etc.

David APi

Agents for Simtek, the most exciting new Ecu for years

 

Thanks David,

Don't kick the poor old codger too hard, we break easily...

I could do to have them by the end of the month, and save me one oil filter adaptor please.

Duncan

 

BACK TO MOAN !

Yep !

Right royally screwed up !

Bought a turbo from Mark @ Lateral earlier this year....

Just spent all yesterday fighting seized exhaust components....

Come to offer new turbo up and guess what ? ?

The oil drain from my turbo doesn't fit.... at no time was I made aware of this one ! o.k. I lied the bolts don't fit and I'm stupid ! LOL


The oil feed pipe to the new turbo has the right connector on so will fit

Grumpy Dunx

P.S. Apologies to Mark for my stupidity at assuming the connector was NOT internally threaded.
Huge thanks for taking the time to call while i WAS sulking in the garage !

 

Thanks to David@API for the fuel rails today !

DunxC