superspokes sucks
 

if you couldn't tell by the horrible web design.... figure i could give them the benefit of the doubt, it seems like they're more concerned about their local business, but whatever, they have rims for cheap. so about mid-july i order a pair of deepV rims to have shipped to my builder. i never get a confirmation of my order so i call them. they say, oh sure, we're migrating our ordering system and there are some kinks. fine, he takes my name, finds my order, says i'll get an email about it shortly.

couple days go by, i email that i haven't gotten anything. they email this near unintelligeable response that doesn't really make sense. so i call them. same deal as last time, excuse about the ordering system, we'll take care of it, blah blah blah. this goes on for two weeks. so after a couple weeks i ask them point blank, what's the deal. they tell me oh, well, velocity doesn't have any deepVs right now, they'll be getting a new shipment in a few days. so i demand to have the number of their distributor. i get it and call them. they tell me two weeks. now i'm starting to get upset. fine, i can wait.

this place is offering them a lot cheaper than anywhere else. only reason i'm doing online ordering instead of my lbs is because it's getting shipped to my cousin that's building the wheels for me and he lives across the country, so i figure, find the cheapest way to go. fast forward to today. this is two weeks and one day from when i last talked to velocity. i ask them if they can tell me when they expect the shipment, they say tomorrow, by the end of the week at the latest. fine. now can they find my order? they don't have an order from superspokes for me. call superspokes back. now he explains to me that he sent a bulk order, so of course velocity wouldn't have an order with my name on it. he told me before that they send orders directly to velocity for fulfillment from them. now i'm pissed.

it's been over 4 weeks, they've taken my money, more or less lied to me about my order processing, and fibbed about how long it would really take. he's assured me that he's going to call velocity tomorrow and have them break out my order from the rest of the stuff that's getting shipped to the store and mail it from the distribution center directly, but i'm not having much hope. i'm calling tomorrow morning to make sure he did it, but if i hear that he'll do it later, or hasn't gotten to it, i'm going to have to cancel my order and place a new one with people that actually DO customer service. yeah i'll pay more, but at this point i'd rather pay more and have someone actually get something done than try to fend me off with lies.

sorry for the rant, i'm just really pissed, and i've seen some threads saying superspokes isn't great. so here's why, in detail.

edited for line breaks to make it more readable :)

I'd like to read that, but I need paragraphs.

what do you expect when you order from a shop you can't visit in person and haven't heard people raving about? Support your LBS, and as long as they're not ripping you off, buy at a store.

Oh crap. I just ordered from them...

bingo. i couldn't find a shop locally that would get me white deepVs for less than 70 bucks per. and if they're getting shipped anyway, why not do it online?

Is $60 worth a few months of time and tons of hassle??

Yup, $75 here, however I just called and got a somewhat reasonable answer about my rims. He told me he has them shipped direct from Velocity and as soon as he gets a tracking number he'll send it. I'm a little worried now, but I took the chance so...

yeah they told me that a bunch too.

i wouldn't really have minded the wait so much if they'd been up front with me. i realize that these things are popular and sometimes people run out of things. and when the manufacturer is an ocean away sometimes things take a while to get shipped. i can live with this. i'll also save 60 bucks to wait for it if it's still cheaper than anyone else (aside from the fact that nobody i called even HAS the rims i want so they're probably all waiting for the same shipment).

Hindsight being what it is I'd spend the extra money.

Has anybody had a non-sh***y experience with these folks?

Velocity, however, rocks. they looked through their records twice and couldn't find anything that even looked like what i ordered.

when we left off our story was that the superspokes guy was going to call velocity and ask them to break out my order and ship it directly. he never called them. in fact, they don't have a set of 32h white deep vees anywhere in any order they have from superspokes. that sounds fishy. and i'm tired of it. so i call up the guy and ask him to cancel my order he asks why. so i tell him that i talked to velocity. so then he gets all indignant asking me if i seriously think velocity would tell me what he's ordered. obviously they didn't tell me details, but i was specific enough that they told me what i needed to know. and that was that it appeared that my order was never made; or at the very least buried or lost.
then he tried to go into more excuses so i cut him off telling him i was tired of dealing with it and i just wanted my money back. then he mumbles "yeah ok we'll take care of it" and hangs up on me. i call back because you don't just hang up on people but he didn't answer the phone. i left a message that was something to the effect that if i don't have a reference number or some other signifier that i'm getting my money back within 7 business days i'll be taking the matter up with my bank. let's just say that by this point i'll be surprised if i DON'T have to call my bank. do yourself a favor and learn from my mistake: patronize someone who has a rep and pay a little more for it.

Srlsly ...hmmmmm
 

This guy was refunded. He has nothing better to do than complain, even if explanations were accurate and verified. He must be a very constipated person, with nothing better to do. We don't only get our rims from Velocity USA, there only one of our suppliers. He couldn't grasp that. Sometimes a person doesn't always know, what he think he does. Some know-it-alls are just looking for the wrong answers, so they think they can look right, in there own eyes. We have toll free numbers, and support 24/7/365. I encourage people to call on local shops whenever they can, as we have a local shop also. We are not just internet mongers like some on line shops. Our doors, and phones are always open. But, as we know even in our vast inventory, you can't always keep every combination somebody may want. But, we bust our butts, best we can, like all cyclists, for cyclists. Sorry Srsly if we couldn't help you as fast as you needed.

Quick, somebody make a thread called "George Bush Sux", and see if we get a response.

I :love: the internets!

NYCBikes is that you? And if you are really serious about your online business. For gosh sakes, have someone redesign that website or take it offline completely and just put up a phone number.

I looked at that page and closed it in about half a second. You're losing customers buddy. Not just because of this thread.

All the images are being served up as *secure* (https). Since the certificate isn't in everyone's browser ... apparently the images disappear ... making an already cluttered page look weird.

Why not just serve up the images off of the main site using non-secure graphic tags?

Can't tell what it was built in, but there appears to be a bunch of JS designed to work-around a MicroSoft limitation with PNG images. Drop the JS and use GIFs.

Better still, redesign the front page from the ground up by hand following W3C standards so that the page is usable in all browsers. Looks like you've hired a separate cart to do your actual store, so don't understand why *anything* on the front page needs to be secure. Unless order information appears after a person starts to fill their basket? But even that shouldn't need to be secure. And, all the 'buy now' links were far down, kind'a in a jumbled mush. Hopefully it looks better in IE (I'm using a couple other browsers at the moment).

Why yes, I do web pages ... and am willing to work for spokes :)

scrap all that and rebuild in os commerace,, that ****s the web jam

Actually, the e-commerce part of their site seems OK, and they've probably already paid good money to the 3rd party shopping cart for setup, authentication, SSL, merchant accounts, etc. Its just the presentation on the home page (and maybe other product pages) that needs to be reworked.

got my velocitys from SS and had good customer service from them other than they never notified me when the wheels shipped/tracking #.

oh, and their website sucks dog balls. Def needs a redo.

I currently have some Vs on order with them. They're friendly enough on the phone, but never are able to give me tracking info.

yeah, I ordered some deep V's from superspokes, and got them in about a week.

I ordered from them earlier this year and had to deal with the backorder. I got my stuff, though. Superspokes, I've got a friend that's ordered a set of rims from you all and has been trying to contact you.

The customer service was terrible. They don't return phone calls. And the reasoning for not sending my rims after 3 weeks..."well, we try not to deplete our stock by having them sent directly from Velocity". Bull****, your job as a business is to deplete your stock. If you don't have something, call the person that ordered it and level with them. My stuff did show up after almost 4 weeks, and having talked to a different person last week. I was short 12 spokes, but whatever. I'd have been a lot more pleased with a little courtesy,(your rims are on back order,etc...), than getting the run around. I mean, this stuff is specialty stuff for all intents and purposes so I don't think any of us are gonna' get too pissed off about waiting a little while. But jeebus, just tell people what's up.

PS: Thank you to Greg at superspokes for getting my order taken care of.

I ordered my set on August 4th, and guess what? Not in yet. Ive called and spoken to customer service who promised to have them arrive September 1st but I guess not. It's not just frustrating to make people wait this long, but the fact that I got no confirmation/tracking makes it all the more annoying. Sorry if this is offensive to Super Spokes, but I think the company ought to know if they're messing up somewhere and how to fix it.