Im not having any luck with Shep Trans.

First Ill say I'm sure they'll eventually take care of it but a couple things have me pretty annoyed.

Back story, My VR4 was cheap and stock with a clutch problem. Awesome, I need a ski car and anyone who knows about these knows the clutch lever arm isn't the greatest design. Mine was bad of course and after searching around high and low I couldn't find a replacement. I decided to call up Shep and see if they had them in stock if I could just buy the lever arm and some bushings since I could weld it myself. Well, they claimed to have it but they don't sell parts only a service. Fair enough, I understand business is business.

I sent in the assembly to get a quality repair and waited a week(ish) after it arrived there to bother them and apparently they don't have the arm as claimed, basically I feel I was lied to/mislead. Ugh, great.. So I ask how long and of course its just a few days out he "thinks". That turned into a couple weeks with me calling in about once a week. Finally it showed up about 2 weeks ago (now probably 3-4 weeks after sending it to them) and I made the bone head maneuver of not sending in the cage that bolts to it. Apparently it needs to be in place before welding.. Oops, Ill claim that screw up of another week to ship out that part. I send it out the next day and it was there 2 weeks ago. I called the Tuesday or Wednesday after and nothing had been done but they had all the parts and would get right on it. OK, cool.. finally..

Called today and now they don't have a lever arm anymore. So someone went ahead and took the arm since my cage wasn't ready leaving me to piss in the wind after being as patient as I can. Now Im waiting to find out when another lever arm might show up.

If I would have been told they didn't actually have the arm in the first place I never would have sent it in. This is my biggest issue right now, I would have had it done a week later not months. I would have ordered some bushings and just welded the part on my own saving a bit of money (I'm up to like $40 in just shipping costs now, plus now I gotta ship it back). Is Shep going downhill, just doesn't care much about the small stuff, or am I just unlucky on this one?

 

[toybreaker]

Sounds like an unfortunate combination of communication and shipping issues ...

... but not getting a straight answer would probably make me unhappy as well.

I can see how a little job like this could fall thru the cracks, as the shop probably loses time/money providing this service, (and only does it to ensure it is done right), but since it does leave your car undriveable I would have thought they would have made it a priority.

I'm a little curious if Jon actually knows the situation exists ... Have you tried contacting him directly to gently request an update? Many times in cases like this, the business owner doesn;t even know there is a problem with an order, as they're busy with the bigger picture. Just frame it as a request, and see where that gets you.

I've met the man, and he strikes me as someone that would stay late to get a deal like this done.

At any rate, hopefully it will get sorted out soon, and please update the thread with the outcome.

 

Yeah, you're probably right. This isn't a profit machine for them doing some small cheap work to help out the community.

I'm OK in the fact that I don't absolutely need the car till the snow start falling again but I do want to play around with it instead of DDing an Evo with some seriously heavy springs or riding the Bike.

But the whole misled part really has my panties in a bind. I'll have to give them a buzz monday and see what the latest status is.

 

Please understand that these levers are extremely hard to get, we get them directly from Japan, and they can take a week to 3 months and we cannot control this. If we said it was here at the time you called then I am sure it was here, but we do get pedals on a daily basis and we cannot hold parts under the assumption that a customer will be sending a pedal core in. In the future to avoid this situation, we will need to charge the customer to hold a lever for them if they are going to send their pedals in for a rebuild (GVR4 only). From what I recall there was a communication problem between the parts manager and the person that does the pedals.

I apologize for the confusion and we will work on making sure this doesn’t happen again. I agree your part should not have been used for another build. We do the best we can to try to make everyone happy.

John

 

[toybreaker]

Thanks for taking the time to reply to this.

The recent events in Japan have put a kink in the supply line, that's for sure!

I'm glad to hear it will be handled as soon as the parts become available, as that's the way you've always done business in the past.

Look forward to a follow up post from DallasJ when this transaction is completed.

 

Thanks for responding.

Like I said, I understand things were going to take a while but there were still some frustrations. And Im not expecting a clutch lever to be a top priority. The biggest issue was just miscommunication.

If I would have known I could pay for it up front to be held I easily would have done that.