I love Summit, and it’s a few cities away from my house which is better than an amusement park next door. They always stick by me, so this is not an indictment of them or their practices.
I ordered 16 new Melling lifters and started prep to install today. Two were dished out and had oil burns, and two were scored on the sides and collapsed or stuck and wouldn’t compress under pressure from a pushrod. Whoever it is who returned those for a refund, I truly believe if there is an eternal place of torment, you deserve a seat!!
That aside, the customer service rep at Summit was quick to make it right and I will have new lifters shipped without having to drive over. A few days delayed, but I am now lifters, pushrods and rockers away from a short block and the 351 looks great.
I recently purchased a Motorcraft FL1 from a local parts store. To my surprise, the box contained a PH8A. I returned it and received a proper oil filter.
(note: PH8As are orange)
On another occasion, my son purchased a 5-quart jug of oil. When we removed the cap, the foil seal had been removed and the jug was full of used oil.
You wouldn’t believe how many people buy our NOS parts on eBay, then request a return. Then they return a clearly used part, 75% of the time missing the original factory box.
Good luck contesting the case, because eBay’s “cognitive agents” automatically rule in favor of the buyer about 90% of the time.
Mike, we’ve been eBay high volume sellers since 2000, and yes, the eBay and PayPal ecosystem is biased towards the buyers. Even when those buyers are committing blatant fraud.
My FIL has been with NAPA, Advance, and now Oreilly over the last 15 or so years. Previous to that he owned his own indie parts store. He’s been relating how common this is now with even commercial accounts who should know better.
I always buy stuff from Summit if I can because of how well they handle this kind of thing. Well, Speedway Motors too.
There used to be an outfit in my town called The Auto Parts Club. It was like Costco for car parts and it was great. I bought tires, car stereos, parts and tools there. They had Japanese made True Craft hand tools ala carte and the parts inventory was open to shoppers. There was a couple of aisles of parts with the books to look them up hanging every couple of bays. People would swap cheap parts with expensive ones to ring up cheaper and also return used parts. I got so fed up with it I would go straight to the special order desk and just order everything. On one visit the guy at the counter asked me why I didn’t want the part he was showing in stock and I explained. He ordered my parts, a couple of ball joints, but asked me to retrieve the in-stock part from the shelf to inspect. The ball joint we shook out of the box was used, the boot was gone, and the person who returned it had spray painted it silver for good measure. They hired girls who didn’t know better to staff the store, so people ran all kinds of scams on them. they went out of business after a few short years.
I’m not sure how this one happened. I wet to a local NAPA store to get a axle bearing. Took it to a buddy’s to install. It was not the correct part. Took it back and the guy at the counter insisted it was and that I gave him wrong information. I asked if he and any more in stock. He did and they were not the same as the one in the box I had with the same part number on it.
