Coastal Tech Charges You For What They Don't Have

[MagneticGrayIndy]

2] Their e-mail support is nonexistent, however, calling the non free # has worked every time. I've even received 2 voice mails from CT answering my Q's.


You're lucky.. I've tried calling both toll and non toll numbers.. have left messages on both.. no return call ever.

[GatorJZ]

Mods: Can I suggest something to save bandwidth? Every one of these Coastal or PriusChat Store threads devolves into the same thing....several pages of one camp posting their negative experiences and one camp posting their positives, with generally the same people involved. Why not open up a vendor feedback forum and requires these type of posts to be made there? That way "victims" whose credit cards were charged too soon, whose parts were back ordered, whose e-mails were ignored or who received the wrong color Sharkfin have a place to vent (read: whine and complain). You could dedicate one thread to each vendor or perhaps one positive and one negative thread to each major vendor.

[Joekc]

Originally Posted by GatorJZ

(read: whine and complain)..

Read: warn others

If a company just plain lies to you, why would you charactarize my response to them as whining and complaining?

But I agree with you about a separate forum for vendor feedback.

[skguh]

Yep. What this place needs is another forum.

[YoDaddyAlex]

Originally Posted by gatsby_88

Several months ago, I was ready to buy one of their lockpick products. I e-mailed them a simple question about the capabilities of the various versions that they make, but they never replied. If they won't respond to a simple question when I have cash in hand ready to buy, how do you think their customer service will be after they have your money? I chose not to find out. I will wait for someone else to enter their market or for Coastal Tech to figure out how to do business.

I had the same experience. no reply to the email... so I would think twice about giving them my money

[chrisspaulding]

.
I agree, a vendor rating thread is a great idea.

I disagree CT consciously lied about inventory/billing - who are they anchoring you from going to instead?

I also did not receive an e-mail reply, so I persisted and called the listed number where I spoke with Kelly at CT. Now I'm the happy owner of several CT products!
Your principles keep you gadget free while you wait. My persistence and understanding the way they work keeps me gadget happy!

So they have bad customer service. Just get your gadgets and get over it, or be gadget lonely till a better Co. finally shows up, if they do. It's not a crisis, it's bad customer service and an inventory mix up. -kinda like that angry soup guy on Sienfeld

[joel7269]

I really wanted to order some parts from this company but heard all the bad press. Funny thing is I don't have the car yet so I thought I'd order the parts and if it takes a few weeks to get fine I'm still waiting on the car.

I placed an order with them on Sunday and today Monday I got the shipping tracking number and should have it mid week. Better then I could of hoped for.

[chrisspaulding]

Only the bad CT experiences get their own threads. Like they say, dissatisfied customers tell more people than satisfied customers. Although it may seem like they get 'all the bad press', remember, there's hundreds or even thousands of perfectly satisfied CT customers for each bad review.
To NEVER do business with them because of no e-mail reply or an inventory mix up seems a bit over the top. It's not choosing the next mayor, it's buying some cool components from techies running their own business.

[Joekc]

Originally Posted by chrisspaulding

.
I agree, a vendor rating thread is a great idea.

I disagree CT consciously lied about inventory/billing - who are they anchoring you from going to instead?

I'm not sure what "anchoring" means here, but assuming you mean preventing, that would be Factory Interactive, who I ordered the same item from today and they shipped TODAY. I would have ordered from them in the first place, but they were shut down for a week for vacation and I did need the radio for a trip. I didn't get to use it on the trip of course, but at least Factory Interactive told me they wouldn't be able to ship for a week. That's the difference. For those of you who wish to enable bad behavior of CT, I could care less. It's your money (and time).

[Joekc]

Originally Posted by joel7269

I placed an order with them on Sunday and today Monday I got the shipping tracking number and should have it mid week. Better then I could of hoped for.

Yes, I got the same thing. They sent me a tracking # for a product they didn't even have. So it doesn't neccessarily mean your order has shipped.

My main gripe was charging my credit card when they didn't even have the item, an issue which has been ignored by the CT apologists in this thread (not you). I hope your order has indeed shipped, but having a tracking # means nothing until UPS actually picks it up and logs it in.