Hopefully I was right when I thought this was the most appropriate place to vent about Year One with some fellow Buick owners. December 31st I ordered valve covers off the Year One catalog, made by TA. Couldn't order them online directly from TA so Year One had to do. A month later I Email them to see whats up, I was told 2 weeks more, 2 weeks later I check again...Same thing... 2 months now and I call and speak to a manager and get shipping back, was told there were none of there "custom bolts" for the Valve covers. Next day he calls back, valve covers will be here Friday, today they arrive, drumroll please... andddddd, they're Poston's valve covers, with a horrible finish, oil fillers aren't drilled out, oh, and, no bolts. Call to complain, Customer Service is closed and I speak to a manager and he says all their valve covers are ordered from Poston, be it 455...350...300, any Buick engine. I ask how come they have it online with matching part numbers as my receipt that they come from TA. He has no idea why and cant do anything. So I wait till Monday. Ordered these: http://www.yearone.com/serverfiles/fbshopmain2.asp?cat=2 Got these: http://www.postonbuick.com/eshop/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=PE463921 TA's valve cover that was supposed to arrive: http://www.taperformance.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TA_1324 Poston's are cheaper, uglier (to me), and not worth 140 $ that I paid and didn't even get the ones I wanted or ordered. Later, Michael.
it will be picked up and free shipping... but the main thing was the time it to get them, and then its no where near what you ordered, I couldn't use them even if I wanted.
This is the right place to vent. I want to hear this stuff so that I know. Also, being as there are so many car guys on here it's a good place to make sure that bad service comes back to haunt them. Maybe they will get better when enough people know what up and business slows donw.
and how did I know TA didnt have the valve covers? did it say anywhere that they dont have them? if it did then I did not see it. but thanks for being quite rude. I know I wouldnt of ordered anything knowing that the place I was supposedly ordering from did not have them at all.
"December 31st I ordered valve covers off the Year One catalog, made by TA. Couldn't order them online directly from TA so Year One had to do." Read that part again, he couldn't order them online from TA, so he used YO. TA does need to get their online catalog ordering system active, they lose allot of money not having one. I for one have bought elsewhere as I could do it online. I don't call to give CC or banking info over the phone. Soon as TA gets an online store open, they will get some of my money. Now sounds like TA needs to kick YO in the butt for advertising their stuff and sending crapy poston stuff in its place.
Year One doesn't stock our valve covers, they only order them as they need them, but they do in fact sell our valve covers. We've have satin 350 covers in stock and have for a long time now so why there was such an issue with your order, I do not know.
It has been my experience that Year One mostly resells other vendors (TA, Postons, GM, etc) so if the original supplier (whoever they might be) is out of stock chances are Year One won't be able to get it again until the original vendor produces more. Also, usually the original vendor is less expensive anyway plus I'd rather directly support the smaller buick guys who are not subsidized by the larger sales of chevy/pontiac, etc sales. That said Year One does have some parts/services you can't get anywhere else and I have always found them to be excellent to deal with so who knows...o No:
JMHO, but the time spent on the LD call to TA will be offset by the cheaper shipping charges, compared to what YO will probably charge you. Mike, do the satin covers outsell the black finish covers? I'd think the opposite would be true, but you only mention having satin in stock.
I just received a nice reproduction of the original valve covers from Noah Performance, Inc. I have a Stage 1 one so I the got the set with the correct numbers stamped on. If you dont have a stage one you can get them without the numbers. They are real nice. http://www.noahperformance.com/. I purchased my set on EBAY for $111 including shipping. You can order from the catalog for a little more.
