American Muscle..

We'll see what happens ...

I just had a lengthy discussion with our Head Tire Technician to try and figure out why you could not get the wheels balanced, and as far as we could come up with, you should have had no problem. The only thing he could come up with he said could be the incorrect cone on the balancing machine but he said that would be a pretty slim chance for someone with experience to make and pretty much impossible for more then one person to make the same mistake at two different shops.

What brand, model, & size (width/aspect ratio) tires were installed on these rims by the way?

I am thinking the best thing to do if you still want a set of these wheels is to send out a brand new set, we will check them on the balancer machine here before they go out. And then when you get them, check them on your balancer machine before mounting the tires. That should help ensure any doubt whether the wheels are good or not. And if they didn't balance after that, then it would definitely seem like an issue with the tires.

Other then that the only thing I could do is work with you on a refund of some of the fees associated with the return. Let me know what you want to do.

Thanks,

Nick

VIDEO

Hey Steedman, just video tape the whole balancing act.....then there is no argument....

I appreciate the offer Nick, but as I stated before, it isnt about the money..This whole thing should have been handled differently from the beginning..I lost a customer for life, put my Service Manager through the ringer with these wheels and blew some of the owners money for no reason...I dont want a "refund"..I want other mustang loyalists to not get treated like this in the future, from any vendor...

I'm not trying to stir up anything here, but it sounds as though you're being unreasonable, steedman07. Nick is willing to work with you, even though his tech is able to balance the wheels just fine, and he's simply the vendor of the product, not the manufacturer. As the service manager, have you never had a customer bring in a brand new vehicle for warranty work? Sometimes parts fail, don't meet QA guidelines, but somehow slip out the door, etc. American Muscle is able to balance the wheels. I understand that Nick is in a position of not wanting to question the level of knowledge, or experience of the tire techs, however I have no affiliation with American Muscle, aside from being StangNet Staff, so I am in a position to ask the tough questions, without having to worry about how doing so may affect my image as a vendor. Nick has gone out of his way to make this right, and I think he deserves a little more credit than he's being given.

My first question is, what type of balance was attempted on the wheels? A dynamic balance will always produce better results than a static balance, so the method used needs to be noted. When the wheel and tire combo was unable to be balanced, did anyone break the beads and change the tire orientation on the wheels, and attempt to rebalance? How were the tires oriented when mounted, with regard to the red dot, which indicates the heaviest point of the tire? They should be mounted with the dot lining up with the valve stem. Do you know if they were mounted in that manner? If they weren't, did reorienting them allow the tires to balance? If not, did orientating them with the heavy point 180° opposite the stem cure the problem? That's kindergarten tire tech that even the 18 year old kid working at the local tire & lube joint would try, in order to obtain a balance, so we need to know how they were mounted. In my opinion, there's still too many unknowns right now, to know for sure what the problem is with the wheel and tire combination, but answering the above questions should definitely get all the parties involved closer to a resolution.

The wheels were balanced with a state of the art Hunter 9700 roadforce dynamic balancer, the best in the business according to my sources..I told Nick I appreciate them trying to help me now, but its not about me, its about my customer..The **** rolls downhill in a case like this, because I am much like AM, a middle man, who got heat from my owner, and lost a customer for life..I could give these people free rims and they wouldnt take them now...They didnt want to hear that "we" didnt make the rims, therefore it is not our responsibility, its the guys that actually build them..If you are going to sell a product under your name, you have to live with the good and the bad...I am not being unreasonable at all right now, imo..the fact that there is no remedy to this issue is not may fault, American Muscle should have thought of this before they told me to go pound sand and penalize us $$ for their crappy rims, that someone esle built..At one point we would have gladly mailed the rims back and recieved a set of new ones, but that was not in AM's plans...I had to beg and plead just to send them back to them, which we paid for..Look through the smoke and mirrors, we should have recieved a new set of rims...period

True

The customer is always right.

On the other hand there are some customers you just can't afford to have. Some are never satisfied and just consume more time and resources than their business is worth.

In the old economy where you'd buy something from the tire shop or hardware store down the street, if you had a problem you could take it directly back there and sort it out face to face with someone you knew and trusted on a personal level. On the other hand, you were also usually stuck with limited supply, product selection, and price competition. In the new internet economy, we have vastly improved product and supplier selection and price competition but at times have to suffer the negatives of dealing at a distance with strangers. When problems occur, they are exacerbated by the cost, time, and unfamiliarity that distance imposes. On balance, I prefer the new economy but it's far from perfect.

steedman07 I am sorry that nothing we offer can reconcile this for you. I have reviewed the actions of our Customer Service Team and I do not see how they could be misconstrued as anything but helpful. The Customer Service Representative that you spoke to accepted the wheels back even after we tested them and they where fine, and on top of that, it is our policy not to accept non-defective returns on wheels once they have been mounted and balanced.

We also have a state-of-the-art balancing machine, a Corghi 8570 Premium Computerized Wheel Balancing System, that our Head Tire Technician (with another Tire Technician and one of our Customer Service Managers in witness) used to balanced each of the four wheels with ease. And still we gave you the benefit of the doubt, taking you at your word with no proof, and bent our policies allowing you to return the the wheels, and here I am further trying to reconcile with you.

If a customer bought a brand new car from you, used it, and brought it back saying there was a problem with it, but no matter what you did you could not find anything wrong with it, would you swap it out for another brand new car? Would you allow the customer to return the car for a full refund, or even at all?

It seems that no matter what we offer, you will never be happy. As I said earlier in this thread I have no intention of endlessly going back and forth with no resolution, so this will be my final response to this thread. I am sorry that there was nothing we could do to come to terms.

StangGT1995, thank you for your extremely knowledgeable input into this situation. I am sure it would have been very helpful, but unfortunately it seems that I was the only party willing to work toward a resolution.

To everyone else, please remember that if there is anything I can ever do to help you with a situation, I am always available via PM, and I will do my best to help you out. That is why I am here.

-Nick

Nick. If one of the options was an option for this guy, I'm sure he'd take it. Like he said, it's not him that bought the wheels, but the customer. The custom doesn't want them. So therefore he can't really do anything. The thread was more of an informative thread than trying to get something, etc. I'm thinking he wants an apology more than anything else but I'm not him so what do I know.

I think it is good that a vendor cares enough about the readers on this forum to try and protect its own reputation. I also see and understand the frustration on both sides of this transaction.

This will also be my last response to this..You cant compare a $32,000 car with $165 rims..And yes, I have had to get Ford engineers involved several times since I started at my dealership for unhappy customers who have concerns. We cant tell OUR customers that WE think, in our opinion, that there is nothing wrong with the car, then send them on their way. It doesnt work like that. Those customers that are not happy with a clearly improperly functioning car go lemon law and get a new car..my "resolution" a month + ago was to get new rims for my customer, your company thought otherwise..So my Service manager, his techs, another speed shop, myself, and most importantly my customers are lying to you about the cars driving condition with your rims and not just 1 set of new tires, but 2 sets, maybe its the tries in this part of the country, cuz it obviously CANT be your rims right? We are wrong and you are right I guess..I have heard a BUNCH of horror stories about American Muscle, but I refrained until now to mention that..I guess they are all lying to right? this is a joke..Im done...

I notice that the questions I posted went completely unanswered. Please respond to those questions, as that information is necessary to determine whether the wheel and tire combination was properly mounted and balanced. From my outside perspective, the only smoke and mirrors I'm seeing are from the end user, at the present time. I can definitely understand being frustrated, but being openly hostile, unreasonable about the conditions of the purchase, and unreasonable about believing you're deserving of a refund/exchange on wheels that the seller has no problem balancing. If I was American Muscle, I'd send you the same wheels back, for the cost of shipping. It's probably good that I'm not a vendor, however. Tough love doesn't always equal sales.

Negative.

Affirmative

Nick, I believe our thoughts on this matter are pretty parallel. Having worked in auto service (hated it, but it paid the bills), and now working in healthcare (cardiac telemetry nursing), I think it's a pretty safe bet that you and I both have an idea of what customer service is, and when unreasonable requests, or demands are being made. This, in my opinion, is one of those times.

You actually can compare the two, from a customer service standpoint. It's not exactly apples to apples, but in either case, a replacement for something that isn't defective is unwarranted. It's really classy to start slinging mud and claim how you've "heard" American Muscle is so bad, once your unreasonable request isn't met, by the way. You have quite a sense of entitlement for being wrong, from an outside, independent observation.

And also, it could take 20 sets of tires, but if they're mounted improperly and take 4oz (theoretical number for the sake of the discussion) to balance and the wheels themselves will balance out just fine without tires, I'd probably start looking at the person, or now people doing the mounting and balancing. Even though you said your ASE Master Tech did the job, that doesn't mean he paid the least bit of attention to how the tires were oriented with regard to their heaviest point, if he even knew to, which was why I made a point of mentioning it in my previous post. Once they were mounted, I'm sure the other shop that you had take a look didn't dismount them, to look for any issues. They probably threw them on the balancer and couldn't achieve a balance either. I used to see it all the time and properly remounting solved the issue 100% of the time, where the wheel and tire inspected fine. I would very seriously doubt you would have an issue with broken belts, or belt separation with new tires, so I wouldn't even take that into consideration when trying to diagnose a potential problem.

It's unfortunate that you two couldn't come to a resolution to this issue that you both agreed to, but I think it's come to the correct conclusion. Unfortunately, American Muscle now has to sell a set of wheels that they have to take yet another hit on, by selling them as used, and your customer is faced with the task of finding another shop to do the work, which may not necessarily be a bad thing anyway. I've added my two cents, which I hope will allow others to give American Muscle a fair shake, when they consider placing an order with them in the future, should they happen across this thread. The customer is not always right regardless of what they tell you in business school, but the business is usually the one that suffers, in the end.

obviously, this is going nowhere. there is no resolution to this situation. AMNick is not happy that a customer is not satisfied, and steedman is not happy with AM as a whole. the two of you have conducted yourselves pretty well in this thread, but as it appears there is no solution, i am locking the thread.