G.R.
Bought a Sierra aftermarket carburetor…
Bought a Sierra aftermarket carburetor kit for a Kohler generator model 5E with a Kawasaki engine. In the past years I bought several times from them and never got issues, but also I never needed their help about a purchased product. This time, I tried to install components of the kit above, then I realized that pretty much all of the parts contained were wrong in shape and in size from those came off from the carburetor which I was refurbishing. I called them the first time to complain and to return the product, the guy who answered heard my story and after asking few things he dropped the phone on me. Then I had to go back to work and several times besides the cost of the item, there’s is time and money spending to accomplish the return. This is what many companies are basing their customer service training. Forcing indirectly the customer to keep the product and discourage them to attempt again to do so. The first guy who I spoke never called me back. After few days I attempted another call, after few minutes of wait a lady answered, I explained again the issue but she asked about the serial number of the kawasaki engine mounted on the genset. The previous guy didn’t asked for it, neither their sale procedure was asking for this number. I was refurbishing the generator and the small engine serial label came off from the block when cleaning it before painting, at that moment I didn’t had a clue of were the label went after starting the restoration process so she said, without that number she couldn’t investigate neither process the return. This isn’t actually true, on their product advertising and purchasing process there wasn’t any mention about different kit based on engine serials or either the year of production. Third attempt after I found the serial label. Another lady answered but after my explanation she said that the product was opened and as a matter of their policy they can’t accept the return. She also became nasty and nervous after I replied, how are you going to check the parts inside that are wrong if you don’t open the package??? At the end trying to explain my situation she insisted and became bitter like an expired yogurt so I decided to give up, but this is not a matter of policy, I was complaining about a wrong product packaged from Sierra Marine. However as a suggestion for anyone buying from Boats.net, their prices are not so good, when matching those with other sellers not in the top of the google webpage, their prices are usually a list price. In the past they were always quick and on-time with the product shipping, now they are slow and after my enquiries about the delay they add excuses complaining about their supplier. They won’t accept the return if package was opened, so my last item was below 50 bucks that’s anyway not acceptable but it isn’t a big damage, beside the fact that I was in rush to finish the job and had to rebuild all the gaskets by hand like 50 years ago. For sure they applied the wrong policy for a different situation, I will also understand what kind of animals are out there returning items in bad shape with missing pieces, however if the customer is paying for the shipping to return the product, boats.net could accept the return and delay or deny the refund after having checked the truth about the return reasons and packaging or the product conditions. Overall they’re are not reliable anymore nor are ethically correct. If you’re buying something very expensive and the product will have issues right after or like my case, it’s a wrong product packaged at the origins, this is going to be a total loss for the buyer. There’s a lot of complaints on the web regarding this product in particular, however discovering it after having already purchased won’t change that much, also you can’t spend time also before buying something so cheap and so common.