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10-02-2011, 09:00 PM | #1 |
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Seibon: STAY AWAY! Good product, PITA Warranty
Apparently, Seibon hates their customers.
I got the Seibon Carbon Fiber GTR Style hood for my 135i from Vivid Racing. I got a great price, and everyone who I spoke to at Vivid was simply awesome. The hood got put on last December (2010), but the car wasn't taken out of the body shop / my own garage, save for one quick trip until the following January (2011). For the price, I was impressed with the quality of the carbon on this hood. It was about 2/3-3/4 the price of an iCarbon hood, and the weave was excellent, the finish was glossy, and the workmanship of the hood as a whole was great. There were a few imperfections in the direction of the weave, but they weren't noticeable except under careful inspection, and this is to be expected on a CF item of this size and complex design. I even tried to get hood pins installed and was told they really cant be installed well. This is because of an extra layer of lightweight reinforcing material along some parts of the underside of the hood. It would make it very difficult to get hood pins on, and the shop was worried they'd crack my hood in the process, so we skipped it. The good news is that the hooks that keep the hood in place are drilled through this reinforcing layer, not simply glued onto the carbon, so this actually negated the need for hood pins, since most CF hoods fail because of glued-on hooks breaking free. Fast forward a few months and my clearcoat starts to yellow and develop strange bumps. I had many people look at it, and everyone was kind of baffled. The carbon fiber underneath the clearcoat was not yellowing, it was the clearcoat itself.. and these bumps.. what the heck? I contacted Vivid Racing, and looked up Seibon's warranty, and lo and behold, there's a 6 month clearcoat warranty on all products! Perfect! Or so I thought.. Turns out that in order to get a new hood, I have to ship my old hood back. This car is my daily driver. I can't go around without a hood for weeks while they receive the old hood and ship out a new one. I told them that this is pretty ridiculous; they really can't expect to have a car out of commission for a few weeks while they handle the exchange. So I was given another option, not much better than the first. I was to buy a brand new hood, at regular price. Shipping was only free if I had the new hood shipped to the original shipping location, which happened to be a bodyshop that I didn't particularly want to install this new hood. But I didn't want to pay $150 for shipping, so I had to abide. I was to install this new hood, destroy the old hood, and send them pictures for proof. Only after all of this would I get my close to one grand back for the new hood. Seriously? I need to have a giant charge sitting on my credit card for however long this whole process will take. Billy at Vivid Racing agreed that this sucks, but it's just how it is with Seibon. Nevermind the fact that they had my full name, address, credit card number, paypal account, etc and if I was dishonest and didn't end up sending the promised pictures they knew EXACTLY who I was and how to find me... So, I finally got the new hood installed, and I went to destroy the old one. I had the shop smash up the old hood with bats and hammers. I sent the pictures. The reply was "not good enough". The hood needed to be broken into at least 6 different pieces and have the individual vents smashed as well. Seibon did not want me reselling even a VENT from their hood. Not that I would, but it would have been cool to keep a little vent as a souvenir. I'm lucky I didn't take my hood home to try and destroy it myself, because I had to inconvenience the body shop and have them use a power saw to cut the hood up into six pieces before Seibon was satisfied. This was all just a giant inconvenience to me. When I see a warranty, I expect a warranty. Not "buy another one, and prove to us that you destroyed the old one". The new hood, however, is perfect. The weave is actually better than the first hood's, and I am very happy with the quality of this hood. However, Seibon's customer service and warranty is just plain horrendous. Oh yes, I forgot. Seibon's people don't even want to speak to you. To file my warranty claim, I had to do it through Vivid Racing. So on top of my own inconvenience, I had to bother Billy at Vivid Racing for weeks upon weeks as this whole months-long exchange occurred. Good products.. horrible service
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10-02-2011, 09:23 PM | #2 |
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How long have you had the new hood on?
Last edited by cooler2442; 10-02-2011 at 09:32 PM.. |
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10-03-2011, 07:09 AM | #4 |
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I dunno. There are some aspects of this that don't sound great, like basically forcing you to use the same installer, if you want free shipping. But as for having you pay for a new one upfront, I'm not so sure that's so egregious. They may have your credit card number, and your address, but that does them pretty much no good whatsoever. They can't simply charge a credit card without authorization, even if someone walks away with the second hood.
The fact that they have your info makes it easier to find you, if they need to sue you, but that's time-consuming, expensive, and basically not a realistic option for a $1000 item, especially if you're not local to them. I actually see an upside to how they handled this. They didn't require that you return the hood to them, so they could inspect it themselves. Most companies require that you return the item, AT YOUR EXPENSE, for a warranty claim. They could have required that, but they didn't. So while it could have been handled better in some respects, I'm not so sure I share your outrage.
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10-03-2011, 09:36 AM | #5 | |
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I'd honestly be pretty happy with the warranty, imho. |
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10-03-2011, 11:24 AM | #7 |
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Better than the tire warranty I got from Pirelli. I had a tire delaminate after 2 weeks on the road. Pirelli made me ship them the tire to their inspection office at my own cost...they never payed me back for it.
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10-03-2011, 05:00 PM | #8 | ||
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Seibon was very unaccommodating. I had to wait several weeks after I originally sent pictures for them to verify that my clearcoat was indeed defective. Then another couple months for them to make a new batch of hoods (they promised about 2 weeks), then another week before the hood actually came. I had to not only destroy my old, already defective hood, but do it in a very convoluted way (slicing it up into at least 6 pieces, etc). Not everyone has the tools to do that, it costs money to get someone to do it for you. I already had to pay to get the old one uninstalled and the new one put on.. so now I'm hit with paying to get it destroyed "their way" and I don't have a choice as to where I can get it installed, either. They didn't want to speak with me, so I had to bother Billy every time I wanted an update. I started my warranty claim process in late may, and if it wasn't for Irene I would have gotten the hood on late August, but had to wait until mid september due to hurricane related issues. The time it took to do everything probably aggravated me more than anything and is probably making me think all this other stuff is worse than it is, too. I know not everyone has a warranty system like this, but for such a large, unwieldy item that I cannot drive my car without, I was expecting better. Destroyed due to an accident
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10-03-2011, 05:02 PM | #9 |
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Pirelli FTL. That really sucks, I feel ya man!
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10-03-2011, 05:26 PM | #10 | |
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Not your fault though. |
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10-03-2011, 06:15 PM | #11 | |
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10-03-2011, 07:01 PM | #12 | |
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2011 135i VERT SGM/SB/MOONLIGHT - ED - with every single friggin' option they offered.
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10-03-2011, 07:15 PM | #13 | |
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But yeah I see where you are coming from. |
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11-27-2011, 06:19 PM | #16 | |
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Here are a couple pics showing that the gap between the hood and the body of the car isn't too too bad, and how it lines up more or less correctly: Not perfect.. but not like the claims of "horrible" fit that I have also heard in the past. Both hoods fit the exact same.
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