[Fe26]

Mr Drake,

Thank you for your timely reply.

As I began in my last post I would like to further thank you for your valient endeavours in the manufacture and supply of reproduction parts to the Ford V8 community.

While your enterprise is seen by many as borne of and for profit (a neccesary motive) it would I think also be true to say such endeavour is also borne of a desire to maintain and preserve our brand of cars and trucks. Some might gush and call it love.

As I previously said, without you and others like you, our community would be much the worse for lack of parts. The consequence of that situation would be very high prices for original/second hand parts, and the attendant scarcity of those parts.

You have won much support over many years, such goodwill is hard-earned, and our collective respect is your due.

High praise is accorded you by many when, the parts they have ordered from you arrive in timely fashion, are well packaged, cause delight to the owners eye when unpacked, and then cause the owner to swell with pride when the parts are fitted without trouble, and finally, go on to provide years of good and reliable service.

In an ideal world this situation never goes awry. We don't however live in an ideal world, which brings me to the complaint. My hope here in addressing the concerns of many is to offer by way of reason, and reasonable opinion, that the situations and proceedures in the manufacture and the selling of parts that are defective, may be addressed in a fair and balanced way. In this I would ask fellow Fordbarners not to use emotive language to either insult or chastise each other or Mr Drake. The situation I am about to relate is not specific to Mr Drakes business. The final paragraph however is specific to 'Bob Drake'.

I live in Australia, three of my cars live in New Zealand, and shipping is very expensive. When I receive defective parts, it is often weeks, sometimes months after they were ordered, most of the time the return dates have expired. Such parts sit on a shelf; a testament to reputations lost. They cannot be returned and cannot be sold.

It is not unreasonable to ask and indeed to expect to pay the sellers asking price for parts that do what they are intended to do, that is; work or fit as intended. Therein lies another dilemma for manufacturers, meeting the market at the lowest price. This is not easy when buyers dollars flow to the lowest price. I do not know the solution to this. I do know that these market forces cause parts to be made as cheaply as possible, and therin lies both our problems. Your problem becomes our problem, and we are the worse for that.

One solution might be that at the end of the R&D phase, advise might be sought from the guru's on this site and others. As you will know, much valuable information (and opinion) is to be found here. Subsequent to that advise, perhaps a limited number of parts could be sent to the known commercial builders and restorers for evaluation. Based on their feedback the parts are further improved. While I understand you have a skilled R&D Team, a recurring problem exists with the complaint of parts quality and fit. I suggest this could be reduced by 'sharing the load'.

Finally, I raised in my previous post the likelyhood of a mandate or instruction within your business to deflect or fob off complaints with the dictum " Really, you're the first guy this has happened to". While I thank you for your reply with one hand I must also raise the other. I believe you are being disingenous to declaim that such an instruction does not appear in your customer service directives to your employees (this is undoubtedly true) the implication is; if it doesn't appear in the manual then we don't say it. The anecdotal evidence (as recorded on this site alone) is to the contrary and overwhelming. To suggest or to claim otherwise is insulting.
What this forum shows is, when a vendor consistantly says the same thing to many people, that vendors attitude to their customers is exposed. In my view this is unacceptable. For what it's worth, the remedy to this is mentioned in my previous post, it is a valuable resource.

Thankyou.