Cip1.com - [email protected] - California Import Parts

[Mrmojo]

Although I have not posted here much, I felt the need to post about Scrupulous business practices from Gary at CIP1.

To start off, I found my way To CIP1 do to not being able to purchase a C45 scat cam from scat as they had none available at scat, I did an internet search and decided to order from CIP1.

1. They took a week just to ship it out
2. After receiving cam I inspected it and it had bad inclusions on bearing surface and would fail Immediately.

3. I call customer service and speak with Gary and mentioned I have a project I need to finish how soon will it take to get the warranty one. He said a couple days. I asked him if it would be quicker for me to order the other cam he had in stock and just get a refund on the first cam. He did say yes, it would be quicker .
4. I ordered other cam and the same exact thing is wrong with the cam.
In the mean time I’ve been waiting for my refund which Gary just keeps blowing smoke up my ass.

Gary said he’s waiting for an answer from scat to warranty cam. I explained to him that I didn’t order my cam from scat, I ordered from CIP1. Gary still insisting that I wait and he’s on it.

I call scat yesterday and talk with Tommy who is the Manager for the VW side and mentioned the situation with the cam and CIP1 and ask Tommy if he’s heard anything about defective cam . Tommy said NO and that they have not shipped any cams to CIP1 in over 8 months.

I do confront Gary on this and told him I reported this to my bank and what Tommy said and all Gary can say is he’s working on it and that YOU DO YOu ROB.

I do have all emails regarding this problem if I need to post that as well.
I hardly ever write a review on a company but this is my new goal in life.

Not to mention, you have to really dig to find any negative reviews on CIP1 due to the fact the get them removed off google for the same practice that I’ve written about.

[Mrmojo]

Upon further investigation into CIP1. It seem when something they sell is not up to parr, they postpone and day “IM ON IT” when in fact the only thing they’re on is keeping your money.

It seems as long as you have no issue with a product they sell thing everything is ok. I have found so many dissatisfied customer through google. Yelp. BBB, and many more. It’s always the same.

[Geezer]

A word of advice. Before you loose $412.50 + return shipping like I have go somewhere else to purchase your parts. I was interested in 4 Silver BRM wheels for my 1967 Beetle. The wheels arrived and upon inspection there was some kind of hard black material on the backside of the wheels. I also ordered BRM center caps and their lugs. The lugs you have to trim as they are too long and will drag on the brake shoes. The wheels were 5.5 width. My stock 1967 VW wheels fit fine. I did not mount any tires, they say I scratched the wheels. I trimmed 2 of the lugs to mount one of the wheels to the car and you can see the wheel back spacing will make the tire rub the fender. I called and was told to use 135R X 15 tires. This would throw the speedo off and make the car to low for me. I said I wanted to return the wheels and they supplied a return number. I repackaged the wheels in the same boxes and materials they shipped the wheels to me in. I sent them UPS shipping cost $59. I included the dust caps and ate the lugs cost. 30 days later they tell me I painted 3 of the wheels with black paint and scratched the rims. They will not credit me for 3 of the wheels. Credit for only 1 wheel and the dust caps. They now want me to pay for return shipping back to me for 3 wheels. They said they will give me $219 credit. I will not pay for shipping for wheels that are not going on my car and wheels I did not damage. To be continued. Some lessons are hard learned. I asked to talk to Chris Ingerson and was told he was not there. I had been talking to Caitlyn ( C.H. ) she is on a 2 week vacation and left me a message to talk to Alan which I did. He was of no help. He said he would have his manager talk to me. I told him I would be posting on the Samba Forum.

[Mrmojo]

A word of advice. Call your bank and have them reverse the charges and send them all the emails you sent to CIP1 . You have a way better chance of getting your money back.
I’m starting to see that this company buys damaged goods and then seeks them to customers

This is a third rate company and should be shut down.
I actually made a YouTube video entitled California import parts review. I hope it gets out to warn people of the shady practices they do

[Mrmojo]

To anyone that has to deal with CIP1 . Here are the steps to take to get All your money back. The second Gary tell you he’s on it that it will take time, call your bank and do a chargeback. Not only will you get your money back, it also goes against them on their account.

The reason they try to make you wait 30 days for refunds is after 30 days, some banks won’t do a chargeback.

[Geezer]

Sometimes in life you have to take the higher ground. This 72 year old Grandpa forgot to pray about this and let Cip1 make me upset after they called me a lier. So I gave it up to the Lord to deal with. I should have known to stick with companies I know such as Gene Berg, Wolfsburg West, VW Machine, and a few others. I will stack this up as a lesson learned. Bye, bye $650. I should have spent that on my Grandkids. I sleep like a baby now.

[Geezer]

After talking to friends and seeing all the negative comments about California Import Parts here and BBB. I filed a dispute with my Bank. Nothing may come of this, but I thought I would try. My bank is asking for the full amount for the BRM's. Since I placed the center caps in the box with the wheels and didn't ship them separate I will eat that cost even though Cip1 gave me credit for the center caps.The return UPS charge was $110 for the 2 boxes containing 2 wheels each and the center caps. Keep the Faith.

[andk5591]

WOW!!! I place a couple orders a month with them and have been dealing with them for maybe 15 years. Once in a blue moon we have a problem, but it's rare and always gets resolved. EDIT: I take that back...we never resolved the pair of Bosch wiper blades that don't fit right - so I need to save a couple inserts from an old pair..no big deal. Bosch is the issue.

There are some occasions that they do have to get with the manufacturer. Had that with a TMI kick panel that was made wrong. Had to wait till TMI did another production run. It is what it is. I saw the one comment about a Scat cam and them talking to Scat and the person they talked to knew nothing about the issue. Not sure where any of you work, but I can't think of many medium size business that alert all of their staff to all customer issues.

I deal with over a dozen vendors for my shop and fortunately I have good luck with most of them. I am not calling anyone a liar, but I am really struggling to swallow some of these issues. There is always more to the story....

Bottom line for me is that I will continue to buy from CIP1 and highly recommend them to everyone.

And I am no way affiliated with CIP1....Just a happy customer.
_________________
D-Dubya Manx clone - 63 Short pan,1914.
Rosie 65 bug - My mostly stock daily driver.
Woodie 69 VW woodie (Hot VWs 7/12).
"John's car" 64 VW woodie - The first ever
Maxine 61 Cal-look bug - Cindy's daily driver.
Max - 73 standard Beetle hearse project - For sale
66 bug project - Real patina & Suby conversion
There's more, but not keeping them...

[mighty-lime]

Cip1 Customer dis-service should read "the Customer is Always Wrong"

Yes the is a Gary story, although , Gary is probably following someone else's instruction.

Hi there, I received these timely and in good condition. But i have to return them due to not meeting my expectations and Cip1’s description of “to purchase in pairs to guarantee that you get a matched pair”.

They are not a matched pair, and this was the reason i bought them. My existing fenders are good except for the lamp bucket being displaced 1/2” to one side of center line. So i bought these from Cip1 with the understanding of them being a matched pair to fix my issue.

The lh fender is ~3-9/16”

the rh fender ~3-1/8”


It gives the bug an asymmetric face, not good.

So this is what I'm resorting to:

Cip1:
I have gone in the warehouse and measured some of the stock and found that 8" was the distance give or take. Have you actually tried dry fitting them on the car??

The 8” value is fairly meaningless, all it means is that the screw is symmetrical about the car centerline. All that counts the the bucket center.
I didnt need to fit them (also your return policy states no returns after fitment). the dimensions to the center of the bucket were all i needed to know that they were not matched pairs. They have the same measurement issue as the fenders i was replacing, that of course i did have fitted to my car. Not saying that any of your stock is any better and i got a bad set, more like the manufacturer of the parts didn't do a good enough job of making the LH & RH dies match.
I could see my non-oem fenders were asymmetrical just as i would see these new ones are also asymmetrical if i fitted them. I bought them to make the car look more like it was intended, and OEM fenders are a lot more symmetrical. I sadly didn’t gain anything over my existing fenders by buying these.

Cip1:
Hello, these, as you must already know, are after market pieces. You will never find 2 that match perfectly, the difference will be not noticed when installed. If you still feel uneasy using them, we can send you an RA # to return them. You will be responsible for the return freight and will be subject to a 20% restocking fee if it is credited back to your original method of payment. We can Waive the restocking fee if you take a store credit for the returned items.

Cost to ship back the fenders ~$350

In sure you can do better than that, you state i should buy these in pairs so they match, which they clearly dont. You sold me a product not matching your description. So it hardly seems fair i should bare the burden of your false advertising claim.

The best i can do is waive the restocking fee and refund your card, you will still be responsible for the freight back to us. If that does not work, you will need to speak to my sales manager, he is back in the office next Monday.

I put this illustration together to make better the visual of what is wrong, and not ‘matching pair’ about the fenders.

I also wanted to send a picture of how serious I'm taking this problem, this weekend i completed moving my own light bucket over 0.5”. I wouldn't have been doing this however if the fenders Cip1 had supplied had matched the description of ‘matched pair’. I was happy that Cip1 had disclosed other issues with the fenders and was willing and able to deal with that.

Respectfully, Cip1 needs to ship these back from me and give me a refund.

Hey Tom I am going to try a warranty request to the vendor of those fenders for the right side and see what we get.
Can you use the left at all?
If I could give you a credit on your online account for says $50.00 would you consider keeping 1 or both of those fenders and try to sell them locally?
If I can get warranty on the 1 right fender i could credit you in whole for that one and maybe do a partial credit for you to keep and use the left or sell it locally........
Damn why could it have not been door handles or something!

Gary

I was thinking the same thing about the part size problem!
My bug is set to go with original fenders now. Im open to a route that could feasibly suit us both, although I’m not exactly excited about the idea of selling them.
Lets sit on it while you try the warranty route. Im guessing if you can obtain that you'd have a way to recover the return shipping?
Best regards

Hey Tom BBT got back to us on this issue. They denied warranty out of hand at first but on my insistence they had another look and this was their response.....

“These fenders are reproductions made on pressing tools that are more than 30 years old, so small differences are absolutely normal. I checked a pair of fenders here from stock, and they have exactly the same difference, the right headlight bucket is about ½’’ closer inwards than the left one. I guess we’ll have to live with this and be happy that these are still available. Such small difference will absolutely not be visible on the car once mounted.”

So definitely in the horseshoe and hand grenade camp (close is good.)

Kinda how we advertise them as well although I am going to tweak the description a bit for a clearer outcome (I hope).

So again if I could give you a credit on your online account would you consider keeping those fenders and try to sell them locally?


Mar 30, 2022
I’m not even remotely shocked by their response, but it was worth a shot.
The hassle of trying to sell those fenders in this remote area with the experience I've already had doing the same with other parts, its not something I care to try. I’ll not only use up so much of my time but I’ll likely take a bath on them too.
I can get them wrapped up as good as or better than I received them, if you could send me a shipping label. I would like a full refund please, then i can get back to spending money with Cip1!

April 5, 2022
Looking for an update, call me of you need to....

in this instance I am having trouble coming up with a solution to the issue. Its a situation where we have sold the hell out of these fenders for years the way they are with little issue.
The fact that you have identified an idiosyncrasy with them that is not suitable to you is definitely an outlier issue.
I have to go back to our policy on returned items. Normally you would pay the freight back and because we paid the freight out we normally charge a 20% restock fee.
In this situation I am willing to delete the restock charge and credit the full amount of the fenders back to you.

Cip1 has amended the description from: "...to purchase in pairs to guarantee that you get a matched pair", to "..in pairs to ensure that you get as closely matched pair of fronts or rears as possible". What with the pitiful offer of $50 and a change to the description, its sounding like an admission of culpability?

So here's what you do with any purchase that doesn't match the description and you meet a Gary: talk to your Credit Card and experience real customer service and a refund

[daveswoodcraft]

Recently I saw an ad here on samba classifieds for a set of cip1 IDF/HPMX clones for $499.99. I followed the link and the price was $150 more. I called cip1 and asked them why the price discrepancy, they got back to me quickly and it was an add they had not updated due to.their cost increase. They offered me the package for $550 instead of$650 and when I called back to order they were great helping me figure out getting some new jets as well.

This was my first time ordering from them but it won't be my last, great customer service!
_________________
There are not such thing as a stupid question, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots!

[Air cooled fan]

[Air cooled fan]

[Air cooled fan]

[dodger tom]

For what it's worth, I've had nothing but good experiences with cip1. When I bought headlight rims for my bus, and they didn't fit properly, customer service took them back and sent me a complimentary pair of slightly different dimensions. Turns out those are the only ones that fit my car these days, as even the stock plastic models do not line up properly anymore.
_________________
1978 Champaign Edition Westfalia
Would never find the time to keep up another classic air-cooled.

[Mrmojo]

Like I stated in other post. It has nothing to do with scat and the defective cams. I all has to do with the poor customer service and the dragging of getting a refund.. everything thing I have stated in my post is true fact and would tank that to the bank. Not to mention, Chris called me today to rant about my bad feedback on Samba and BBB and told me to get my refund back from scat and that CIP1 will not handle the refund. I did tell Chris to not call my number anymore and sent email the Gary explaining I will only communicate through email.
I paid $103.99 x2 for cams total of $207.98
Talked with Tommy and he would only refund what scat charges of $85.00 x2
Total of $170.00. So I’m supposed to eat $37.98 . I sent this to Gary and he said that CIP1 would handle the refund and not scat.
I had to inform him that Tommy even acknowledged that he was advised to send the refund.
So they don’t even know what’s going on within the company.
Get the story right Guys.
Even after all that, they still try to blame me for not getting the refund and asked me to remove the chargeback and remove my post and they will give me a refund.

I have been in the Automotive industry for over 30 years. Either as a technician, manager or parts. I worked for singh auto parts for years and never once did we treat a customer the way I have been treated. And even when we couldn’t get a warranty from the manufacturer. We ate the product. THATS CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THE PRIVCE OF DOING BUSINESS.

Yes I understand you can’t please all customers, but this was handled wrong. I can understand if I installed them and it failed, but this was right out of the box

I have talked to both Eddie and Tommy regarding the cams and they didn’t know anything about it until recently.

[Air cooled fan]

[Mrmojo]

Nothing is resolved. I’m still waiting for my bank to settle the situation. I’ve lost a month of time. And nothing but games from CIP1.

[Air cooled fan]

[Mrmojo]

Once again. It’s not about the product. It’s the customer service.
And if you do a little research on them, you will see that I’m not the only one with the same type of complaint. Even if you keep reaffirming your happiness with CIP1

Like they say . A happy customer tells 1 or 2 people. A unhappy customer tells 25

[Air cooled fan]