How Long Does FFR Take to Answer e-Mail?

[CaptB]

With David Brigham's departure, I reached out to FFR to assign a new sales person to me so I could get some details on my in progress FFR order. Been a few days so I didn't know how quick I could expect an answer.

[svassh]

I've sent the same question twice since my purchase date on May 4th and no response. I'm losing faith in their customer service and beginning to look at other options besides waiting on my order.

Prior to my order I always got a response within 24 hours. Their BEST CS rep honestly is this site.

[zarnold]

Dave Smith (FFR President) spoke to this a little yesterday in the Facebook live stream -> https://fb.watch/5-laPqd1t6/

[CaptB]

I saw it, finally got a reply about a 1/2 hour after this post. Thanks to all!

[svassh]

I saw Dave address this on his Youtube blog also. So I emailed them a different question and got a response within an hour. Glad to see them acknowledge it and try to address it. I'm trying to be patient as I know the Supply Chain and employee capacity is a struggle for all of us.

[Greg Wenzel]

I ordered my kit on April 18th with a scheduled completion date of August 28th. What I would really like to know from some of the folks that have received their kits recently is how bad is the back order issue. You hear bits and pieces on the videos but I don't want to receive a kit with 25-30% of the kit back ordered and no real idea of when the rest will arrive. I understand that FFR doesn't know what they don't know but I think they need to communicate how bad the issue is and set realistic expectations for their customers. Things will hopefully be better by August but really, how bad are they right now?

[edwardb]

I ordered my kit on April 18th with a scheduled completion date of August 28th. What I would really like to know from some of the folks that have received their kits recently is how bad is the back order issue. You hear bits and pieces on the videos but I don't want to receive a kit with 25-30% of the kit back ordered and no real idea of when the rest will arrive. I understand that FFR doesn't know what they don't know but I think they need to communicate how bad the issue is and set realistic expectations for their customers. Things will hopefully be better by August but really, how bad are they right now?

It's not going to be 25-30% of the parts backordered. There are several thousand parts (never have gotten an exact count...) and your backorder list (POL) will probably be a page to two long. That's what I've experienced and so have others. Having said that, will likely be some key items so can't minimize too much. Spindles have been an issue, along with other suspension parts. Once you get your kit and complete the inventory, you'll be able to size up the situation as well as identify any additional issues. There are usually a couple. Then establish a line of communication, often with the support person that took your order, and you should be able to get ongoing updates of the status of your parts. Have to be realistic about the frequency. But the information about when parts will be available is usually known. The main thing that's different from the past, having just recently received the last parts for my truck kit after almost 6 months, is that it's taking longer to get the list closed out. Used to be only a couple of months with maybe an outlier or two. I'm not sure what you want Dave to say in his videos. He's been owning up to this issue for the last months. It's industry wide if you'd try to order parts even from Summit or whatever. Other industries too. You'll have plenty to work on and unless you're a very fast builder shouldn't run out of things to do. But you will need to be creative and be prepared to work out of order from the manual in some cases.

[Greg Wenzel]

edwardb, Thanks for your response, and what you described is pretty much what I was expecting when I placed my order. I would say that watching Dave's updates lead to my concerns. I remember a few updates ago he mentioned having 60+ (I think it was) customers waiting for steering wheels and I don't recall him ever updating us with the fact that those had been received. I know I've heard the spindle issue mentioned on several updates and then wheels on the last update. I'd just like to know that those issues are being resolved and not compounding to the point that by August a much larger back order situation will exist.

[Tbev]

With David Brigham's departure, I reached out to FFR to assign a new sales person to me so I could get some details on my in progress FFR order. Been a few days so I didn't know how quick I could expect an answer.

Dave Brigham left? I just emailed him and got a response 2 weeks ago. Dave was usually pretty good with getting back to you quickly, others, not so much.

[CaptB]

Dave Brigham left? I just emailed him and got a response 2 weeks ago. Dave was usually pretty good with getting back to you quickly, others, not so much.

Agreed. He set a high bar of customer service.

[nucjd19]

I up'ed my order date earlier than I planned due to COVID and knowing the supply system in out of the Far East was going to be a junk show for about a year or so even after the pandemic. Like edwardb I got my last part on my POL list last week and my kit arrived 12/4/2020. So about 6 months too. I had just over 2 pages on my POL with a rate limiting part for every major system north of the firewall. So I did exactly as edwardb said. I started working from the rear moving forward. I always had something to do and was never dead in the water. When I started getting to a point where I was going to stall due to a missing part I would take on a mod that I had not planned ( i.e. drop trunk, drop battery, etc) and that kept my OCD hands busy.

I read an interesting article on why the supply chain is so jacked up. So... The far east and other manufacturers out of the country are running just fine. What has happened is there are only 2 ports on the west coast ( Both in California) that ALL of the shipping container boats access from the far East. In a usual time it takes about a day for a boat to wait in the harbor before it is unloaded but due to COVID and California's restrictions boats are sitting in the harbor waiting to unload for 4-6 weeks. Compound this issue with the fact that the cargo containers are getting stuck here in the US because the harbors do not have time to reload the empty containers back on the ships so they can get back to the far East. THEN, add the fact we are undergoing inflation with demand outstripping supply and this creates a perfect storm. Gonna be a while until this settles out.

[ggunter]

With all of us our car is the most important car out there. It is only important that we be taken care of in our minds. We paid our money and we want to get our car built. That was my thinking when I was waiting on my backordered parts, and I ordered my car last June before it got anywhere close to this bad. Working in the heavy truck industry we are facing rediculous parts shortages of months because our parts are globally sourced as our FFR parts. Tell a customer his truck, that he makes his living with, will be sitting for two months. After they stop screamiing they say you might as well keep it because I'll be out of business before we get it fixed.This Covid mess has screwed up the world probably more then it had to and our beloved government made the unwise choice of paying people to stay home for a year, not that some didn't need it but now they don't want to come back to work. I watched a woman on the news the other day complaining that the state was going to stop the unemployment, and you should have heard her cry, real tears, "I don't want to go back to work because it's been nice being able to do what I want". I wanted to throw a brick at the TV. We struggle every week to hire people and just to get them to come in for interviews. Thats the easy part, then get them through the drug test. Half of them don't bother to go. Sorry I'm just venting. Have a great day:)

[CobraboyDR]

Could be worse.

Imagine if you ordered a kit made of wood...

[CaptB]

With all of us our car is the most important car out there. It is only important that we be taken care of in our minds. We paid our money and we want to get our car built. That was my thinking when I was waiting on my backordered parts, and I ordered my car last June before it got anywhere close to this bad. Working in the heavy truck industry we are facing rediculous parts shortages of months because our parts are globally sourced as our FFR parts. Tell a customer his truck, that he makes his living with, will be sitting for two months. After they stop screamiing they say you might as well keep it because I'll be out of business before we get it fixed.This Covid mess has screwed up the world probably more then it had to and our beloved government made the unwise choice of paying people to stay home for a year, not that some didn't need it but now they don't want to come back to work. I watched a woman on the news the other day complaining that the state was going to stop the unemployment, and you should have heard her cry, real tears, "I don't want to go back to work because it's been nice being able to do what I want". I wanted to throw a brick at the TV. We struggle every week to hire people and just to get them to come in for interviews. Thats the easy part, then get them through the drug test. Half of them don't bother to go. Sorry I'm just venting. Have a great day:)

Agreed!!!

[BradCraig]

I've had Wilwoods on order for two months, they are WAY behind as well. They'll eventually get here... :-)

[Greg Wenzel]

I guess I can feel a little better knowing that POL lists are still getting completed within 6 months. If all of my parts get here within 6 months I wouldn't expect to run out of things to work on. And yes as I complete my engine build I have experienced a number of delays from Summit, JEGS, etc. but with those vendors I can change my selection to an available product. I'm sure FFR is working to fill back orders as quick as possible but I just don't want to find out late in the order process that this problem is continuing to get worse and not better. So who's still waiting for a steering wheel.... :)

[Papa]

I watched an interesting "local" news story this week about a chicken wing restaurant owner that has had to shut down for days at a time because he can't get food delivered. Evidently, when the pandemic hit, the poultry industry was left with supply they couldn't move, so they adjusted down. Now, with things opening back up, there isn't any supply. My guess is another year at least before we see things settle back into some sort of "normality".

[ggunter]

Pappa is right, when corporations find themselves in a slow down, whether it's an economic or pandemic slow down, they adjust their supply chain with all their vendors accordingly, and all those vendors adjust their labor and their vendors they buy from, and the snowball gets bigger and bigger. When it finally reverses, the snowball rolls back the other way and it takes a bunch of time for the whole cycle to reverse it's self. It used to take about 90 days from the time you ordered a truck to deliver it. Now it is taking nine months due to the factory not being able to obtain parts to build with. I feel really bad for Dave Smith trying to keep his customer base supplied in cars and parts. He is in a difficult position for sure.

[J R Jones]

Papa, Mother Nature has a way of tempering over-confidence. Not many years ago migratory birds brought a virus to the local mega chicken farms, the kind of chickens that live to market size in and on "chicken wire".
They had to burn and bury millions (yes millions). More recently a similar industry harvested millions of chicken eggs to grow vaccines in. They were buried too, mRNA vaccines are more synthetic.
Routine at the restaurant is not the same. Today's chicken is tomorrow's soup and next week's donation to a shelter or food pantry.
Maybe we need to gene-cross chickens and centipedes. The objective is a chicken with 20 wings. I'll bet that would fly.

[TheMole]

With David Brigham's departure, I reached out to FFR to assign a new sales person to me so I could get some details on my in progress FFR order. Been a few days so I didn't know how quick I could expect an answer.

David Brigham was my sales person and was awesome. I'm hopeful that FFR can fill this gap because his response time was always almost immediate and his product knowledge was quite deep.

[CaptB]

I'm still waiting on an e-mail reply from June 8th (with a second follow up on the 17th) adding a couple of parts to my order.
I guess when my car is on the rack ready to ship they'll call me then????

[Jeff Kleiner]

They'll call for final payment before it's packed and made ready for shipping.

Jeff