I recently purchased a PWC wheel and other accessories from Fanatec and have run into both COMMUNICATIONS and PRODUCT QUALITY issues.
Although my purchased product is not a GT3 RS V.2, I believe my experience so far interacting with Fanatec is of relevance to this thread.
ORDER FULFILLMENT:
I recently purchased a PWC wheel and a couple of other accessories from Fanatec via their Fanatec/USA site.
5 min after making payment via PayPal. I realized that I forgot to add aluminum paddle shifters to the cart.
The way the Fanetec online store is set up I knew that if I placed another order for just the paddles I would get nailed another $17 bucks for shipping.
...so I emailed Fanatec via web store contact form asking them if I could add another item to the order (easy for them to do via PayPal invoice) prior to shipment so I would not have to pay an extra $17 in shipping charges.
...no reply was forthcoming by the end of the next business day Germany time.
…so I left a VM at the Fanatec USA Tel. in Beverly Hills, CA, sent an email to the email specified via the Beverly Hill number, emailed Claudia directly, still no reply.
Two business days later Fanatec finally got back to me stating that they could add them to the order so I would not have to pay additional shipping charges.
The problem: Fanatec's reply stating they could do so arrived after my order had actually shipped and was due to be delivered the next day!
To Fanatec's credit, once you place an order with some companies it is difficult to add to the order, and they did send correspondence a few days later stating they were sorry and would provide a 10% discount on my next order, but they provided no details regarding how the discount would be executed or a code to be used for discount.
What troubles me is that Fanatec never replied to me within the stated time frame stated on their web site's verbage of one Business day following a weekend although I had gone above and beyond by trying all avenues of communication including the USA Beverly Hills 800 number, Claudia's email, and the email that the 800 number recording referred to in addition to contact via the Fanatec/USA contact form.
So clearly Fanatec's customer service has internal communications shortcoming regarding order status/shipment and possibly priority issues regarding order fulfillment.
QUALITY CONTROL ISSUE:
...so I paid an additional $17.00 shipping to add the aluminum paddle shifters to the order.
...and when the paddle shifters arrived today I discovered that the right Paddle Shifter mounting hole on the PWC was shipped out without ever being threaded!
Visual inspection of the three remaining mounting holes on the PWC's plastic paddle shifter housings indicates they are fitted with metal threads.
...so Fanatec's product assembly quality control mechanism missed this very basic issue easily confirmed by a quick visual scan....
I have contacted their support email and provided the info they require (PDFs of Invoices, Product SN#s) as well as a photo of the threadless mounting hole, TWO BUSINESS DAYS LATER STILL NO REPLY.
Pic of paddle shifter mounting hole with no threads
http://gallery.me.com/tekrealitychek#100018/PWC_RIGHT_PADDLE&bgcolor=black
)Unfortunately I did need to contact him this morning but "Fanatec" was not accepting private messages. I did a user search and it looks like "Fanatec..." is the one most used. I tried that so we'll see....
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