[Closed] Superstar customer service

Got an E-mail today saying that some of the pawls did not meet their standards and am getting some new ones posted out to me. It is not a recall apparently, I assume they are for the V6 hubs I bought before christmas.
So in that regard they are pretty good.

Crap! And will look to blame anything else but themselves.

Oh dear 🙁

Absolutely terrible.

Wouldn’t order again after sending me new wheels with hub faults.

Wouldn’t do anything to help other than send me the wrong instructions to repair it myself.

I didn’t have the tools and said they would void my warranty of my LBS to fix them.

Crap after sales discourages you not to buy from them again.

We've got your money, now F*** off!

Looks like I'm taking them to small claims court then. They have to pay costs when they lose right?

OTOH I had an issue with some wheels; emailed them, they sorted it immediately.

Looks like I’m taking them to small claims court then. They have to pay costs when they lose right?

Might be worth wating until the PP dispute is concluded?

Hmm. I ordered a round 34t NW chainring back in Nov. Received an oval 32t. Sent it back, waited a week, prodded them for P&P refund and replacement. They sent me a round 36t chainring, at which point I decided to quit while I was ahead. Subsequent refund was painless, but it cost them the best part of a tenner not to sell me their product. A shame, really, the rings I got seemed nicely made, just too few/many teeth!

I received some wheels from them a few days ago, listed as being Sapim Laser spokes and black ali nipples, but these are built with Sapim Race spokes and silver brass nipples. No response yet.

I assume that they have been off over Christmas and New Year so effectively have been back for less than a week, and probably have a few orders to get through, so I would say calm down a little and wait.
Also the fact you sent them multiple e-mails has targeted you as a problem customer, so that has probably taken you from high priority to the F- him list.
For a guy with a username Chilled76 you come across as pretty fired up.

I've only needed to contact them once when I'd ordered a service kit for my Nano-X pedals but the kit arrived with the seals for the older pedals. I think I had the correct seals in the post the next day.

Yeh it's an ironic username. Get wound up easily.

so 1st Jan - your order was placed, 5th (friday?) you were notified rims out of stock then you've sent 3 emails between then and today asking for a refund, received a response and you're now planning to take them to court? Is it worth maybe being a bit chilled for a little longer?

Not quite how you've put it. Bit take your point, chill for a few days and see.

I'm supposed to be doing a big ride next weekend and needed these wheels, ordered them on the 1st. Getting wound up as can't order new ones until they issue the refund.

My first email refund was in response to them asking as well... which coupled with the last email telling me they don't have time to respond has wound me up I guess.

so 1st Jan – your order was placed, 5th (friday?) you were notified rims out of stock then you’ve sent 3 emails between then and today asking for a refund, received a response and you’re now planning to take them to court? Is it worth maybe being a bit chilled for a little longer?

This. Really.

If I ordered some wheels from them when they were on a very special offer (40% discount) then I wouldn't expect to get them within two weeks. Think about it, they're likely to be busy. Also probably a bit behind on orders after Christmas so I'd suggest they deserve a bit of slack.

I do also know they have a bit of a reputation but I once bought some wheels from them and they were great, as are the wheels. In fact anything I've ever bought from them has been well made and with decent customer service.

When i was buying my headset from them they had a deal on the bearings so thought i would pick up a spare set for the new headset i was ordering off them at the same time. I emailed to ask them what bearings the headset i was buying took....they replied that they did not know as different headsets take different bearings! I replied saying surley they knew what bearings their own headsets took.....never heard back.

I've had exactly the same email from them after ordering some new wheels asking what hub I wanted, responded immediately and they replied immediately saying order would be dispatched to builder. Then another email saying no rims in stock, I responded on Friday saying I'll wait then later this afternoon got the email saying thanks well be in touch shortly.

Think they're just really busy at the moment so I'd give it a couple of days for them to reply/refund. To be fair their communication has been good so far.

I felt like they were replying promptly until I asked for a refund.

Will see I guess. I'll give it 2 days then go back to PayPal if no response

Yeah it’s the beginning of the year, so take it easy. I damaged a seal changing freehub bearings once and when asking if they sell them separately they said no but got some out 2 broken freehubs and sent them over for free.

Hopefully the boss will see this thread and provide plenty of entertainment 😈

They've put up a post on Facebook saying please bear with them, they've ordered more rims and should be with them in a couple days. They also said they'll answer queries ASAP.

A PP refund is literally just the press of a button and it's poor form to keep a customer waiting. I had the same issue with Works Components recently, I ended up opening a PP dispute and got a refund that way after a handful of calm, polite emails and then radio silence from them.

Bought loads off them, couple of things needed some warranty work, they were fine.
They are in the middle of their biggest sale of the year, I honestly wouldn’t worry.

Ordered on a bank holiday, got a reply on (by my reckoning) a Friday, one fluke reply on the Saturday (not a working day), so it's then not unusual to not hear anything until at least today (first working day back).

As always, this is the challenge we face as consumers. Would you still have bought at the price that would pay for a 24/7 tech support/query/social media person?

Would you still have bought at the price that would pay for a 24/7 tech support/query/social media person?

Maybe not, but it Would have been better if the person who had plenty of time to send the snotty “stop emailing us, we are too busy” email, had just clicked “refund” in PayPal instead.

Clearly logic was trumped by petulance in that exchange.

Can we assume the stop e-mailing email was automated?

I think people's expectations are often too high. Mistakes happen and sometimes in really busy periods online companies find it hard to cope. With any online company I'd expect to give it a week or more before going all mental and opening Paypal disputes, etc.

JP

I won't buy from superstar any more.
I've bought a few bits, mainly pads but some other stuff. Without going into detail, one time I had a problem with one of thier products I was basically told to piss off.
The value of the defective item was not worth perusing so I just won't go there any more.

All this 'we're really busy' bullshit.. blah blah blah. Hit the button, give the man his money back. No excuses.

Ordered a set of the 40% off wheels (a custom build not a stock on) on the evening of the 2nd, they arrived today, far quicker than I was expecting!

Superstar not quite as bad as On One but bad enough that I'll never use them again.

08:44

Emailed me to say order cancelled. No refund has appeared yet. Breathe in and out slowly!!!

Scratch that, shows as Pending in Paypal.

Rant over I guess.

Next question, how long for a pending refund to actually appear?

PP refunds work like this-

1. customer asks for refund
2. seller logs into PP account and finds the transaction (easy to do; you can search by email address, name, date, amount, transaction number, blood type*, shoe size**)
3. seller issues refund
4. a) refund is usually instant if there's enough in the seller's PP account to cover the whole refund, otherwise b) refund takes ~5 [u]working[/u] days to arrive as the shortfall is transferred from the seller's bank account to the seller's PP account and then to the buyer's PP account

I reckon the longest it should take is a day to actually get round to pressing the 'refund' button and then a further 5 working days to receive it. PP are funny with emails sometimes though, I don't always get emails from them regarding invoices or payments sent (without having bought something) so check in your account for any change in the payment's status. PP will side with you though OP.

* of course you can't
** see above

Had a lucky escape from their bad rep by showing serious interest in a set of wheels except no one at SS wanted to pick up phone to discuss.

Just like ubyk recently, best bet is to go with your gut most the time I strongly believe.

* of course you can’t
** see above

Only if you've been making sure to dispose of your plastic wrappers securely otherwise all bets are off.

They started a conversation with the OP - 'your thing isn't available, what do you want us to do?', then appeared to vanish in a puff of smoke.

And if the best they can do is some snarky reply telling the OP to stop answering their question instead of just hitting a few buttons and refunding him, it's unsurprising that they end up on social media.

I love the idea that the snarky emails are automated, though!

I've found that when you remind Superstar that the time they're using pissing about could be spent issuing the bloody refund you're owed they will start acting up. Absolutely the worst customer service.

you do have some history with them though...

Hello, just to let everyone know we are almost back upto speed again.

We apolagise for slow replies and the issues with stans flow rims temporarily selling out, the offer took us by surprise as the the epic volume of orders we got. Our entire stock of stans rims sold out and we are just waiting for palligap to send over the replenishment to we could build the balance of everyones bargain wheels. We were expecting high tens of wheelsets sold and it was several hundred, so it will take a few days to physically build the backlog. we normally have 10-20 of each spec of rim on the shelf but these evaporated in a few hours of sale starting! The other specs of wheels are all instock so most shipped next working day.

We were having a tech issue with the website, so we had to doublecheck the spec of lots of wheels with customers to prevent the wrong things getting sent out. the web guys are fixing this currently and it unfortunately caused a backlog of work for the guys in the office who were working physically as hard as they could. We had several customers sending tens of emails a day over the weekend when we were shut which wasted yet more time and delayed everyones responses, ill apolagise for them as well. We are only a small company doing things differently from the mega corporate VC funded discount boxshifters, so we dont have a callcentre with 50 staff 24/7, sorry.

I know there are people who have held a grudge for nearly a decade in some cases on this forum. Note that only one side of the story keeps getting repeated in these cases, so i will leave people to read into things with a pinch of salt. I gave up on responding years ago, and focus on looking after our customers and making stuff in the UK.

I think that 99% of people will be very happy with their wheels. We appreciated the few people who sent words of encoragement at this busy time. I apolagise again to everyone for the couple of days delay on replys and wheelset deliveries.

if anyone has any questions please let me know,

Neil - Superstar Components

I ordered a green oval Hope 30t in Boost and received a non-boost. Sorted painlessly, with only Xmas holidays slowing things down, and will totally use them again.

" I gave up on responding years ago,"

Not before you slagged of competitor products under an alias 😜