Custom cages... what a waste of time!

Right where do i start!

Ordered 2 of there CL2 rear cages almost 6 weeks ago now for mine and a friends track cars, several phone calls later and i still havent recieved them.

At first order it was 10-15 days for build and delivery, no problem! 3 weeks later and nothing, called and was told the order was never processed, order processed and was told id have them with in 10 days.

Still no roll cages!.. so another phone call and i was told they would be built and ready for despatch on monday 11th and should be delivered by wednesday the 13th, guess what... NO ROLL CAGES.

Rang them 3 times today and no one seemed to know what i was on about, even spoke to the same person twice and they couldnt remember the conversation from only a couple of hours ago.

Now i dont mind delays, i just dont like being lied to, if was going to take another 3 weeks i wouldnt care aslong as they told me just dont keep fobbing me off with 5 working days.

Got a phone call at 4:45pm today and was told the order hadnt been processed and they were not on the manufacturing list, best they can do is...10-15 working days... ive been here before, genuinely felt like i banging my head agaisnt a brick wall :banghead:

The worst part now is we've got a clio in bits ready for the roll cage that should of arrived yesterday and is booked in for a full respray on saturday, now not going to happen.

Now i understand that mistakes can and will happen... but surely not to this extent? Has anyone else experienced such issues with them? From what i knew they are a leading company in roll cage design and manufacture.

Im now left with 2 cars without roll cages taking up space in a workshop and the next option is another cage supplier, best i can find is a safety devies one for my puma and an OMP one for the clio, which works out at £850 for the two...£250 more than the custom cages ones which were £600 inc harness bar for the pair, would i be right to seek compensation from custom cages to pay the extra?

Do you have an order confirmation or has all the correspondence been over the phone.

That's a pretty poor show!

Everything was done over the phone, you can't order a roll cage any other way with them

did you pay by credit/debit card or bank transfer??

They never took any money

No money changed hands = no contract. Sorry old chap.

My dealings with them were very positive but they're obviously not maintaining that for everyone.

Very frustrating when you're building something on a timescale. We were fairly lucky in that everything came together ready for stuff the cars were booked on to but it can just as easily go the other way.

And re the compensation for going elsewhere, not going to happen, you've no loss to recover.

Not ideal but there's no penalty for lead times, particularly if you didn't even get as far as paying.

yeh i know, was some shoddy customer service on there behalf, wouldnt recomend them to anyone

Personally, I've not had any bother with CC; they delivered on time or even early. Maybe I was lucky. Or maybe you are unlucky. I had a similar problem to you with Safety Devices once, where it turned out they were trying to get a few orders together before making a batch up. No excuse for poor service, of course...

I would recommend CC but with your feedback, getting an email confirmation upfront looks advisable.

Hi Jay,

Sorry to hear you're having so much trouble with your cage. There's nothing more annoying for me than crappy service. There's just no excuse for that and for not sorting it out properly when something does go wrong. Hope you get it sorted out quickly.

As for the compensation question, as others have said above, that's not going to happen unfortunately. You don't necessarily need to have paid for there to be a contract but it doesn't sound like there would be a binding obligation in the circumstances on CC to delivery your cage within the stated timeframe. In any event, time is not usually of the essence in a contract of this nature so even if there was a binding contract you would be very unlikely to successfully sue for it being late unless it had been expressly agreed that CC would not deliver late and you had made them aware of possible consequential losses if they are late. That's quite exceptional and won't apply to general sale contracts. Drop me a PM if you want any more info.

Scott

yeh i know, it was more a heat of the moment thing,

whar really got to me was there poor customer service, i rang 4 times in one day and everytime the woman couldnt find the details id given her the time before.

Just really p****d me off that they could be so useless, especially after i was told it takes no more than 2 hours to make the clubman cage kits!!

Was there any resolution to this?

Nope, nothing ever arrived

not the best advert :-(

spike. said:

not the best advert :-(

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No and there's some saying or other about 1 poor review outweighs 10 good or whatever and there's no doubt that this was a poor display.

To put it onto some context, however, I used CC with no issues at all, Mac has recently used them, and the guy who welded my cage has done dozens without issue.

I can imagine they are a good company, they wouldnt have the reputation they have if they wernt, it was just poor service from start to finish that i got.

I had a similar experience with safety devices last year when ordering a cage through Birkbeck's, at first it was Birkbecks i was annoyed with when i rang after the 3rd failed delivery i was told by a lady there that 'its not my job to find out why your cage has not arrived', i nearly exploded!

Then after finally speaking with the md of s/d did i get anywhere, ended up with a free 6 point harness and some roll cage padding as an apology. It took 13 weeks in total for it to arrive.

Phil

i didnt even get an apology from custom cages...

phil185 said:

I had a similar experience with safety devices last year

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Yes, I've known of quite a lot of delays with Safety Devices. I believe they have been doing a lot of work for the Army (Afghanistan) and they prioritised that contract over individual cages obviously.