Vendor qualifications

[gmookher]

Im amazed at how much crap is both being sold and bought for our cars

Some thoughts I wanted to share

Before I buy anything for any car I qualify the vendor if the purchase is for a hard goods item like exhaust or intake or a filter

Have they been working on boxxer engines?
Do they have a manufacturing expertise in a given area and are they a market leader?
Is this their first stab at it?
What success rate is in their reputation?
What other toyota or subie models do they offer stuff for?
Are they a leader in their area of expertise?
Warranty?
Other user experiences?
How long have they been around?
Is their goal to be first to market or best of market?
What is their return policy?
How complete is their product line up and solution strategy?

Every joe blow with a product is selling names I never heard of and solutions clearly not complete

Like borla, they make a good product but IMHO not for my Brz. Why? Well they target a few vehicles, but I don't sense an ongoing product development commitment from them. Great stuff great products great company but this is not their area of specialty. A vette, sure

I see small shops with great initiative but then I read the threads and words like drone, bogging, loose screws, and I wonder how folks are buying one off crap from vendors whose goal is to make money, but they have no history with subie, or no focus on the brand, or no strategy to earn my business.

I'm also cautious of anyone I can't just pick up phone and dial. And get to a human or a voicemail that gets answered timely.

There are small shops that are class acts and truly committed.

If their shop doesn't own a Brz or frs, what is their commitment level? How much testing could they have done?
how can they develop a fix if one is needed if they don't own the car?
Are they testing for a improved version?

[StarsGarrador]

Every shop had to start somewhere. I know just about ever vendor we have on our forums have shown outstanding customer service and understanding. And as a first year car owner I also understand there will be problems with any car regardless of the products we put on it. People are the #1 reason a product gets a bad review or complaint because they installed it wrong and don't want to believe they made the mistake. Screws loose? I'm not even going to touch on that because did the product developer help you screw them in?

I don't just go out and spend all of my hard earned money on parts I havent research on, and I highly doubt our admins and site owner would let bad or sketchy vendors. They implemented the vendor sponsorship to help ward off some. Our forum is probably the most trafficated forum of all FR-S and BRZ forums combined. Have some faith in what the rest of us are doing. At this point in our car's life, we are all in devolpoment and testing stages not just vendors. I know for a fact if anything were to happen to any of my parts the companies would gladly reimburse me and then some for the troubles.

/end rant

[S2kphile]

Just don't be lazy and research and research and research some more. Don't buy anything from anyone until your 100% confident in the seller, product/service & customer service. Simple as that.

One last thing don't be an idiot, be smart about mods. The car is already perfectly balanced out of the factory. Don't install mods that will possibly f*** that up.