Disclaimer: The following is my personal experience and does not reflect any other past or future transactions made from other parties with the mentioned supplier

My Frustration
I placed an order with ECS tuning on 2/29/2016 for 4 lower control arms, an engine mount kit, and a pair of door sensors. This order was approximately $1,000. That being said, I was unable to get the shop I chose to install these parts until the week of 4/10/2016 for financial reasons as well as time conflicts with my job. This is where my nightmare begins. Turns out, I also needed to replace my upper control arms. As expected, I shelled out another $370 for the upper arms (with the $40 overnight shipping surcharge) because my car was already dissembled and on the rack, and I didn’t want to have to pay extra labor for them to repeat the process. The upper arms come in, and everything seems to be back on track.
Then, I get a call from the repair shop saying that my kit contained two left engine mounts. At the time, I was very frustrated and could not wrap my head around how such a well-known company could miss such an error. So I contracted ECS, and they did not seem to care. I asked them what their exchange policy was, and their reply was “It’ll take 6 days for the parts to be shipped to us and then we will get them to you as soon as possible.” That would be fine, if my car had not already started being repaired. I tried to explain that to them in order to initiate a brainstorming of ideas between us. However, they told me they would not look for any replacement engine mounts that may be in the USA. They wouldn’t check their competitors or any dealerships. So I’m livid by now, and I ask to speak to the supervisor. The representative tells me they have a heavy call volume right now (even though when I called it was answered within 10 seconds) and I could leave he supervisor a voicemail. This isn’t my first rodeo, and I have several friends that work in customer service call centers so I knew better. I tell him I can wait and he lets out a frustrated sigh and puts me on hold. After five minutes or so, he returns and asks me to leave a voicemail again, and I refuse, again. Five more minutes pass and I get to talk to the supervisor. I ask him how can you order parts knowing they take 6 days to be received without checking the orders for accuracy. His response, “We get thousands of parts in daily, therefore, we do not check any of our orders that come in from outside manufacturers.” This made absolutely no sense to me, and I was pretty much done with the whole situation. When I asked was there anything that he could do to help rectify the mistake. He told me no several times. He specifically said, “Sir, you have had these parts for a month and just now are noticing they are the same engine mount?” As if I work quality control for ECS and have some kind of mechanical certification (which I don’t, I’m a medical student), and this is all my fault. I said, “Can you send me some soap and sponges or something?” out of desperation for some kind of placation. He said, “Are you seriously asking me for soap and sponges?” I reiterated, “I will take your left sock just give me something to show you care about your customers.” He sighed and decided finally that I deserve a $50 gift card for my troubles. I ended up having to outsource, with the help of my body shop, the correct engine mounts and we had to pay (again) to get them overnight shipped to the repair shop. When I log in to my account and order history the following week, the $50 gift card had been removed from my account.
But wait, there’s more. Turns out the 2 lower control arms (curved) were not meant to fit my car. I reiterate that I placed this order with the help of a sales agent who asked me specific details about my car. I figured this order couldn’t possibly have more discrepancies. However, there is a VIN split with the 2008 Audi S5s that was not addressed and so, once again, I have to return parts and delay the completion of my car’s repairs for a quality control error. I’m about $1500 deep into my orders with ECS and I’m being treated as an afterthought continuously. I call to see what we can do to fix this as quickly as possible. They tell me they can ship the parts with overnight shipping once the control arms have been picked up by FedEx and they get the notification. Great, right? Not so fast, my friend. I call to notify them that FedEx should be contacting them that the order has been shipped. Turns out that even though FedEx doesn’t close until after they close, they were done shipping items out for the day. As if someone with a heart couldn’t have taken five minutes out of their day to stop by the local FedEx with the shipping label as I did to return the incorrect parts. Then, she tells me I should receive my control arms by the end of the day 4/22/16. Startled, I asked why was this? I was told they would be overnight shipped. Turns out, another mistake had been made and they were labeled as standard shipping. She corrected this mistake and I was fine with the thought of them arriving Wednesday, 4/20/16.
Well, 4/20/16 arrives and my order still says warehouse transfer. I contacted ECS again to ask what was the problem. Good thing they did not ship because the person I spoke to noticed that they were sending two left control arms. ANOTHER MISTAKE by the ECS staff. I did not notice because they were two different prices. From my understanding , it looks like they made up a price for one of them to equal the higher price I paid for the wrong control arms. When the order was rectified, the correct control arms cost approximately $35 less that the incorrect ones I received. At this point, I’m not going to focus on $35 versus the anticipated extra $300-500 I will have to pay for the engine mounts from the dealership and shop storage fees. Now, I am being told it will be Friday before I receive my correct control arms. I asked for a reason why, and they told me they have to get them from the warehouse. I was like it takes two days to pick up two control arms. He said yes. I asked why can’t someone just go get them. He said, “We don’t do that and I don’t even know where the warehouse is.” He could not tell me the vendor name or phone number to contact them to try to speed up the process because of “policy”. I ask why, he doesn’t have a reason. As I’m continuing to speak my frustration about how you sell parts from an unknown source along with not quality checking these orders from these unknown sources, they try to appease me by saying your engine mounts are being shipped today. A pseudo-mistake as I clarified Monday that I no longer needed the engine mounts and would like a refund instead.
All in all, an order that was placed with the help of a ECS sales representative turned into back-and-forth between me and ECS over mistakes that were made internally. They continued to talk condescending to me without any signs of sympathy. I understand there are policies in place in any small business to large corporation. However, under certain circumstances, policies should have alternative plans for worst case scenarios. Anyone who has worked in customer service should know that a customer should never leave a point of contact with a team member frustrated and angry. There should be fail-safes in their delivery of materials in case something was to happen. All you will get with ECS is a we are sorry and all we can do is ask you to send it back and ONLY AFTER we get the incorrect items we will send you the correct ones. They were very hesitant to overnight ship things and give me a gift card (that they took back). All these mistakes were made in-house, and I became the victim. Take this as a warning for anyone looking to buy parts from ECS. Make sure you verify they are the right parts independently BEFORE you order them because some of their staff does not thoroughly check parts for fitment. Then, upon receiving your product, check it for accuracy with your body shop. This will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration.