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On January 7, 2009, I was at Z1 Motorsports because of a power steering leak that they had failed to fix when I was there a month earlier. I spent $767.88 with Z1 in December and $1977.49 in January as I also purchased a Blitz boost controller, Greddy EVO 2 exhaust, and many other miscellaneous items. I told John that I wanted to buy their 13" brake kit and I asked him if I needed to measure my wheels or if he could do it, since my car was already being worked on in their shop that day. He told me that he would look at it and tell me what I needed. Later, he told me that I would be fine with 5 mm spacers and that I would not need extended studs. I assumed that he had actually measured the distance between my caliper and wheel, but I was wrong. A couple of weeks later, I, along with a friend of mine, wasted about 5 hours of time. We spent a lot of time installing the kit, only to spend more time reinstalling all of my old hardware and contaminating my new brake pads, because my wheels wouldn't fit with the spacers that I was sold. On February 9th, I called and discussed this problem with John, who wasn't at all apologetic for not measuring my wheels as he indicated. He simply told me, "it looked like it would work with 5 mm spacers." He told me that I'd need 10 mm spacers and extended studs and transferred me to Josh. I waited on hold for a while, then spoke with Josh, who didn't seem to have been told anything about my problem. I repeated the details again, but he didn't seem at all interested in doing anything other than charging me for new spacers plus $68 + shipping for new studs. After arguing for a minute, he seemed to be willing to send me the correct spacers, but he still wanted to charge me $68 + shipping for the studs. I explained that I had already paid $35 over the price of the big brake kit for Hardware Kit A (5 mm spacers), while Hardware Kit B (10 mm spacers + studs) was only $65 ($30 more than Kit A). He checked and confirmed that I was correct, but was unwilling to do anything other than charge me $65 + shipping for Kit B and to refund $35 when I returned Kit A. At this point, I asked to speak to John again. I waited on hold for a while, then spoke to John for about 30 seconds, before he said that he was busy with a customer and that he would call me back. This occurred around 5:00 pm. He never called me back. At that point, I wrote a long email to Russell explaining that I was a long time customer and I have receipts going back to 2001, when he was working out of a barn. I simply asked for them to ship me a complementary set of 10 mm spacers and extended studs and explained that I did not think this was an unreasonable request considering all of the time that I have wasted in dealing with Z1 errors and considering all of the money that I have spent with them. Instead of receiving a reply from Russell, I received one from John, saying that he did not understand why I thought it was their responsibility to provide new spacers and studs. After writing another long email, explaining how it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that he had actually taken the 5 seconds required to measure the distance between my calipers and wheels instead of just eyeballing the distance, he agreed that I was correct and called me to tell me that they would send me the correct spacers and extended studs, but that I would have to wait 2-3 weeks for the studs to arrive in stock and that I would have to return the 5 mm spacers. I agreed to this solution. Now it has been more than 3 weeks and Z1 still does not have the extended studs in stock. I drove 60 miles to Z1 last week to return the 5 mm spacers and at that time, I asked John if the studs were in stock. He told me that they were not in stock and that if I sent him an email, he would let me know when they would be available. I sent an email early Monday morning and by this afternoon (Thursday), I had not heard anything. I called and spoke to John, who told me that the studs should be in soon, but he had no estimate on a date. At this point, after almost two months of having this unusable kit, I just want to return it. John told me that I would have to talk to Josh about returning it. Once again, I waited on hold for at least five minutes before talking to Josh. Josh told me that they didn't the studs that they were going to send me in stock, but he seemed happy to sell me some Nismo studs that they have in stock. (Apparently the Z1 brake kit doesn't come with these Nismo studs, but instead comes with some cheaper no name brand studs.) I said that I did not want to pay for these studs and that I would rather just return the kit, so I can purchase a kit from Coz or some other company. He told me that there was a 20% restocking fee. I asked him to waive the fee since they sold me the wrong thing and was told that he could probably cut the fee in half, but wouldn't waive it. Then he put me on hold and when he came back, he told me that they wouldn't accept a return on a used kit. I told him this was unreasonable considering the kit has 0 miles on it and was only installed because John told me that it would fit. At this point, Josh told me that he was sorry I felt like I wasn't being treated fairly, but that they were doing everything they could. I replied that they were not doing everything they could do and that a reputable vendor like CZP or Powertrix would likely have no problems in accepting a return, particularly if they had caused the problem in the first place. At this point, Josh hung up on me. I've had minor problems with Z1 in the past, but I've always dealt with them privately and kept my problems out of the public forums up until this point, but I'm tired of all the hassles of dealing with Z1. They have a large inventory and its nice having them relatively close to my house in the event that I need a part quickly. But they have absolutely horrible customer service and they don't seem interested at all in keeping their long time customers happy. And hanging up on a customer? Give me a break...
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