Aircooled.net - [email protected]

[56vwoval]

Just wanted to give a world of thanks to John and his crew. I just installed the Aircooled.net SVDA distributor on my 1835 with 34 PICT 3 carb and what a world of difference. It was like night and day. The car idles smooth as silk with the Engle 100 cam. And the best part is the oil temp fell 20 degrees and it was at about 210 with the previous Uh oh 9. I could not be more pleased. I understand from your web-site that the SVDA will no longer be available. I hope Bosch has the good sense to continue making such a great distributor. Thanks folks.

[ManFromNapa]

I placed an order almost a week ago and it's still "pending". I didn't order anything fancy. I've tried to call a few times today and the line is busy. Who the hell gets a busy signal anymore? LOL
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North Bay Air Cooled - VW Club in Napa, CA
http://www.northbayaircooled.com/

Check out my band, Thru The Haze
http://www.thruthehazeband.com/

[[email protected]]

Our phone is exceptionally busy, try e-mail. We ARE an online company.
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It's just advice, do whatever you want with it!

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and get a 5% off code for use on one order for VW Parts ON OUR PARTS STORE WEBSITE, vwparts.aircooled.net

[aircoolednetoffice]

Hi ManfromNapa,

I'm sorry that you haven't been able to get through. Our phones are chronically busy due to the free phone tech support that we provide -- and we are also especially busy in the early part of the week because we are typically playing catch up from the high volume of orders that come through over the weekend while we are closed.

I assure you that if you drop us a quick email asking for status of your order or backordered items, we will respond promptly. Correspondence via email is a much easier and faster way to get answers to your questions and/or information about your order. We can, literally, help 5-7 people via email as it takes to assist one person by phone typically. We rely on that time savings to be able to serve more aircooled VW lovers :0)

...and we are also working on upgrading our phone system so that it will let you hold in a queue instead of just ringing busy...

Sincerely

Stephanie
Aircooled.Net Customer Care

[shokwave2]

After ordering through other US stores for my VW parts, i thought i would try out aircooled.net, since i'm always hearing good things about them.

l placed a small international order to Australia on 07/17/2013, shown as pending for a week, then received an email from Corbin: "We have you order all ready to go and it should be shipped out by tomorrow at the latest." I thought cool.

No shipping tracking details for a week so i sent an email back asking if they had the tracking number, this was the reply i got on the 08/01: "I apologize for the delay, I was out of town on family business for the last couple days and we have been rather busy. I will make sure that your order is shipped out today."

Finally got a tracking number, shipped on 07/31, my package has been sitting in San Francisco since 08/03. I guess i'll be getting my package in another week or two.

Now, last year i bought most of my engine parts (i'm talking $2,000+) through another US store and i placed another order with the same company on 08/01. My order was shipped the next day and it arrived at my door 9,238 miles away on 08/05! And the shipping cost was the same as were the brands of parts.
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Drive it like you stole it.

[aircoolednetoffice]

Hi Shokwave2,
I'm really sorry that the US Postal Service website is showing the tracking info for your shipment as somehow stalled. The US Postal Service is definitely lax (compared to more expensive private carrier companies like UPS and FedEx) at keeping their tracking information current. As far as I know, once the package is scanned at either their San Francisco or New York International clearing centers, they release it to the reciprocal carrier service in your country and after that, tracking updates are provided by your country's service company, and not all of them are good about providing the data.

That said -- please accept my personal apology, as I do see where Corbin emailed you on the 23rd telling you it was ready for shipment. July 24th is a State holiday here, and Corbin had scheduled vacation for the following three days, and he asked me to cover for him while he was gone. So it was me who missed the correspondence where he had made you the commitment for it to ship the following day. (The original delay between the 17th and the day that your order was actually ready to ship was a backorder delay for the Dellorto Air Filter Gaskets to complete your list of requested items).

We are certainly not perfect and are very sorry for your disappointment. Corbin is a new addition to our team as of just a few months ago, and we are looking to add yet another customer care rep as well as soon as we can find someone as good as him! In the meantime, I am working long hours to try to keep up the service levels that earned us our reputation until we can find and afford the staff to get back to our previous levels of responsiveness and turnaround times. I'm very sorry that I disappointed you. Normally if we have made a commitment to ship after requested items are acquired, we do send it when we say we will!

Sincerely
Stephanie
Aircooled.Net Customer Care Manager

[tattooed_pariah]

placed another order today, within an hour of placing the order I had an e-mail to remind me that I'm an idiot.. tried to ship something flammable priority instead of ground.. took less than 30 minutes to sort that out and I got a tracking number and shipping notification within another hour after that..

Love ACN, great, and SUPER fast customer service and great prices! I could have gotten what I needed locally, but I'd rather pay shipping to support them in particular!

Thanks ACN Crew!!
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-pariah (just a novice from "that other VW site")
'72 Volksrod "Effigy"

"Never worry about stepping on people's toes. People who get their toes stepped on are either sitting down, or standing still on the job."
-Admiral Arleigh Burke, USN(ret.)

[tommu]

I keep giving them money, they keep giving me quality. Long may this relationship continue.

[BugMan114]

Ordered a disc brake kit from ACN. Came packed exceptionally well! Lots o bubble wrap. The only thing I'd recommend is using a thicker box, as the bottom was tearing, and was about to fall out. Otherwise awesome job!

Btw, if you're reading this John, u have a listing for super beetle caliper brackets (just the brackets) for a normal price of $79.99 and a sale price of $239.99, XD. Just wanted to let ya kno
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1974 Super Beetle: Custom resto in progress
1972 Super Beetle: Daily Driver
1971 Std. Beetle w/ 1929 Mercedes Benz Gazelle kit
1960 Baja Bug
1969 Baja Bug
Sand Rail- Homemade
Sand Rail- FUBAR

Aircooled Airheads

Why the hell do they call it a gland nut. its obviously a big fat bolt!!!

[ZwitterND]

I ordered parts from from a competitor the same day I ordered parts from Aircooled (9/17) Parts from competitor arrived today. Order status of AC parts as of today (9/25/) "Pending"... Just saying.
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Bill

[aircoolednetoffice]

Hi Bill,
As we explained to you via email, we are of course always sorry and hate when an item you request is temporarily out of stock. Your order was submitted just before midnight on Tues Sept 17th, and we emailed you to let you know that the item was out of stock (and offered an alternative brand of equivalent quality) at 11:43am on Thursday Sept 19th. We did not hear back from you (perhaps the email was snagged in your spam filter?) Then when you inquired yesterday about your order status at 6:07pm, we replied 18 minutes later, again letting you know that we had the same size/spec Piston & Cylinder set in stock, just in a different brand.

Below is our Backorder Handling and Fulfillment procedure information for your easy reference (also posting for all you feedback forum readers out there!):

When you select "standard fulfillment" as your Backorder Handling Method during order checkout (which you did in the case of this order), and subsequently your order request isn't marked as within 2-3 business days of order submission, then rest assured that we are diligently working to acquire and collate your requested backordered items for you. We are careful to fulfill your order request per our posted fulfillment procedures that have been developed to specifically address the various sourcing issues that are prevalent in the world of aircooled VW parts. We hate backorders as much or more than you probably do, but they are a fact of life in the business of sourcing parts for classic / discontinued vehicles. The majority of backorders are due to short term lack of availability at the manufacturer/supplier/importer level, and often only take 1-3 weeks (if that) to fill. But there are also some sporadic availability items and items that are more difficult to source, and in those cases we provide ongoing, longer term "acquisition service" for up to 3 months from the date of your order.

Please note that our system does NOT notify automatically when one or more of items requested items are out of stock. We inventory/stock many thousands of products in our warehouse, but there are easily 30,000+ products that were made at one time or another for the various types of aircooled Volkswagens and so we list many that we are willing to acquire for customers upon request. We just don't always know until we go to source them, whether their availability may have changed since the last time we restocked. This is a much more complex business than selling autoparts for currently manufactured vehicles! Instead of spending the large amount of time it would take to manually notify about every out of stock item, we use our available staff/time resources to immediately get to work on acquiring the requested out of stock items on your behalf. We are always happy to provide you with as much ETA information that we have for backordered items if you send us an email inquiring about your backorder status after you see that shipment is being held up past 7 days from the date of order.

Standard Fulfillment Procedure Summary:
Your order may be delayed in order to ship together with backordered items that are either pertinent to the other items on your order, OR that we believe we will be able to acquire for you in a "short" (3-5 days) or "medium" (1-3 wks) timeframe. If we determine that it makes more sense to ship your in-stock items now, and send backordered items separately, then the backordered items remain open and are automatically charged and shipped to you as they become available unless you contact us in writing (email) and instruct us to cancel them. If we are unable to acquire and ship your requested item(s) within 3 months, then your order for those items will auto-cancel.

Other Options:
If standard backorder handling doesn't meet your needs, please use the ORDER MESSAGES/NOTES field available to you during checkout to specify any special handling conditions pertinent to your order. During Checkout (on the checkout page) you are also prompted to select from either of these two alternate backorder handling options:
"Hold to ship order complete after backorders acquired" - We collate and ship all your requested items at once (except any made-to-order/dropship items which may have manufacture lead times and typically have to ship separately regardless of availability). Your order may still ship in separate packages when items in the order request are either too heavy, or too fragile to be combined into one package safely.
or
"Ship readily available items and cancel any backorders" - If all items are in stock, we will ship immediately (usually same or next business day), or if there are any SHORT term acquisition items, we will hold shipment for up to 5 days, and ship what can be acquired in the "short" (3-5 day) timeframe. All medium and long term backordered items will be canceled. Made to Order / Dropship items are still subject to normal manufacture lead times, payment terms and dropship fulfillment.

In every case, the staff here at Aircooled.Net work hard to do everything possible to get your order filled and shipped out to you in as timely a manner as is possible! Your patience and cooperation is appreciated. Thank you for working with us to take care of your aircooled parts needs for your classic VW!

Sincerely

Stephanie
Aircooled.Net Customer Care

[ZwitterND]

1. I never received an email on 9/19 it was sent after I inquired on 9/25.

2. I have heard this line before "Hey we have these name brand but we are currently out of stock, but hey we have this other brand that is just as good"

I don't need a 30 line explanation. I was in customer service for 20 years, when we didn't have a part we called the customer. Why do you ask for phone numbers?

This is all I am going to say on the matter.
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Bill

[nreslifer]

I haven't ordered anything for awhile,Saturday ordered an item no one else had.Arrived today they're still as sharp as before

[tim3]

have never complained much about any business before in my 20+ years of owning over 16 classic vws, but Aircooled.net just earned an official bitch from me..

So apparently it is quite impossible to get a decent answer from aircooled.net through their contact section without a spot of attitude in their response. It seems there are some old vw guys out there still fronting pseudo neo nazi personalities.. I am so sick of the pompous attitudes these vw shop/part store owners have... They must really hate their lives answering questions about simple things..

the story is retarded but I asked about getting their carb service which is clearly stated on their site.. I didn't mention the webers or the sku.. I did however speak of my setup and my carb settings hoping that would help give them an idea of what they would need to put in the new carbs i would buy from them.. With their site being ridiculously impossible to write a message via email over a mobile device I kept it short. I also left a voicemail with a better description of what I wanted to know. Long bitch short John at Aircooled.net simply didnt put two and two together and thought I was a dumbass customer asking about getting my solex carbs rebuilt.. granted they have "lots of customers ask this" as they claim so they "aren't mind readers" though a simple "are you asking about our CARB SERVICE that we talk about on our site?" would have gained a new customer and a large purchase.

Stephanie behind the final emails also said I have a past correspondence where I was not happy with them before.. So the way I look at it is I have spent well over 100k in parts over the past 10 years through many companies like ISPwest, Cip1, WolfsburgWest, etc.. I can't remember ever buying anything from Aircooled so if I did I must not have been that excited about using them in the future.. they pretty much sealed the deal on never getting me or my friends as customers.. as they said to me "Good Luck" I wish them all the luck in the world..

John if you are an online company then you shouldn't have such an attitude.. you can sense it right off the bat.. choose your words better and you wont get in these types of fights.. You pissed me off on your first response.. no one in 20 years of vw aircooled business has pissed me off so quickly.. you obviously for the past 10 years of this thread have not learned your lesson.. STOP being such a tight ass!!! I am serious I want to do business with you but you are really hard to deal with as a person..
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[aircoolednetoffice]

Hi Tim,
Stephanie here. We misunderstood your inquiry with your existing carb info as a request do a setup service on your existing carbs. We are always saddened when an miscommunication deteriorates into anger and name calling (you called us "losers" and "retards" in your email and voice message, and now you've called us "pompous" and "neo-nazi"!) I don't dispute that John doesn't do a great job of keeping his temper in check when messages come through with demanding words and condescending tone -- I do everything I can to "calm him" and help him take the high road...but I don't manage to catch everything due the high volume of email we receive and send.

You also expressed frustration with trying to access our webstore on a mobile phone, and when I confirmed for you that our site is NOT mobile compatible (due to a lack of that feature being available from our ecommerce platform provider), you took the time to tell us what you think we should do about it. In a perfect world we would have unlimited resources and would spend 24/7 making our website perfect and follow many of your design suggestions, but we are still a comparatively small company (probably only about 1/10th the size of CIP), and so have to make either/or choices about allocating our resources. It's tough to be a small business in slow-fulfillment industry serving a world of customers with Amazon.com-esque site features and super-fast fulfillment expectations...but we believe that the knowledge we share with our customers sets us apart in many ways and makes us valuable despite not having deep pockets and huge inventory like some of the bigger fish in the business.

You mention "not remembering buying anything from us in the past" -- according to our records, you have actually placed 10 orders with us since April of 2012. We're sorry none of those good/smooth transactions were memorable enough for you to have banked us some forgiveness or cut us a little slack in the face us misunderstanding your question submitted about our carb setup service. The situation last August that I mentioned to you had also resulted in you being "unhappy with us" occurred when you submitted an order for approx 8 items, with a $30 off promo code, and when we responded to tell you that 2 of your requested items were on short term backorder, you were frustrated and chastised us for not having real-time inventory on our site (our site mentions in multiple places, including on the checkout page -- twice -- that backorders are a possibility, and that immediate shipment is not guaranteed due to sporadic availability of parts). You were in a hurry to receive your items because you had a race coming up, and didn't want to wait, and you canceled everything (which is fine, and we don't charge for anything at time of order, so no refund is due upon cancelation). But I guess you were annoyed that you lost out on the promo discount when you canceled the whole order because you posted something angry about it (and derogatory about us) on our Facebook page. The promo discount still would have applied, by the way, if you had simply told us to go ahead and ship only the in stock items and just cancel the backorders, but we didn't question your reasons or right to cancel -- whether or not you proceed with an order is your choice!

Anyhow -- I post these explanations in response to complaints on this forum because I've worked here for 13 years, and I'm proud of the thousands of people we help each year, and the good that we do to promote quality products and keep this awesome hobby alive. I guess I still believe that with a better understanding of the how and why of the way we process orders and serve our customers, even previously frustrated people might see the value of what we do, and appreciate the service our whole team here at Aircooled.Net works very hard to provide to every customer that entrusts and honors us with their order.

We, of course, respect your right to choose with whom you transact. We've been in business long enough to know that it is impossible to be all things to all people and so understand if the the style and policies of our colleagues in the aircooled parts arena are a better fit for your style and needs. We sincerely wish you all the best in your aircooled endeavors.

[saintmand]

[EverettB]

[bugninva]

[saintmand]

Try using the website with your phone. Not very friendly for being a "ONLINE Company"..

[bugninva]

Confusing me now... moving targets are harder to hit. First you respond sarcastically to johns post about using email, then you change your tune. I do use Johns website from my android. I haven't placed an order from my phone, but I wouldn't do that anyway. I like security.
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