RCI customer service inquiry

@RCI-Offroad I've been trying to get in contact with your customer service for a couple of weeks to check on my order and my voicemails and emails have gone unanswered. When I ordered sliders 6 weeks ago the lead time was 4-6 weeks. When I placed the order I spoke with your team and they were very helpful. Maybe the sale inundated you with orders? That's a good thing I suppose, but I just want to know if my order will be shipped soon.

Unable to send a direct message to your account here, so thought I'd try a thread and hope that you stop by here.

 

Hi! We are extremely lucky to have such wonderful customers like yourself. It's well known we are a small team of talented individuals and are constantly growing. The last "Tax Time Sale" we just had was extremely successful and brought in a lot of orders! We are doing everything we can to staff up, keep up with a massive production and achieve the fastest lead times we possibly can.

We understand you are excited about building your vehicle, have planned trips and are eagerly waiting for your order! The flood of emails, phone calls and walk in customers looking for status updates, customer support and technical questions has provided our two-man sales team an enormous load to handle. We greatly appreciate all your patience and are doing everything we can to get back to every single forum, email, phone call and social media question out there.

Thank you so much for your patience! We'll be notifying you of your tracking information as quickly as we possibly can!

 

Thank you for the reply! Yep, like you said, waiting on truck upgrades is hard. I'm glad to hear that the sale was a success, and thanks for taking care of us here on TW. Really looking forward to seeing those sliders on my truck!

 

TW has enough pull to get a response from MFGs. This is awesome. Kudos to RCI for responding. Most don't know that these shops although may seem to have a large footprint online are actually very small in employee headcount. I went to a shop to get my canopy installed and they were a team of 6. One person doing all the CS and purchasing. From their youtube channel you thought they were a much bigger outfit. What I know to be true so far. 4-6weeks leadtime can mean 6-8weeks. These small shops have other small machine shops contract to mfg for them. That machine shop also makes stuff for a dozen other shops. Since they can't afford to hold stock everything's made to order. If they had more in stock I am sure they would sell much more. Chicken or the egg. That's why planning is so critical.

 

well have you gotten the rock sliders ?

 

Sure did, and I put them to good use this past weekend.

 

sweet!
I’m hoping to get my sliders very soon . lead time is +-8 WEEKS friday will be 9 weeks so I’M SURE I’LL GET THAT EMAIL SOON
I should call them and ask about when i go to install them should I put wool wax on the frame where it bolts up to keep the inside the sliders and the frame rust free or just bolt them on and then hit it with wool wax they use a lot of salt here in PA.

 

just got a email today from RCI THEY WILL BE HERE MONDAY!

 

may 7Th Ithink it was a sale they had no step plate and just metal

 

thanks 89 hope you get them soon also HAVE A GOOD ONE

 

did get them yet ? my sliders are still in the boxes i’m putting up a fence and wife said no playing with truck till new fence is up

 

I'm in the exact same boat and was starting to wonder if there's an issue with my order. The only thing I know about my order after 10 weeks (showing 6-8 week lead times, even now) is that I've been charged for rock sliders with no update after the quoted lead times.

I will admit that I came here frustrated and was about to make my own post as well. The lead times are not accurate and it's impossible to get through to anyone...

@RCI-Offroad - If this very reasonable communication was sent out in a mass email or posted on the website, which is displaying inaccurate and ambitious lead times, then I think it would greatly alleviate the influx of other frustrated customers reaching out to your team because we feel like we are in the dark and out $1,000+ depending on what all was ordered, especially well-beyond the lead times.

I appreciate the sentiment and I'm sure many others would also. Unfortunately, I had to go digging through Tacoma World just to get an idea about what's going on.

 

Perhaps coincidentally, I just received a response to last week's status check after making the above post.

Here is the information I just got back from @RCI-Offroad via email if it helps alleviate concern for anyone else waiting on rock sliders in particular:

"Thanks for your purchase and support! We appreciate your patience.

Our tube supplier had the machine that cuts tubing break causing our shipment of tubing to be delayed which has pushed back the fabrication process.

We fortunately received a shipment of tubing today and have more coming monday. Our fabrication team will get started welding Tacoma sliders first thing Monday morning and that batch of 20 degree tacoma sliders will begin shipping before the end of next week."

As a customer, I wish this information was pushed out publicly. I think people would be more understanding, less frustrated with the delays, and less overwhelming to the company with late order status checks.

In any case, I look forward to the rock sliders.

 

Sounds like I'm in the same boat. My order for Rock Sliders was placed at the end of June. Website says 6-8 week lead time, okay no problem. So I waited, and waited. After 9 weeks of not hearing a thing I decided to call customer support. I did get a live person, he looked up my order and told me that my sliders were just getting out of powder coat and would ship that day (Friday Sept 1st) or the Tuesday after Labor Day. All week, no emails no updates. So I called them yesterday (Friday Sept 8th) and I'm told that they were having production issues and things were delayed by a week, I did tell them that a week ago I was told they were already completed! He apologized to me over and over again. Had they kept me updated I probably wouldn't be nearly as frustrated, but here I am at 10+ weeks still waiting on my sliders that were bought and paid for in June, and I was basically being told to wait longer.

 

Did you ever get your sliders?

 

@bushman31

Yes! They finally arrived via FedEx on Thursday the 21st, which was 13 weeks after placing the order. I opened them up for a quick inspection. They look great, but... I was missing the Tread Plates, so another phone call to RCI. Tread Plates were shipped the following day (22 Sep) and arrived yesterday (25 Sep). CO to UT is usually pretty quick. But FedEx says there is another package from RCI arriving today. I am guessing it's the hardware.

 

Thank you guys so much for your support and feedback. You are correct, there could've been a public or mass update to elevate frustration, anxiousness and provide better communication through the delayed process. We are going to take this learning experience and do our best in the future to improve communication and give you better updates on your orders. We hope that you enjoy the quality and function of the sliders once they are unboxed and installed!