[Closed] Superstar customer service

Got an E-mail today saying that some of the pawls did not meet their standards and am getting some new ones posted out to me. It is not a recall apparently, I assume they are for the V6 hubs I bought before christmas.
So in that regard they are pretty good.

Crap! And will look to blame anything else but themselves.

Oh dear 🙁

Absolutely terrible.

Wouldn’t order again after sending me new wheels with hub faults.

Wouldn’t do anything to help other than send me the wrong instructions to repair it myself.

I didn’t have the tools and said they would void my warranty of my LBS to fix them.

Crap after sales discourages you not to buy from them again.

We've got your money, now F*** off!

Looks like I'm taking them to small claims court then. They have to pay costs when they lose right?

OTOH I had an issue with some wheels; emailed them, they sorted it immediately.

Looks like I’m taking them to small claims court then. They have to pay costs when they lose right?

Might be worth wating until the PP dispute is concluded?

Hmm. I ordered a round 34t NW chainring back in Nov. Received an oval 32t. Sent it back, waited a week, prodded them for P&P refund and replacement. They sent me a round 36t chainring, at which point I decided to quit while I was ahead. Subsequent refund was painless, but it cost them the best part of a tenner not to sell me their product. A shame, really, the rings I got seemed nicely made, just too few/many teeth!

I received some wheels from them a few days ago, listed as being Sapim Laser spokes and black ali nipples, but these are built with Sapim Race spokes and silver brass nipples. No response yet.

I assume that they have been off over Christmas and New Year so effectively have been back for less than a week, and probably have a few orders to get through, so I would say calm down a little and wait.
Also the fact you sent them multiple e-mails has targeted you as a problem customer, so that has probably taken you from high priority to the F- him list.
For a guy with a username Chilled76 you come across as pretty fired up.

I've only needed to contact them once when I'd ordered a service kit for my Nano-X pedals but the kit arrived with the seals for the older pedals. I think I had the correct seals in the post the next day.

Yeh it's an ironic username. Get wound up easily.

so 1st Jan - your order was placed, 5th (friday?) you were notified rims out of stock then you've sent 3 emails between then and today asking for a refund, received a response and you're now planning to take them to court? Is it worth maybe being a bit chilled for a little longer?

Not quite how you've put it. Bit take your point, chill for a few days and see.

I'm supposed to be doing a big ride next weekend and needed these wheels, ordered them on the 1st. Getting wound up as can't order new ones until they issue the refund.

My first email refund was in response to them asking as well... which coupled with the last email telling me they don't have time to respond has wound me up I guess.

so 1st Jan – your order was placed, 5th (friday?) you were notified rims out of stock then you’ve sent 3 emails between then and today asking for a refund, received a response and you’re now planning to take them to court? Is it worth maybe being a bit chilled for a little longer?

This. Really.

If I ordered some wheels from them when they were on a very special offer (40% discount) then I wouldn't expect to get them within two weeks. Think about it, they're likely to be busy. Also probably a bit behind on orders after Christmas so I'd suggest they deserve a bit of slack.

I do also know they have a bit of a reputation but I once bought some wheels from them and they were great, as are the wheels. In fact anything I've ever bought from them has been well made and with decent customer service.

When i was buying my headset from them they had a deal on the bearings so thought i would pick up a spare set for the new headset i was ordering off them at the same time. I emailed to ask them what bearings the headset i was buying took....they replied that they did not know as different headsets take different bearings! I replied saying surley they knew what bearings their own headsets took.....never heard back.

I've had exactly the same email from them after ordering some new wheels asking what hub I wanted, responded immediately and they replied immediately saying order would be dispatched to builder. Then another email saying no rims in stock, I responded on Friday saying I'll wait then later this afternoon got the email saying thanks well be in touch shortly.

Think they're just really busy at the moment so I'd give it a couple of days for them to reply/refund. To be fair their communication has been good so far.

I felt like they were replying promptly until I asked for a refund.

Will see I guess. I'll give it 2 days then go back to PayPal if no response

Yeah it’s the beginning of the year, so take it easy. I damaged a seal changing freehub bearings once and when asking if they sell them separately they said no but got some out 2 broken freehubs and sent them over for free.

Hopefully the boss will see this thread and provide plenty of entertainment 😈

They've put up a post on Facebook saying please bear with them, they've ordered more rims and should be with them in a couple days. They also said they'll answer queries ASAP.

A PP refund is literally just the press of a button and it's poor form to keep a customer waiting. I had the same issue with Works Components recently, I ended up opening a PP dispute and got a refund that way after a handful of calm, polite emails and then radio silence from them.

Bought loads off them, couple of things needed some warranty work, they were fine.
They are in the middle of their biggest sale of the year, I honestly wouldn’t worry.

Ordered on a bank holiday, got a reply on (by my reckoning) a Friday, one fluke reply on the Saturday (not a working day), so it's then not unusual to not hear anything until at least today (first working day back).

As always, this is the challenge we face as consumers. Would you still have bought at the price that would pay for a 24/7 tech support/query/social media person?

Would you still have bought at the price that would pay for a 24/7 tech support/query/social media person?

Maybe not, but it Would have been better if the person who had plenty of time to send the snotty “stop emailing us, we are too busy” email, had just clicked “refund” in PayPal instead.

Clearly logic was trumped by petulance in that exchange.

Can we assume the stop e-mailing email was automated?

I think people's expectations are often too high. Mistakes happen and sometimes in really busy periods online companies find it hard to cope. With any online company I'd expect to give it a week or more before going all mental and opening Paypal disputes, etc.

JP

I won't buy from superstar any more.
I've bought a few bits, mainly pads but some other stuff. Without going into detail, one time I had a problem with one of thier products I was basically told to piss off.
The value of the defective item was not worth perusing so I just won't go there any more.

All this 'we're really busy' bullshit.. blah blah blah. Hit the button, give the man his money back. No excuses.

Ordered a set of the 40% off wheels (a custom build not a stock on) on the evening of the 2nd, they arrived today, far quicker than I was expecting!

Superstar not quite as bad as On One but bad enough that I'll never use them again.

08:44

Emailed me to say order cancelled. No refund has appeared yet. Breathe in and out slowly!!!

Scratch that, shows as Pending in Paypal.

Rant over I guess.

Next question, how long for a pending refund to actually appear?

PP refunds work like this-

1. customer asks for refund
2. seller logs into PP account and finds the transaction (easy to do; you can search by email address, name, date, amount, transaction number, blood type*, shoe size**)
3. seller issues refund
4. a) refund is usually instant if there's enough in the seller's PP account to cover the whole refund, otherwise b) refund takes ~5 [u]working[/u] days to arrive as the shortfall is transferred from the seller's bank account to the seller's PP account and then to the buyer's PP account

I reckon the longest it should take is a day to actually get round to pressing the 'refund' button and then a further 5 working days to receive it. PP are funny with emails sometimes though, I don't always get emails from them regarding invoices or payments sent (without having bought something) so check in your account for any change in the payment's status. PP will side with you though OP.

* of course you can't
** see above

Had a lucky escape from their bad rep by showing serious interest in a set of wheels except no one at SS wanted to pick up phone to discuss.

Just like ubyk recently, best bet is to go with your gut most the time I strongly believe.

* of course you can’t
** see above

Only if you've been making sure to dispose of your plastic wrappers securely otherwise all bets are off.

They started a conversation with the OP - 'your thing isn't available, what do you want us to do?', then appeared to vanish in a puff of smoke.

And if the best they can do is some snarky reply telling the OP to stop answering their question instead of just hitting a few buttons and refunding him, it's unsurprising that they end up on social media.

I love the idea that the snarky emails are automated, though!

I've found that when you remind Superstar that the time they're using pissing about could be spent issuing the bloody refund you're owed they will start acting up. Absolutely the worst customer service.

you do have some history with them though...

Hello, just to let everyone know we are almost back upto speed again.

We apolagise for slow replies and the issues with stans flow rims temporarily selling out, the offer took us by surprise as the the epic volume of orders we got. Our entire stock of stans rims sold out and we are just waiting for palligap to send over the replenishment to we could build the balance of everyones bargain wheels. We were expecting high tens of wheelsets sold and it was several hundred, so it will take a few days to physically build the backlog. we normally have 10-20 of each spec of rim on the shelf but these evaporated in a few hours of sale starting! The other specs of wheels are all instock so most shipped next working day.

We were having a tech issue with the website, so we had to doublecheck the spec of lots of wheels with customers to prevent the wrong things getting sent out. the web guys are fixing this currently and it unfortunately caused a backlog of work for the guys in the office who were working physically as hard as they could. We had several customers sending tens of emails a day over the weekend when we were shut which wasted yet more time and delayed everyones responses, ill apolagise for them as well. We are only a small company doing things differently from the mega corporate VC funded discount boxshifters, so we dont have a callcentre with 50 staff 24/7, sorry.

I know there are people who have held a grudge for nearly a decade in some cases on this forum. Note that only one side of the story keeps getting repeated in these cases, so i will leave people to read into things with a pinch of salt. I gave up on responding years ago, and focus on looking after our customers and making stuff in the UK.

I think that 99% of people will be very happy with their wheels. We appreciated the few people who sent words of encoragement at this busy time. I apolagise again to everyone for the couple of days delay on replys and wheelset deliveries.

if anyone has any questions please let me know,

Neil - Superstar Components

I ordered a green oval Hope 30t in Boost and received a non-boost. Sorted painlessly, with only Xmas holidays slowing things down, and will totally use them again.

" I gave up on responding years ago,"

Not before you slagged of competitor products under an alias 😜

TBh I have bought loads of stuff from them and have never had a problem. Mistakes always happen. A few days wait after New Year is not the end of the world OP needs to cool his jets.

For balance have ordered a couple sets of wheels (including in the recent sale) and other orders over the past five years and have always been really pleased. Thought I had an issue with the first set of wheels and sent an email and got a helpful swift reply and offer to sort. Turned out it was my error anyway! I would definitely use them again, and have been impressed at how they have branched their offering out over the years. Still miss their brake pads though although appreciate they've moved on!

Original pads have got so much cheaper now its hard to be sad about not getting cheap knock offs now. OE ones are so much better.

I've been very happy with the products I've purchased from them (a n/w chainring for me then one for my son, brake hoses, and other bits), but I have found their communication wanting.
I know how frustrating it can be when you've ordered something that you're relying on for a ride and it either doesn't come on time or it's faulty!
I hope you give them another chance after this...

Slight tangent, what's the current thoughts on Superstar Kevlar versus Uberbike Race Matrix? SS still have pads for my brakes in stock so thinking of grabbing some

I wouldnt trust anyone to build a wheel for me.

best way is to buy the parts and assemble the wheel your self - then pay a local shop or mechanic to dish/tension it.

this way you can lube the spoke threads with the correct lube and know its a bonza job.

Afterall, the first thing you will do when you get a new wheel is balance it, right?

I have done 3 wheels like this and have refurbed 6 Crossmax Wheels this way.

Sometimes its the only way you can get what you want - in this case I wanted a V brake UST 26" rear wheel.

Funnily enough fotorat I normally do build my own. I bought theirs as the 40% off made them super cheap- which I guess caused half the issues in the first place with so many people ordering them.

I wouldnt trust anyone to build a wheel for me.
best way is to buy the parts and assemble the wheel your self – then pay a local shop or mechanic to dish/tension it.

So you're giving the wheel to a shop to sort out the most important part of the build. Any monkey can put the bits in the right place!

also I normally drop a spot of 3in1 on every nipple when i get new wheels so that solves that...
Balance? What? HOw?

Personally I would have no qualms about buying a set of wheels from SS.

I was/am skint though so couldn't take advantage of the deal.😋

Balance? What? HOw?

Of course not. Round enough is round enough for bicycle wheels. Check the spokes every so often and give it a quick belt with a hammer (spoke key) if it's wobbly but who balances bike wheels? The tyre and tube/sealant'd chuck it straight back out.

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I wouldnt trust anyone to build a wheel for me.

best way is to buy the parts and assemble the wheel your self – then pay a local shop or mechanic to dish/tension it.

Don't get this. You've just contradicted yourself in the space of two sentences, as the bit that defines the longevity and strength of the wheel is not the lacing (unless you completely screw it up of course!), but the tensioning process. Also, most LBS or bike mechanics do wheel building / repair as one of many services they offer and are unlikely to produce wheels to the same consistency as a dedicated wheel-builder (although obviously, YMMV).

FWIW, if you're going to the faff of sourcing the bits and assembling the wheel, you might as well learn how to tension and true the wheel too. It's not hard, although it can be time consuming if you are inexperienced, but there's no magic involved. Be systematic (Musson's book helps here) and take things steady and you'll produce a wheel that's every bit as good as one a shop will produce...and you can bore your mates stupid with tales of your homemade wheels 🙂

(Source: me, (very) amateur wheel builder, who can now claim that 75% of the regular use wheels were built by me in the garage and, despite my son's best efforts, none have required more than a tweak in many hundreds of miles of use)

y'all need to check who's posting prior to responding...

Thought I'd order another set of wheels with their bargain £100 offer, whilst I wait for my original wheels to be re-laced with the correct spokes and nipples. This time they have turned up with the wrong freehub on ... great service, not 🙁

Mistakes happen. Now see how they respond and judge.

Lightning does strike twice GeForce...

'Send the freehub back and we'll send you a replacement when we receive it back' ... So that's 4 visits to the post office (the first 2 DPD return shops wouldn't accept the wheels as they were too big, so had to go to the depot 20 miles away!), with no gesture of goodwill.

It's a 1 star rating from me! Shame it's so hard to support uk manufacturing companies when they are so incompetent.

That's unfair, it's not totally incompetence on their part.
They don't really give a shit either.

GeForce Junky

Subscriber
‘Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back

Ok, that's ****. They have messed up your orders twice and won't even send you a freehub until you send the old one back??!!

Isn't it a small family run business trying to be a "bit different" from the rest?

They should be all over complaints like this on a public forum. "Keep the freehub, we'll send the right one,our apologies."

There are mistakes and there is bloody minded "couldn't care less" mistakes. This is the later. 👎

Avoid Super Star seems to be the moral here. So much for their mission statement BS on their website.

Shame it’s so hard to support uk manufacturing companies when they are so incompetent

Don they manufacture in the UK? EDIT I see they assemble wheels tho 🙂

Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back

That's just pants. FFS, just send the right part out and wait for the wrong one to arrive back in the post.

That's what they did when they sent me the wrong axle width on a wheel one time, but they seem a bit more stretched on the CS front now.

Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back

That’s just pants. FFS, just send the right part out and wait for the wrong one to arrive back in the post.

That's totally unrealistic for an online business - I guarantee you'd end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.

In situations like the one described, if it were our fault, I would usually reimburse the customer for the return postage and knock off the original postage, as a gesture of goodwill. Sending out a replacement before receiving the original back is generally not an option. People can be incredibly dishonest/lazy.

As an example, a customer recently kicked off about not receiving something within the 2-3 days we quoted. I refunded him, then shortly after I did that he emailed to tell me it had arrived. I asked if he could reiumburse us but he's been strangely silent for the last 10 days, so has effectively got £160 worth of our products for free. Surprised people can be so unethical.

The moral of the story is that it's very easy to throw your toys out of the pram with online companies, but in most cases they're just trying to make a living and do as good a job as they can.

JP

jjprestidge

That’s totally unrealistic for an online business – I guarantee you’d end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.

Ordinarily I would totally agree. However As they got 2 consecutive orders wrong for the op I think that would call for going just that little bit further for him if I were running super star.

As it is, this thread will be sitting there in search results showing poor CS from super star when it could have shown a busy company going out of its way to rectify a mistake it made on 2 orders. One right after the other.

I guess I could be accused of throwing my toys out of the pram but I don't think the op can. He seems to have been far more obliging than super star have in all fairness.

That's my take on it all anyway.

Perhaps use your local bike shop?

"davosaurusrex

Subscriber

Slight tangent, what’s the current thoughts on Superstar Kevlar versus Uberbike Race Matrix? SS still have pads for my brakes in stock so thinking of grabbing some"

I'd have the kevlars. I really liked the racematrixes when they worked, better than the kevlars, but then I had them go all weird and inconsistent out in the alps so they ended up in the bin. kevlars went in and no issues for the rest of the week. But the racematrixes were damn good at first.

I'm reasonably sure the uberbike kevlars are the same pad, and probably the same pad elsewhere too. Uberbike haven't exactly covered themselves in glory either, I'd sooner go with SS personally.

Hello sorry that you have been impacted by a mis pack twice. Due to the offers we have been inundated by crazy demand, so a couple of mispacks went out last week. As you have said we have rectified the problem in a fair and efficient way.

As you have an anonymous profile I can’t tell who you are to look into your problem.

I appreciate the feedback from everyone commenting, I can see the sentiment but I’ll explain why we have this process for rectifying issues. Firstly from past experience where we have gone out of our way to help by shipping an item before a return, in the majority of cases people just don’t bother holding their side of the deal. This just means all of our honest customers end up footing the bill with higher prices.

Second as we aren’t making a huge margin (or any on the clearance stuff) we don’t have money to burn in extravagant public marketing gestures. The people who are doing this are already charging you 2-3 times more for the exact same product than we do. so you have already paid in advance for your spares and service which you probably aren’t going to need...

So I’ll apologise again. Dave is on it sorting your return. Over 250 pairs of wheels built and shipped this week with only a couple of mistakes. We aim for zero but we aren’t Amazon with robotic warehousing we are just humans.

Neil Superstar

That’s totally unrealistic for an online business – I guarantee you’d end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.

I disagree. I run an online business (much smaller than Superstar mind and the average sale is ~£50) and if I bugger up I'll send the right part out or correct my mistake FOC and wait for the wrong part to arrive back. The majority or people, when treated with a bit of respect and trust, will do the right thing in my experience, but your mileage obviously varies. If I was SS I'd have just sent the right part out and waited for the wrong one to arrive back. If it didn't, I'd chalk it up to experience and move on. I get that buying stock in and not making much on it can cause problems though.

edit- I availed myself of the clearance wheel offer last night- decent rims on decent hubs that'll fit anything for £100 per pair? Really? Go on then.

I don't understand why more companies don't offer to send out replacements before receiving the old one back on the condition that the customer provides billing details and agrees to be billed if the first one is not received back in a defined time period. I'm happy to agree to that when offered and it's always gone smoothly.

We do in a way offer this, but you can’t just keep people’s data and bill them, infact we never know what the customers payment details are. So Just order the item online and send the other back for a refund. It’s usually suggested by customer service as an option in most contacts but depends on what the problem is and if we need to look at it first.

The reason we usually want the item back to inspect first in some cases is to double check that the solution solves the customers problem.

Really genuinely we want to help people as quickly as possible. Hence why we have standard contact and return processes.

Neil Superstar

The freehub is on it's way back, thankfully I'm not in a huge rush so it not much of a problem. The most annoying thing is the DPD issue, they don't state on their website that only depots accept larger parcels, might be worth adding to your email if you send customers a return label via DPD. Two wasted trips to the two nearest collection shops was pretty annoying!

My refund landed on my card yesterday.

17 days since I ordered the wheels originally I can now afford to order some from elsewhere.

I use superstar a lot along with friends and have always had fantastic service even when it's been a warranty claim.
Imo they make the best pedals and I actually admire Neil and what he's achieved .
Things break people make mistakes sometimes he tells people how it is under pressure but he's human and selling bike parts .
He's invested in what he believes in UK made .

Yes he probably likes trump and his favourite meal is a frey bentos and probably has a series link for naked attraction set up but Jesus last time I checked he hadn't killed anyone .

Pretty sure not killing someone is low down on the list of the main tick list of running a successful business that people rate. In fact I doubt its even on the list.

Not annoying your customers to the point they talk about it together on the internet affecting future sales should be pretty high though.

It was a tonque in cheek comment .
This forum is mainly full of negativity so I'm just balancing it out with my experience.
Good luck getting sorted but I think ss explanation is perfectly understandable imo .