Danchuk good and bad

I wanted to post about two separate customer service experiences I had with defective Danchuk parts in the past year or so.

About a year ago I ordered a pair of Danchuk taillights for my 56 Nomad along with parking lights and some other parts. I ordered through one of their dealers, not from Danchuk directly. When I got the taillights, I noticed that the driver's side had a couple of 'dimples' in the bezel from over-buffing or sanding. Also, the chrome was peeling and blistering on the back of one of the parking lights. I contacted the dealer, who told me "none of these parts is perfect" which kind of upset me, as if I was supposed to accept what I considered defective parts. This was in stark contrast to my experience with the dealer's dad, who apparently passed the business on to his son. So I contacted Danchuk and they agreed to replace everything I wasn't happy with with no problems. I was even allowed to replace just the bezel on the taillight, not the whole assembly. I was afraid I'd have some different defect if I replaced both lights, or one entire light. The experience with customer service was great, and I got nice replacement parts. It seems like they went out of their way to help me that time.

Fast forward a few months and I ordered a whole bunch more parts from a different Danchuk dealer. Most parts were pretty nice, some better then originals. While not perfect, they were acceptable. However, the 56 hood bird I ordered had very noticeable "dip" in the top of it right where the stud boss is. It was like they had too much shrinkage in that spot, or tried to sand out a defect. This is a part that's very visible, and tops the hood off like a crown. So imo it had to be nearly perfect.

I contacted the SAME person who was so helpful before, sent a picture of the defects, and she said that replacing the part would be no problem. She said she needed my customer number to get a return tag for me, but I told her that I had never ordered directly from Danchuk before, so she said my address and phone number would suffice. I waited a week for a return tag...got nothing so I sent another e-mail asking about it. I waited another week and still no answer so I called. The receptionist said I would get a response to my e-mail, and for some reason the person I wanted to talk to wouldn't talk to me. I never got a reply, so I e-mailed again, and finally got a return tag (still no communication whatsoever). So I boxed the part up and shipped it back. A couple of weeks went by and I got nothing. So I e-mailed them again, and still got no reply. The past few e-mails I copied their sales rep too, but he wouldn't reply either. Finally I got a call from a guy in sales or shipping asking where I bought the part...so I gave him the dealer's name. He said he saw the defect on the part, and it would be no problem replacing it. About six weeks had gone by so far. I ended up sending at least two more e-mails, about a week apart, before my replacement part showed up. It's like they forgot about it after they called. Not once in all of that time would the person who was so helpful a few months prior reply to me via e-mail or return my call.

I don't know what happened in those months from the first issue to the second, but it was like night and day. Jeckel and Hyde. Luckily, I have most of the parts I need for my car now, and if I need more I'll consider buying from Trim Parts or someone else if I can. Danchuk really soured me on their piss poor customer service the second time around. Maybe the first time was the anomaly.

Same here. I think when a company gets that big, they don't care about individuals anymore.

I've had nothing but bad luck with Danchuk, from over charging for shipping, parts that don't fit and bad chrome jobs. Do not recommend.

Danchuk has their own forum at trifive.com. It continually amazes me that they will let a problem posted go a quite long time before they make some kind of reply. And often it's a lame one. They are also quite arrogant when they do speak on their own forum. You'd think that an insider would tell them that saying nothing is usually better than what they put out.

As for the inconsistency, I'm thinking that the people that you dealt with are the rope in an internal Danchuk tug of war between those who want to do customer service correctly and the bean counter types.

Bottom line is they are like any other aftermarket car parts vendor, buy low sell high, most of their stuff is from China and they buy a lot from smaller companies that sell Chinese stuff. They make a few items here, very few. With that said, they could do better with customer service as that helps to mitigate the low quality Chinese issue. They do seem to fail with customer service very often yet they still manage a few "atta boys" at times also. Their management does come off as very arrogant, which usually trickles down to lower level employees.