1970 Barracuda Go-Wing Install

(Reply from First Place Auto Products to my Comments on their Service)

As a part of my web site detailing how I installed a First Place Auto Products (FPAP) Go-Wing on my 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, I mentioned how my trunk lid did not match up with the instructions provided and I approached them at their booth at Carlisle to hopefully get a little advice, where I was completely blown off. Naturally, this was very dissapointing to me, and I expressed my displeasure and related my experience on my web site. In September of 2004, someone from FPAP saw this and contacted me via e-mail. I never did get back to FPAP to reply to their e-mail, I just got busy doing other things and forgot about it, and have just now stumbled across it again nearly 3 years after the fact while cleaning out my inbox. Since so much time has passed, I didn't think it was worthwhile to send a reply, but figured that in the interests of fairness, I would include it here, along with a few comments. If you haven't already read my original comments on my experience, you can do so here.

The e-mail I received on 9/28/04 is as follows:

Jon,

In surfing the web tonight, I noticed the press you gave us. Please allow me to opportunity to make some comments and share some feedback.

I'm sincerely sorry that you had a bad experience with our company. I apologize for this and I wish you had brought it to our attention sooner as we do indeed offer service after the sale. We are commonly providing mounting advice to callers well after midnight our time! I truly believe we have among the best of reputations in the industry; as far as I know, there are very few companies outside of the catalog retailers that even provide the 100% money back guarantee that we do.

One thing that I did notice in your article is that you purchased the wing in its basic form, that is, not as a complete assembly with the original style under deck bracketry, etc. Had you chosen the "complete kit" (at approx. additional cost of $50) installation would likely have gone more smoothly as use of the original style bracketry and the original placement instructions (included in complete kits) would have been a great aid. When buyers purchase the basic wing kit and choose not to purchase the bracketry, our response when asked about how to mount is not much beyond the "good luck" you apparently received. There's simply no good advice we have for circumventing the use of the original bracketry beyond advising the purchaser to somehow transfer the load to the bottom panel of the deck lid. (Of course, if a buyer is not happy with that, he's welcome to return it or not purchase in the first place.)

I want to congratulate you on one of the best installs I've seen w/o use of the bracketry. Great job! And again, I'm sorry that you had a bad experience with us and I hope we have the opportunity to demonstrate our true service level to you in the future.

We really do care.

Best regards,
Greg Wurgler
Business Development
First Place Auto Products
My comments/response to FPAP's e-mail:

This certainly was a nice reply, although one part of it is incorrect - Greg said that he noticed that I had purchased the wing in its basic form without the mounting kit, but that is incorrect. I did mention on my web site that I had the mounting instructions, and if you look on the page, you can see me holding the FPAP brackets up to my deck lid to compare them. So, its not like I didn't spend the extra money for the install kit and then railed on the company when they wouldn't help me to figure out how to install it. I did in fact buy the mounting hardware.

With that correction made, the rest of the e-mail is certainly cordial, and Greg seems to indicate that service after the sale is something that the company is usually good at. That wasn't my experience, but then again my only experience was that one contact at Carlisle, and there was only one crotchety old dude manning the booth at the time, so it might be that one guy was having a bad day or is just a jerk. Obviously, I held that against the entire company since he was in fact their representative, but perhaps that is somewhat less than just. At any rate, in the interests of fairness, since the company (or one of the company's representatives anyway) did contact me, I thought I would post what they said and whomever stumbles across this can make up their own mind.
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