CPTCO

I hope business owners are watching this thread. Bangastang has shown us exactly how NOT to conduct ourselves when it comes to customer service issues.
I understand (sort of) there concern, if Rick was acting hinky on the phone, maybe you get a little worried, but there is no fraud warning on the card, no other issues. Still, if you want to cancel the order, that's there prerogative.
The ONLY response to this forum thread that I would have seen as acceptable from Bangastang would have been something like, "We are sorry for the misunderstanding and hope to earn your business back in the future." Posting links to someone's mother's obituary? Talking about an old (no offense) man's credit limit? Completely inappropriate in my book. My guess is, no one who reads this thread will ever shop with Bangastang again.

aaquib1992

Wow, a business going on a public forum and posting personal information about a potential customer? I am pretty sure this breaks some forum rules first of all, and second, this is the sloppiest and most disgusting display of a grown man playing the finger pointing blame game.

If the mods are reading this thread, I don't think anyone would be against "Mr. Bangastang" getting permanently banned from the forum for breach of the rules/code of conduct. Absolutely disgusting.

Mr.Bangastang

Hi Rick,

This is Hendrix, the owner of Bangastang, and yes, I’d like to come out and say that this has been a very unfortunate incident. The problem we run into as a small business is that losses due to credit card fraud are put on the small business owner, not the person using the card nor the bank that issued it. It is almost impossible for us to recover funds from fraudulent transactions even when we ship to the verified address on file, use appropriate CVS security checks, and do everything to log IP addresses and similar, when all that has to happen is a buyer to issue a “chargeback” that they either did not receive their item, they didn’t order the item, or the item was incorrect. Once that occurs, the issuing bank will almost always side with the consumer, and the funds are taken back from the account, with very little recourse. Larger parts houses just normally chalk this up as a cost of doing business, but small businesses like ours simply can’t afford to lose funds sometimes months after the sale occurred when the bank finally decides to issue the chargeback.


That said, we have to always have our guard up, and even though the computers may be saying things are okay, our human “buffer” is our last line of defense to try and screen out these fraudulent transactions before they can bite us in the backside. In this particular case, it seems we might have been acting a little too conservatively due to the wording of the original conversations, but given the different states, addresses, etc… involved, we erred (incorrectly) on the side of caution and just refunded the transaction. Our sleuthing skills via the Internet only can take us so far, and for that, I do apologize.

Our decision to cancel your order was based on our conversation with our credit card processor when we informed them that a different phone number was given to use other than the one that they have on record and that someone other than the person the card was issued to placed the order they told us "do not ship the order and cancel the transaction". We would not be covered in case of fraud. We have to listen to our credit card processor regardless of what you may say.

A few months ago we were almost defrauded of $3,000.00 in wheels. The phone number that the customer gave us was to the Hilton hotel in Dallas. The address where the wheels were shipping to was in Florida. We contacted the local police department in the city and they dispatched an officer to the house, the residents at the house never placed the order and didn't own a Mustang. The officer explained to me that the purchaser probably had the house under watch to pick up the wheels since we would have sent them a tracking number and they would know what day the wheels would arrive. Once they got the wheels they would have issued a chargeback claiming they never ordered the wheels. They would have a $3,000 set of wheels and $3,000 cash in there pocket and we're out of $6,000.

Maybe you don't understand how bad credit card fraud and identity theft is in this country. If someone from China can hack into Sony Studios and get someone's emails and broadcast them why would we process a transaction when our credit card processor told us not to. Every week on the news it's reported that some BIG corporation is being hacked....Target, Defense Department, Health Care companies and people's personal information is stolen.

In Europe credit cards are now made with chips not magnetic stripes like here in the US. There are devices that people use that can scan your credit card while it's in your wallet and you have no idea it's been done. They then clone your card and make purchases and get cash advances and you don't know until your card is maxed out.

We’re sorry to have lost your business on this order, but returning you to your original state pre-transaction by giving you a full refund is the only solution we have to offer, which we already had done for you prior to this thread even starting.


Hendrix
Owner Bangastang

rzundel

Hendrix, I appreciate you taking the step to explain and own the decision you made regarding my order. I fully understand your concern regarding credit card fraud. I don't take this lightly. I support the small business owner and any illegal activity that cost the business owner money is a sad thing for this and any industry.

Another thing that cost a business owner money is poor business practices. What I am not seeing in any of your communication is your commitment to delivering high standards of excellence for your customers. As a consumer that has many choices of where to procure products, that is what we expect from any business we chose to do business with. Price, Products, Process and People are the four keys to any successful company.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see Bangastang thrive. You appear to put out a good product for those fortunate enough to receive it. That is one of the four P's mentioned above. Let's look at your other 3 P's.

Price. You are not the cheapest but probably fair. This is not a differentiator for you. In other words, doesn't help or hurt you.

Process. It appears to me based on all the complaints including mine this is one area you fall short. Poor communication, extended lead times on custom products, missing your delivery commitments, poor credit checking order management process, etc. are all examples of this.

People. This is a big one. People buy from those they trust and like. I think you are missing a big opportunity here. Right or wrong, James was flat out rude to me as your sales guy. Not professional. In my business I wouldn't tolerate this. Your lack of response when I tried to reach out to you as the owner is also not acceptable as a small business owner. Lack of trying to exceed the expectations of your customers is something I think you can work on.

Not trying to be harsh here but I truly do hope you take some of this to heart. This might help avoid the BBB complaints and negative forum chatter that has to be hurting your business financially. Or just think of the possibilities if you really got this dialed in. That is what I would love to see for you and/or anyone else trying to support our community of car guys/gals.

Success to you in the future.

Rick

BlindGUYnAR

Ok everyone has weighed in and told their sides. Apologies were rendered and seemingly accepted.

The OP could have used is own card, but hadn't had to in the past and wasn't told he needed to either. The business could have read some emails and done more before canceling the order, but in reality they likely thought they were doing your dad/themselves a favor by protecting all from fraud. They probably should have had the issuing bank call the holder to validate the transaction, but what's done is done.

More blame is likely on the business than the OP, but had this really been fraud you'd be buying the guy a case of beer right now.

As someone that recently had a lowlife file and recieve a tax refund fraudulently in my wife's name I have a unique perspective. The mess I am wading through now makes me wish everyone would do more to prevent fraud.

Reciting business/customer service 101 to the owner is a bit condescending to him in a public forum even if your intentions are good, but that just my opinion.

Since you felt jaded by the experience I can understand why you did it, but if it felt condescending to him as well then your message will have likely fell on deaf ears and your message ignored thereby defeating your purpose.

You could have IMed him the lesson since he's now a member here. I understand you felt compelled to educate him, but you could have just accepted his apology publicly and discussed the rest privately. Again that's just my opinion.

It feels like the horse is beat, dead, embalmed, buried, and prayed over at least twice at this point. I think professional phone calls could be used if any additional communication is required between the parties, but please continue on if warranted.

Mr.Bangastang

Hi Rick,

I've spoken to James and expressed to him that he should have handled the situation a lot better. He was concerned that I would come down on him hard if we had been defrauded and I would have.

Let me talk about our prices the vast majority of the products that we sell are made here in the US. All of the products that we make under the Bangastang name are made here in the US. We don't believe in taking our products offshore for production. We want to give people in this country the opportunity to make a living. We pay US wages to Americans for US made products that's one reason why our prices are higher. We use Spies Hecker paint to paint our products while others us cheap quality paint and clear, it makes a huge difference in quality. Spies Hecker paint cost twice the price of other paints on the market. We're also located in California, everything is higher in California as opposed to back east. We're mandated to use water borne paint in California by the EPA to cut down on VOCs in the air. When we changed over to water borne paint the cost for paint almost doubled as compared to solvent based paint. Europe has been using water borne paint for years and we're just catching up to them.

We haven't done as good as a job in terms of communication and we intend to improve. We receive a lot of orders for custom painted parts and sometimes we get behind. We don't want to rush orders because when we do stuff happens and the quality suffers. If a part comes out of paint and it doesn't pass our inspection it's done over, regardless to someone needing a part for a show. I can honestly tell you that we've had very few returns since we started in 2008 and that's because we believe that quality is #1.

I've attached some photos of the custom work that we've done and I'll stand behind our quality. We're not perfect and we'll try harder.

Best to you.
Hendrix
Owner-Bangastang

rzundel

BlindGUYnAR - Points well taken. Wasn't meant to be condescending but rather constructive.

Hendrix - I do hope you take this as constructive. Yes I am disappointed that our relationship had to begin and end this way. As long as you are committed to delivering excellence and improving the business practices that your customers are trying to share with you, I'm sure your business will thrive. You do put out nice work. Don't let this quality get diluted by poor execution. I would love to see the complaints minimized and your focus be on delivering innovative high quality products for this community. I love the enthusiasm of the Mustang community and equally important are the companies that support our passion. Best of success.

ThaiCobra

Derf00

Good point on the activation but, they don't require any real validation.

Last 4 digits of your social or your billing address or if caller ID shows the number as that matching what's on the account, even worse, what are the security numbers on the back of the card...most are even automated so again, defrauding a credit card company on a renewal is very easy.

Regardless, it looks like this was resolved so

ODDYSEY

I agree, it looks resolved so let's keep it handled. Thanks.