LeatherUp.com - Horrible Customer Service

[Croz]

I used to be a huge fan of LeatherUp.com. I've spent hundreds with them in the past year on jackets, boots and other accessories. I've recommended them to friends and they've bought hundreds in gear from them.

But about 40% of good customer service is getting the order right and getting it shipped fast. They have that nailed.

The other 60% is how you respond when something doesn't go 100%. And they failed that miserably, IMO. My wife ruined a pair of boots last weekend on my exhaust pipe. We ordered a new set of nice Xelement boots from LeatherUp and they shipped right away. When we got the boots, we discovered that they must run about a full size big. They were huge on her feet. We have a toy run coming up on Sunday, so we needed boots right away. I was willing to pay for overnight shipping for a new set, and then send back the other boots, but LeatherUp says they have a 1-3 day processing time for orders and we had about a 30% chance that even with overnight shipping, that we wouldn't have them by Sunday.

So I decided I'd call customer support and see if there was some way to expedite the shipping time so I could be certain that overnight would get me the new boots in time.

I called. Now, I wasn't asking for free overnight shipping. I wasn't asking for a discount. I wasn't asking for free shipping to return the other boots. I just was asking that the 1-3 day order time would ship in the 1 day, instead of 3.

So I reached a man in customer service and explained my problem. He responded with an obviously canned response, "Our orders take 1 to 3 days.." I said I knew that, but wondered if there was some way to expedite it in the warehouse so it shipped in 1 day. Got the same canned response. Asked again, and basically got a "no" and the same canned response.

So I asked to talk to a supervisor. He told me he was the supervisor. I asked to speak to his boss. He said he didn't have one. I was getting irritated and said if he's not the CEO of LeatherUp, he has a boss. Could I speak to that person? He said no, that his boss doesn't take phone calls from customers. How about his email address so I can send an email? No, he doesn't take emails from customers. I can only reach him by snail mail. I asked for that address. He read it so fast, it wasn't possible to write it down. I had to have him repeat it a few times to get all of it. Then I hung up.

On the chance I just reached this years recipient of "A-Hole of the Year" my wife called and got someone else.

This new woman was nicer, and put her on hold to find out if the customer service manager would take our call. He wouldn't. Told us he wasn't reachable by phone or email, only physical mail. She also reiterated the canned response when we asked about expediting our order.

So I went from being a HUGE fan of LeatherUp.com, and someone who sang their praises to my friends to someone who will NEVER do business again with them and will do everything I can to make sure no one I know ever does business with them again.

Nice job, guys.

[dt]

Ugh! Most online places go out of their way to help out a loyal and continuously returning customer. With the level of competition for online motorsports apparel and accessories it's stupid not to. The "attitude" they displayed in this instance is unbelievable. You don't have to do a lot of googling to see that Leatherup and Myleather (same place) have a lot of customer service complaints. They might lead the whole industry in that.

However....

Not sure I'd cut them off. At the end of the day, they are what they are...a distributor of really low end and really cheap motorsports apparel...operative word "cheap." Also, that Xelement line is kind of hit or miss from a quality perspective...but again it's cheap and they do take returns; just gotta play by their rules.

I've bought Xelement stuff from Leatherup that was pure crap and sent it back. I've also bought some Xelement stuff that I really like a lot. I bought an Xelement Knockoff of the armored Icon Regulator Vest. I think I paid $50, but it's on sale at LU for $25! The regulator vest is in closeouts at DK at the moment for $150 but back when I got the knockoff that thing was like $250...and I got something close for $50 that wasn't available anywhere else. It's no Icon product but I really like that Xelement vest; wear it all the time in the summer. I have other examples too.

I guess the point is...there's no excuse for bad CS, and certainly attitudes...but, if we're getting usable stuff at Leatherup at super low prices, maybe we just decide to not like them as a company, continue to buy their stuff, but pocket the difference and put the $$ toward cool stuff for our motorcycles.

[v65infla]

I have just recently learned that a huge number of these cs rep's are answering the phone from home and if you take the time to complain their contract will most likely be terminated.  That being said if I really needed those boot's I would have just ordered another pair, had them over nighted and the dealt with just returning the others for a refund instead of an exchange.  The only issue I had with LU was the same thing, an exchange on a jacket that didn't fit correctly.  The initial purchases are quick but their exchanges, not so much.  Bill is correct, you have to deal with online stores not expecting too much and seeing them for what they are.  Cheap and in most cases good enough but not always perfect. 

As a side note, I can tell you that I got my rear tire at the dealership when I was up there with Gary for like $90 off of "retail" and when I commented that was a really fair price the part's guy said they didn't have a choice because the online retailers were killing them.