THSCC Forums

Wednesday I noticed a crack at a seam in the Neon's plastic radiator top, and so I made a few calls to local shops. Advice: replace it, and they'd have to order the part. ~$200.

I noticed radiator.com kept coming up in the BellSouth directory list, so checked out their site. It brought up a "live chat" with the fastest-typing sales rep I'd ever seen. It was a more productive chat session than I've had with most sales reps, then the guy said he wanted to call me to work through a fitment issue, as there were something like 5 radiators available for that year.

About 10 seconds later my phone rings, and it's a sales rep. Not the same guy, but I remarked to this fellow that the other guy must've had a big set of text options at the ready to be able to type so fast. Well it turns out the first rep was actually a computer program! Of course I'd already started to suspect that, but it really seemed to understand my input and asked good followup questions.

Anyway, the new sales rep still needs to figure out which radiator I need, and was able to give me a simple measurement to make that'd yield the answer. Depending on the measurement, the part would be $135 - $150. Other shops needed some part number off the fan shroud, which was not visible with the rad in the car.

I talked with the guy a bit- apparently they do most of their business selling to radiator shops, but they do the website and call center for consumers too. I think he said they had 300 people in the call center? Some big number, anyway.

So yesterday I call back with the measurement, and I needed the $135 part. They had it at a warehouse in Greensboro, so they waived the shipping fee. Today it was waiting for me when I got home from work. It was very well packed, and (key) it was the right part. It even came with a little hardware kit (a small bracket and some snap-in captive nuts).

Price to my door- $144 including tax, fast delivery. I'm a happy radiator.com customer.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

That is very impressive. Might need to get up with them as I am looking a AC fitment rad for the Scirocco.

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RedLanternRacing, builders of the fastest cars in last place.
Success is not an option.
1981 Scirocco, "Vera"

Oh, I forgot to mention 1 other nice thing. When I called back the next day with the measurement, a sales rep picked up right away- no phone tree. The caller ID brought up my record automatically, so he had all my information, notes from the conversation with the last sales rep, etc, right in front of him. No 20 questions, no rehashing the same old stuff, very nice.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

Yet an even larger company that has to deal with a much higher volume of customers like DirecTV can't seem to get this right. Amazing.


--Donnie

Maybe if everyone in the club buys radiators from radiator.com, they can make enough profit to buy Time Warner cable (or my credit card company) and use that system for their phone customer service.

I HATE when the automated program forces you to enter your phone number, billing address, account number, mother's maiden name, etc- then when you finally get through to a live person they ask "may I have your account number please?" !!!!!!!! Next time I'm gonna just reply- "OK Skippy, it's right there on your monitor- why don't YOU tell ME what it is???"


Bret.

That is much better than my expierences with Dell computer's "Please to be helping you" technical support.

I started with a simple question. I had lost the certificate of authenticity for my windows XP upgrade. Am I dead in the water? After 20 min. of getting my problem through to Hodgy on live chat, they told me that I did not need the COA. They told me how to bypass the initial querey for the COA information. I followed the directions and the upgrade wiped out my hard drive before refusing to go any further without the COA information. The next day tech support called me back to ask how it went. I told them what had happened. The guy now says that his superviisor said I need the COA information and to call Microsoft. But of course Microsoft says to call Dell since the upgrade was obtained through them. I ended up having to go by XP from another source.

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George Bright Member # 141
One of the youngest of the old farts.
Yes I voted against you joining the club.

I think they ask for your number again because you have been on hold so long you could have had a brain hemmorage while being forced to listening to their hold message.

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George Bright Member # 141
One of the youngest of the old farts.
Yes I voted against you joining the club.