Dennis and Adam Quella

You are not the only one that has difficulty reaching them. I really have no advice other than to keep trying.

I try to remind myself that our vendors did not take college business courses and then research to find an unfilled market. They sort of wound up being vendors without having planned to do so. Thus, their business sense is often lacking.

Larry

Hi Larry,

Just get a reply from Adam , problem solved.

talking about myself  , I am also not a computer guy , but whit the modern comunication tools it's easy to send a reply.

it only takes a few seconds.

Simon

I just purchased an a/c fan shroud from Dennis and, as always, he was super helpful. If you do not get through right away, leave a message or send an email. Dennis is usually busy working in the shop and not able to take calls, but he will return calls if you leave a voice mail.

Wow. That wasn't nice:

"I try to remind myself that our vendors did not take college business courses and then research to find an unfilled market."

Their business sense is often lacking.

While I cannot speak for the other vendors, I personally graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelors of Science in Education (albeit not business) & became a teacher. Why would you make such an unfair judgement like that, not knowing?

With regard to Dennis & Adam, I've never experienced even the slightest difficulty reaching either of them. They pick up their cell phones when their not 'on the clock' as we say.....

I’m glad your experience with Dennis and Adam is satisfactory. However, as anyone who reads this forum and the others knows, the service from them is certainly not the same as it was when Becky was in the office to answer phone calls as they occurred. Before Becky there was Rae, who like Becky was pleasant, knowledgeable and nearly always accessible  

likewise, I’m glad you have a college degree. But it appears it did not specifically prepare you for running a business, which was the gist of my previous comments.

as for our vendors and their business sense, I offer the following observations:

phone calls that go unanswered or returned.

websites that are never updated

websites that are basically nonexistent

websites designed in another decade, perhaps a different century, and never up-graded

online ordering protocols that offer the bare minimum.

mystery shipping charges that are only revealed upon receipt of the parts ordered

Never any indication of inventory on hand, but vendors will be happy to process your credit card charge and then contact you to let you know they are waiting for the parts  for which you just paid to be delivered from their subcontractor, delivery date uncertain

Etc

I contend lapses in quality customer service are in the category of “not nice” much more so than any comments I may make regarding that service

Larry,

Just a friendly reminder that the De Tomaso community is very small relative to many other marques. This means specialty De Tomaso vendors have small sales volumes and so the resulting cash flows cannot support a lot of bells and whistles. Personally, I am grateful for the dedicated and highly knowledgeable vendors who, despite the small market and perhaps at the expense of updated state-of-the-art web sites, still manage to keep us supplied with virtually any and all the parts we need.

I have a '69 T-Bird of which some 50,000 were produced. Despite this, there are only a handful of specialty parts vendors, and parts availability is poor to nonexistent. I would gladly accept some lapses in customer service in exchange for some of the parts that I have been hunting for years.

In the DeTomaso community, we are extraordinarily fortunate, when you think about it.

Have to agree with lf-tp2511. Small business can't have too many excuses. It owns you, you don't own it. That means you have to do it all, including answering emails 24-7, design, and maintain your own web site, and a lot of other things that don't cost anything except time which you don't put a price tag on as a small business owner.   

As far as Pantera vendors, most of the time I am pleased, other times I'm shocked at how they could push a product out the door and say it fit's or works when it doesn't come close. Yes, grateful for them, but that doesn't give them a free pass to drop basic business practices.

Lastly as far as Dennis goes, I've enjoyed conversations with him. A nicer guy you could not meet. He's been at it a long time, rich in technical knowledge, and mechanical ability, don't know how much longer he'll keep going, but when he does decide to pack it in, it will be the biggest loss the Pantera community could suffer.

Hopefully, he is planning for that day, is training a qualified, interested and engaged successor, has documented his supply chains and processes, and will sell his business in a manner that is profitable to both he, and the person who will carry it forward!