Originally posted by MattHarrell:
Yeah, Eric will be really helpful until you want to return something that came with a serious defect. The rotors that came with my BAT Big Brake Kit were severely warped, and they (Eric was who I spoke with) would do nothing for me, except to tell me to go ahead and cut them. I will likely not be buying anything significant from BAT again.
In this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for needing to machine brand new rotors, especially if they were marketed as premium rotors. There are many things in the BAT catalog that I find very interesting, but they will not be getting my business until they do something to make amends with Matt. There are many things that he could do to help make up for this, the very least would be to give him credit for future purchases for the cost of machining the rotors. I don't know how much Matt paid to have them machined, but the common price if removed from the car and hand carried to an automotive machine shop is $15.00 a pair. Matt would have still been inconvienenced with doing his brake job twice but sometimes that is the price of DIY projects.
To help put this in perspective the Ford rotors have not needed to be machined when new for more years than I can remember (and that is more than a few). Ford is close to introducing Motorcraft rotors. They should be out in a month or two. They are behind the projected launch date because they are making sure that the quality control is where it should be. The vendor purchased new equipment to meet the volume anticipated for the contract and they are making sure that they will not be producing junk to try to keep up with demand. So far only two of the four work stations are in production and they want to build up the supply before releasing them.
The last set of new rotors that I saw installed on a Mystique last week had made in Germany stamped on the box. They will probably wear as fast as the other Contour / Mystique rotors (which I'm not happy with). The rotors on that Mystique had to be replaced because they were at minimum thickness and could not be safely machined any thinner. Being made in Germany is not all bad, as the rear rotors on Navagators are also made in Germany, but they are so hard that they are hard to machine and wear very little. I do hope though that the new Motorcraft rotors made here in the US for the Contour / Mystique will be made of better materials and not be as soft as the original equipment.
I guess that I have rambeled a bit. It does upset me that Eric has not done something for Matt to make things right. I hope that Eric makes an attempt to extend the olive branch and then concentrate on future business. It might help if someone let Eric know about the bad will that he has generated from this.
