NM, I see the robot reference now.
If you don’t have a bike, why’d you call Schwinn?
Is that Robert’s less accomplished brother?
Ah, someone said this topic had been bumped recently. Thought I’d look in. (There’s a reason.)
This thread was one of the great disappointments of my long tenure in Adams-land. Yeah, it was posted in the Pit so there’s absolutely no basis for bitching about what was said, but… the careful reader will note that there’s two narratives here. One is the fairly honest and complete tale of shitty CS I tried to tell; the other is the utterly arbitrary Pit-shitting interpretation that “I must have…” and “They must have…” and how it was all really my fault.
Okay, whatever, long ago and far away and in the Pit. I can only hope some of the original revisionists have learned to read for comprehension. (You’re excused for well-established reasons, Drunky.)
I thought I’d nail it shut with some belated notes on aspects I didn’t bother to add in at the time. Readers may judge things as they like, and being the Pit, will.
[ol]
[li]The cheap floormats I put in the car lasted through Daughter #3, Son #2 and Daughter #4 before the car was traded in for something newer.[/li][li]When I helped Daughter #3 buy a new car here in Colorado, the first thing I did was look up WeatherTech mats for it. They turned out to be over $150, and while I would have loved to gift her with them it was out of proportion for someone who can now buy her own quality car accessories; I gave her another set of the $25 ones from Sam’s Club and they are working just fine.[/li][li]One of the things the bleacher crowd here ripped me for was not accepting WeatherTech’s make-good offer. If I didn’t say it clearly, I felt a $100+ set of mats was greatly excessive for the problem; I didn’t kick them in the shins to get freebies, and no longer really needed them for that car. I wanted them to fix their grievous CS problems, not pay me some settlement.[/li][li]When this thread came to WeatherTech’s attention, I ended up corresponding directly with the big man himself, the owner who appears in all those splashy four-page ads to tell us how great and all-American and dedicated WeatherTech is. We had a longish, civil exchange in which I made it clear that my concern was that their CS, given several chances, fell way short of the image he was trying to project, and he might want to take some steps before the reaction was more than one disgruntled loudmouth on an obscure forum. He conceded the whole issue and assured me training and a few good ass-kicks were underway.[/li][li]He insisted on making-good to the extent of refunding the rest of my shipping cost - I had paid $15 for delivery and $15 for return, and they’d refunded one of them. He insisted on repaying the other $15 and, since I didn’t need any other mats, sending a cargo mat for the wagon. I said sure; it seemed the gracious thing to do even though I didn’t really want the mat.[/li][/ol]
**Ready, kids?
…he failed to ever follow up on either promise.**
I never bothered to add this exchange to the thread here; it just would have been my fault again, somehow and I was sick of the whole matter. But process this: my whole involvement started because a company that makes world-class products and crows about how great it is in around 20 pages a month of advertising (in the car magazines I read, alone) had basically crashed and burned on a simple CS problem. It gets all the way to the modestly famous owner. He vows to fix the problem… and then forgets to actually complete the fix, which kind of nails the lid shut on my assessment of their CS. The boss is often the source of such failures; you’re welcome to argue otherwise here.
Disappointing, but I will buy WT mats for my next car, and the next, and continue to recommend them highly to anyone who wants the best. The two cars that had them back when this was current still have the same sets - a little worn but perfectly functional after 11 years of fairly hard service. But their appalling customer service, all the way to the tippy-top of the polished image, will always bother me.
Anyway - after nearly 30 years (when did a.f.c-a found?) on Usenet and as a charter-era member here on SDMB, this is probably my last post in this pocket universe. No hard darts; just moved on. Saying so is more the reason I came back to post all this than any of the largely irrelevant crap above.
It was fun, Dopers.
ETA: dammit, those kids deserve names.
Well, he was probably waiting for you to update this thread (and maybe the title) after he spent the time to hear you out. But since you didn’t bother, neither did he.
Oh man. You know that relief you all just inexplicably felt? That was your sense of creeping unease, caused by Amateur Barbarian’s unexplained absence, experiencing a sudden cure through his long overdue explanation. The dark clouds of our collective sense of anxiety have lifted – he’s all right! AB, thank you so, so much for coming back to say goodbye and soothe away the worry we felt for you daily.
I’m so glad someone summoned you by bumping this thread four months ago…
This is a pretty long saga over something that you put your possibly muddy, snowy, and/or wet shoes on.
Always is such a final word. Say rather that fate had marked you and WeatherTec floor mats to set sail for different shores, journey through other lands, and yet the same stars which drove you apart may see meet you again in some distant place under different skies, both of you older, wiser and more ready to forgive, and then the healing can truly begin. Let yourself be free.
At the risk of extending this thread further, hopefully you did see where he said he still plans to buy their product - their crappy customer service notwithstanding, he likes the floor mats.
Who are you again?
So you’ve turned pro?
I noticed you were gone and wondered if you were ok. Thanks for the update and best wishes.
I still want to know what Pippers’ Schwinn problem was.
I’ve read through this entire thread and decided to go to the weathertech website to check out the floor mats for the vehicles in question.
If you look up 2003 Outback a message pops up stating"all weather floor mats are not available" for the vehicle and you can look at another product. You have to click on the link to be redirected. When you get to the other page, it states, at the top of the page “semi universal trim to fit” mats. There is even a video to show you how to trim the mats. These are the mats that that the OP bought. If he had the Legacy version of the Outback, they are the correct mats, but not custom fit. These are also the same mats listed under 2003 Legacy.
The argument he is presumable making is that the mats on the Impreza are what fits his vehicle. If this is the case, he owned the Impreza version of the Outback and purchased the wrong mats. The Legacy and Impreza are two different vehicles, fitted floor mats for one wouldn’t fit the other. Regardless of which vehicle he had, it was HIS mistake and HIS fault.
He wrote an email to corporate, and then wrote a second email a few days later saying that the first email was ignored. He stated in the original post that he received a response five days after the first email. They didn’t “ignore” the first email, it took five days to respond, that’s normal. They probably did take the time to check out his complaints and found that he was wrong.
He then calls a customer service representative who he states is rude, but we only have his word. He once again makes his (wrong) claim that the website has the mats mixed up. He wants the customer service representative to pay for his return shipping and to swap out the Legacy mats for the Impreza mats, which cost twice as much. The representative offers to accept a return.
He comes on this website, and by his own admission several others, to complain. Weathertech comes in on this site and others and reaches out to him, and he decides that it’s too late and ignores them.
He sends the mats back paying for the shipping both ways. The story would end here, but after getting ridiculed on here, he stated that he did reach out to Dan, and even talked to the CEO of the company. He was offered by the CEO the $100 mats for the Impreza but declines. What? If that is what you wanted the whole time you wouldn’t decline! He further states that he had been refunded one way of shipping, remember he originally stated that he was charged both ways after returning the mats. Seems fishy to me. He stated that the CEO agreed to refund the other shipping and failed to do so. I doubt that claim as well.
You posted a whopping two posts over 7 years ago and you come back to post this one…your third. Are you the CEO at Weathertech?
In 7 years I’m guessing the web site has changed.
I love Weathertech and own a full set of floor mats for my car. But I did have a bad experience once. I bought a cargo liner for my 2001 Toyota Echo and it didn’t even come close to fitting. And I didn’t make a mistake, they just didn’t have the right product.
But that thing is durable. I don’t have that car anymore but I still have the liner, I use it as a mat in my garage in front of my work bench. It’s the perfect shape for that. 
I didn’t follow this thread when it was new, but the fact that Weathertech reached out to the OP in this very thread is pretty damn cool.
I originally ended up here because I was looking to buy weather tech mats and I was checking out what people were saying online. I didn’t search the straight dope message boards, I did a Google search. You obviously didn’t check the other posts as they have nothing to do with weather tech.
I’m not the CEO of weather tech, I highly doubt that he would waste his time on here. Why would you even assume that I am the CEO? That’s a strange assumption.