Newstalgi Wheel

[Rreemo]

FYI - I used to post under the same username but haven't been on in a while, something happened and I had to re-register.

This is long, but worth the read if you are in the market for wheels.

I just went through a bunch of crap when I bought the wheels for my Chevelle...so I thought I'd share this experience.

I bought a set of 18" Billet Vintiques...a place called Newstalgia Wheel (www.newstalgiawheel.com) came highly recommended from a couple of other car guys. They are one of the few dealers that sell the billet version of the Wheel Vintiques wheels.

Nevertheless, I ordered them several months ago, they told me that my specific backspacing was made-to-order, so I was looking at 4-6 weeks on delivery. no prob, I could deal with that. On schedule, they show up about 5 weeks later....packaged like total crap! 2 of the boxes had only been taped with like two pieces of clear tape...about 6" long. Those 2 wheels were heavily damaged....they were dinged so badly that they prob wouldn't have even held air. The boxes weren't even the correct size, and there was not one bit of extra packing material used....wheels were just flopping around in the box.

I called them up to let them know, and at first, the guy tells me I need to call UPS and deal directly with them! Of course, I told him no way, they need to deal with this...he calls me back a little while later, and says that UPS will pick them up the next day. They did. I wait a few days, didn't hear anything, called them back and they said that they are shipping them out to CA to be repaired! No way, I told them I didn't pay $500 ea for repaired wheels...I paid for new wheels. At that point I started dealing with David Coker (also owns Coker Tire), he is the owner of Newstalgia Wheel. David was really cool, and tells me that they are not going to "fix" them, they are going to re-hoop both wheels (just re-using the center piece)...after he explained the process, I agreed that this was acceptable. However, he says I'm looking at another 3 weeks....not really acceptable, but they give me no other choice. Also - I had found out that these weren't drop shipped in the first place, they went from Wheel Vintiques to Newstalgia first, they inspected them, then sent out to me...so they are the ones that packaged them so poorly...and this also confirms that they were damaged between them and me.

Another 5 weeks later I finally get my wheels back...one looks perfect, but the other one was obviously a poor fix job...it was scraped on about half the wheel where they had obviously used some machine to straighten it out....it looked just like curb rash....it surely hadn't been re-hooped like I was promised.

So I call David back...I was pissed, but I still maintained my cool about it....after all, they had my money for just over 10 weeks, and I've still got 1 bad wheel....I've got a right to be angry, but even still, I was never an ******* to him. David says he'll work with me anyway that he can...including getting me a 5th wheel, and then just having this one for the trunk. Basically, he tells me just to figure out how I want him to take care of it, and he'll do it.

To keep this from getting any longer - the long and short of it is this....I took a few days to think about it, then elected to have the wheel repaired (repolished) locally at his cost - sent him an email to let him know that I would just take a refund (one of the options he offered earlier) for the difference. However, now he has changed his tune, and says that my only option is to send the wheel back to California (again) to be repaired, with at least a 3 week turn around - that's all he'll do for me...he will not discount this wheel, cover the local repair cost, or anything like that...basically, it either goes back to Wheel Vintiques for repair, or I get nothing!

At this point, I'm done screwing with it....they obviously aren't worried about customer satisfaction, or the fact that I will tell EVERY person about my experience, and I have A LOT of people walk up and ask where I got these wheels....I've already had the wheel polished, and it looks great...it did cost me another $150 though...after I've already spent $2K on them in the first place.

There's a lot more to this story, including my credit card info being stolen on this transaction (was never used for anything except to buy these wheels, then a day later has tons of online charges show up) so if you're interested let me know - I'm more than happy to share my experience to educate people so this doesn't happen to someone else.

DISCLAIMER - I'm not advising who to or to not do business with - my only intention is to share my experiences with Newstalgia Wheel, and let others know about what I went through.