Summit Racing Equipment - Tallmadge, OH — Attraction in Tallmadge

Very poor experience with this company. Short – I ordered a flywheel for a ford focus on their website. Their website said in nice green print “This fits your: 2013 FORD FOCUS”. It actually doesn’t, instead you have to sort through the fine print of the part to discover that it only fits the ST Turbocharged. I call their customer service line asking for a refund and they said “no since it’s not new anymore, it’s been installed on my car”. It wasn’t even on my far for a full 24 hours and I never even started my car with it on. I’m upset that their website is misleading by saying it will fit a 2013 Ford Focus but then you have to sort through all the part information to find out that no it will not fit every 2013 Ford Focus. I don’t understand why on their website your vehicles sub information so that something like this doesn’t happen. I also don’t understand why they won’t accept any partial blame on their website being misleading about this product. Long – I ordered a flywheel for my 2013 Ford Focus SE because the Ford dealer wanted $900 for an OEM dual mass flywheel. I go on their website and enter the prompted vehicle information for my car (2013 Ford Focus). The search comes up with a few different flywheels that I can choose from. I will be honest here, I ordered the cheapest one because I have a basic Focus and don’t need any performance parts. After I clicked on the specific flywheel, the website gave a click option one more time to see if this flywheel fits my vehicle. The website then said in nice green letters “This fits your: 2013 FORD FOCUS”. Then below in the overview section it listed the flywheel as having a 6-bolt pattern and that the flywheel is made out of steel, exactly what I was looking for. So thinking that this flywheel would work for my car I ordered it. This past Friday, a friend and I took my car apart to drop my transmission and replace all the necessary parts. We get everything replaced and put back together, I go to start my car and it won’t start. I eventually try and manually spin the crankshaft pulley and it won’t budge. So Saturday comes and I get back to dropping the transmission again to see what went wrong. I removed the new aftermarket flywheel and set it on the workbench to take a close look at it and compare it better to the stock OEM flywheel. I come to find out that the bolt pattern is about .25” thinner than the stock OEM bolt pattern. The issue with this is when you torque down the flywheel to the crankshaft you push the bolts against the crankshaft causing it to seize up. After installing the original flywheel the car started up just fine. Come Monday morning I call Summit Racing requesting a refund on the part since it didn’t actually fit my car, I would’ve sent to flywheel they gave me back to them cause I don’t need it as well. They tell me that they can’t give me a refund since the flywheel is no longer new since I installed it on my car. They also tell me that I ordered the wrong part. You have to scroll all the way down to the applications section of the part to see that it only fits the Focus ST Turbocharged model. My issue here is that this is misleading because if you follow their websites prompting it will tell you that this flywheel fits the 2013 Ford Focus which leads you to think that it will fit my 2013 Ford Focus SE model. My other issue here is that they won’t accept at least partial blame for this confusion and at least give a partial refund. I say partial blame because even though I still think that their website is fully misleading here I’m willing to concede somewhat since I didn’t fully read the part listing. I still want a full refund but I’m willing to accept if this mistake causes the crankshaft bearing to brake and require an engine rebuild as my problem. I also don’t understand why they don’t then have a sub-model section in the search feature where you can tell them your cars sub-model (In my case the Focus SE) and then see all the available parts that fit my specific model. All other major auto parts stores like NAPA and AutoZone have...

Zero communications or apologies after years of opportunity. It is clear that the organization's culture towards customer service remains unchanged, and the business is committed to not valuing its word or individual customers.

Terrible customer service. I ordered parts online with an estimated delivery to the Tallmadge store within 24 hours. However, 24 hours later, the estimated delivery time became twenty more days. This happened without a single notification; no call, text, or email or apology. Nothing, absolutely nothing from Summit at all!

At minimum, Summit could've at least apologized for any inconvenience, but they did not and clearly won't. This company refuses any form of accountability, which is a direct reflection on its complete lack of sincerity in good faith dealings.

I hope anybody with any degree of influence in this organization at minimum acknowledges this company's glaring failures and understands they are complicit with the organization's intentional insincerity with resolving legitimate customer issues.

I am very disappointed in the organization's lack of expectation management and complete lack of proactive engagement. Summit simply does not care about individual customers.

I have not and will not purchase through Summit. If you legitimately respect yourself in any reasonable capacity, you won't either.

Twenty days is a lot of time to take from a customer, I would have happily paid extra for expedited shipping had I thought it necessary.

Update: I wrote this post years ago (well before COVID) and made direct complaints to Summit. Still, no apologies. I haven't spent a dime at Summit since, absolutely no regrets, and I will never recommend it to anyone!

Please look through my other reviews; I'm honest and fair. I know my sample size is very small, but I had three legitimate complaints: 1.) estimated delivery time was increased by 2000% (hardly a small margin, I hope their parts have better tolerances)

2.) The delay wasn't communicated in any capacity to me, I had to research tracking information

3.) no staff member online or on the phone expressed an apology, empathy, or even an acknowledged that they could have provided better customer service, let alone admit that their business failed to function as intended.

I've made no wild assertions that the customer service was offensive, and I have not distorted or embellished the facts (these aren't exactly grave accusations); therfore why haven't I ever received a fair and sincere communication? That's the real kicker, the absolute knowledge that you, as an individual consumer, simply don't matter at all. To me, that attitude and absolute lack of effort in customer engagement reveals a lot about an organization's culture... and Summits...

I would like to take the time to leave a review in any place that can be publicly seen for this company. And I hope those who are thinking about taking the plunge into a large purchase with Summit will take the time to read my review. I’m a small restoration business. Very young. I just started last year. I’m nearing completion on my first full project and I have used Summit racing for a large chunk of mechanical parts. In December, I bought an Edelbrock top end kit through Summit racing, trying to work through issues with a 289 engine. There were some part failures after installation and Summit racing worked diligently to replace the parts that had failed. It was an easy process but ultimately after this, I opted to buy a completely new 302 crate engine instead and returned the top end kit through Summit racing. When I purchased the new engine, the sales process was easy, the sales person I spoke to over the phone answered all of my questions and made sure everything was set up correctly for delivery. The new 302 arrived in perfect condition, it broke in smooth, it sounds even better and we’re looking forward to having a reliable engine with a great warranty and I couldn’t be happier with a decision to go ahead and buy a crate engine for this project. This is where things get a bit crazy. When I returned the top end kit, it was lost in shipping and it seemed I was gonna be on the hook for $3000. When I contacted Summit racing and explained the situation to them, they took care of it immediately and assured me that I would be OK and that ultimately I would be taken care of while they solved what happened to the top end kit. And that’s exactly what they did. Before they had even filed a claim for the missing package, they refunded me for the entirety of the order and set me completely at ease. There was no waiting, no back-and-forth no struggle. These days you just don’t get customer service like this. In my opinion, this is highly notable. Over the last year, I have dealt with some companies that have very much so left some things to be desired on the table. I’m not so sure that had I decided to make this purchase with someone else, I would have come out of this situation completely intact. What I didn’t explain to them was, I was a new small restoration business less than a year old, nearing completion of my first major project and that a $3000 setback would been devastating for me. They did all of this without even knowing what kind of impact that it would’ve had on me personally. I can’t thank this company enough for working me through a multitude of problems with grace. You’ve earned a customer for life. And I hope I can post this in as many places as possible so it can be seen. I’m grateful, thank you...