Phoenix Automotive — Local services in Diamond Bar

-1 star. The company does not honor its warranty and tech support was done by email or video chat. I bought the tesla radio for my 2020 Gladiator in December 2021. It appeared to work fine, A few months later the rear video camera begins to flicker and then eventually just stopped working. I continued to send repeated emails requesting tech support. The replies were very sad. They sent me photos of the back of some other model stereo that was pointing to with plug was the camera. Serious broken Asian/English to the point I just could not understand them. I kept telling the that the camera was working and now the unit was not showing the camera. I installed my Mopar radio back in and the camera worked fine. So the problem was the radio itself. If there was no problem with this radio the warranty would have expired in Dec 2022, but there was an ongoing problem up to June 2022 with the radio not working correctly because the rear camera was not displaying on the tesla style radio. I continued from December 2022- June 2022 to chase them down for Tech support, constantly worthless IT support by Email to solve the problem. So, the warranty was an ongoing problem into June 2022 and now they Michelle Posasare is hiding behind the warranty claiming the warranty expired in December 2022 even though they admit of the ongoing problem while it was under warranty and stringed me along into June 2022 with Emails and IT support that did not fix the problem. They did not offer to swap out the radio, to send it in for repair, refund me, etc. now they are hiding behind the warranty and Michelle refuses to give me any other information for their bosses, the so-called "Return team" information that is claiming that the warranty expired even though the problem was ongoing while it was under warranty. Basically, they are not honoring the on-going problem that was under warranty, they refuse to solve the problem for 6 months and when I asked to swap out the unit because we have exhausted all avenues to fix the problem, they then decided to hide behind the warranty expiration date. they are a scam, They ripped me off and they will not take care of the customer. Save your money and do business elsewhere because you will get the run-around sham deal from this company and get stroked until the warranty expires regardless if the unit was fixed or not. I can see from other bad reviews and the BBB complaints on this company this is a pattern that they operate under. I wish my case was an isolated one, but the public should read all the reviews on Yelp, Google business and the BBB before being crazy enough to do business with this company. I am not the only victim of this scam. Shame on Phoenix Auto for not taking care of their customers. They must be desperate if they are this cheap on a $600 radio and rather scam a customer and others. I guess that's the only way...

PLEASE READ ALL THE 1 STAR REVIEWS BEFORE CONSIDERING BUYING ONE OF THESE RADIOS (and there were over 130 ONE STAR reviews as of May 2024). PHOENIX AUTMOTIVE IS A TERRIBLE COMPANY TO DEAL WITH!!! TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE. TERRIBLE TECHNICAL SUPPORT. EVEN WHEN THE RADIO ARRIVES DEFECTIVE OR DAMAGED, THEY MAKE IT VERY HARD TO RETURN THE RADIO FOR A REFUND, AND IF YOU CAN, THEY CHARGE YOU FEES SO YOU WILL NEVER GET A FULL REFUND. I purchased a PX6 Android radio for my Silverado in January 2024. The unit arrived and was defective and I had nothing but issues with the radio. Some of the advertised features did not work and I was told the factory in China could not find a solution for the issues. I called customer service numerous times to get technical help. Each time, I was told a technician would call me back at a set time. This never happened. I would wait for the appointment time, and when no-one called after 30 minutes, I would call customer service back again. They would be put me on hold for up to one hour to await a technician to come onto the line and help me. Once I got them on the line, some of them were helpful and could assist me but, most were useless and had to keep putting me on hold to go confer with other technicians. After three months of trying to get this radio working properly, I had enough of it and asked for my money back. Initially, even though the radio was defective, they wanted to charge me a 15% restocking fee but, that was eventually waived by the owner, Alex. I packaged everything into its original box and sent it back, mostly at my own expense, as they would only cover $30 of the $72 return shipping cost. Then, a week later, Phoenix tried to tell me there was a part missing. I had ticked off each item on their original list of items when I sent it back and I know everything was all there. It is possible (or probable) that the item went missing at their end. They were just trying to make up a reason to get some of their money back. I again called to speak to a supervisor about this back charge and, of course, no-one ever called me back. I tried several times, requesting the owner, Alex, to return my call...it has been several weeks and numerous calls and still no callback. DO NOT deal with this company. You will be very disappointed in the customer service and technical support provided by Phoenix. There are plenty of other aftermarket radios out there that perform much better. I have now purchased an AUTOTECH unit and it has performed flawlessly, and it looks much better as well. I have also initiated a Small Claims court process to recover my non-refunded money. What is owing to me is less than the filing fee for the Small Claims Court challenge but, at this point it's the principle of the thing. Alex wants to brush me off over a few bucks. Well, it's going to end up...

Unfortunately, I have to give a bad review, not because I'm not satisfied with the product but because I never got it. Here's why:

The company uses too many "automated" third party systems to handle their customer service. (from Facebook messages to emails, issue tickets, Route for tracking, Shopify ecommerce, etc) I understand that gadgets and technology is great for handling minor things but when something goes wrong, the system fails. My order was never shipped by the supplier and not only that no one caught it, no one knew what happened. I personally think they rely too much on their "system" without actually getting physical confirmation when saying it will arrive within 3-4 weeks.

I had to call after 5 weeks by patiently waiting for them to realized that the order was not processed in the first place. Instead of taking the "bull by the horns" and get in touch with me to apologize or make up for their mistake, I got an automated message (again) telling me the order will be processed within 7 days. Most importantly the message said : "Please note that this is not a guarantee. Your order may be sent out sooner or it may take longer." This is not something you want to tell a client who found out 5 weeks later that his $800 purchase wasn't processed correctly and may or may not be shipped. We all know that these products are coming from China by sea, so what...another 3-4 weeks. I was looking at 12 weeks total before getting the product. It would have been great if someone said, sorry for our mistake, we'll ship your product by air freight and should get it within the next 7 days or something.

Anyway, I cancelled the order. I would have waited another week or 2 if the company would have dealt with the issue and give me good customer service.

Hopefully they use my comment as a lesson learn to improve their customer experience. I think the products they sell are amazing but the company needs to redefine how their system works.

PS : One more thing, I don't why but the website keeps flickering from a auto-translation trying desperately to change the language to French. Is it geo tagging my area as French? No idea but it's buggy. It...