So you're telling me it's a bad time for me to try and seek resolution on something I just noticed... (lol)

On a lighter note, they're not the only one that's been hit with a wave of COVID. I had placed a Black Friday order with another vendor which required weekly follow ups after the 4-week mark in order to have it arrive this week. Another cause of the hang up was a part that they said they can no longer offer at the price point they were advertising and perhaps their email person quitting(?? there was a mention of that person not being there anymore).

And on a GOOD note, I put my first orders in with GA and JP3, and both arrived ahead of schedule, well packaged, and with little goodies, like stickers n such. We are spoiled to have so many vendors making bespoke parts for our cars. It makes things a lot easier than working to fabricate things locally (for me). I'd like to be able to give them more support with brand name parts orders as well, but it doesn't often seem to make financial sense to do so, and sometimes it feels like I'm rewarding bad behavior by doing so.

/PC-ish rant.

 

First time ordering from IRP, ordered a shift rebuild kit BEFORE Christmas and paid for the 2 day shipping.. 2 weeks later still hadn't received anything, left calls (no answer ever, sent email with no response & messaged on facebook as well). After 3 weeks they finally responded and he said they were short staffed and had no eta on when it would be shipped, so i kindly asked for a refund and he agreed. I ordered from Atkins that same day and received everything i needed within 3 days. I am currently still waiting on IRP to refund me (Its been 3 weeks now) & can't get a response anywhere to see where that refund is. Will never do business with them again.

 

Communication is terrible. Ordered a LIM gasket and reached out to this shop for about 3 weeks with no response. My final email to them was to refund me my money. I got a response right away stating it was shipping out that day and "let me see if I can stop it before it goes out". This was on 1/20/22....I still have yet to receive my refund or item.

Let me not get into how my motor only rebuild took one full year to complete at this shop with little to no communication as well. Never doing business with them again and will not recommend to anyone else.

 

I'm not bashing anyone or anything with this reply, but that is crazy. I've dealt with two shops for two separate cars, Pettit and Rotorsports, and my cars was done within a month about for each one. Granted, this was an engine removal, rebuild & reinstall on both, but that's just crazy. Two years. I'd be making sure my car was still there at this point.

 

Yeah, it's still there. They are reputable, just overwhelmed with popularity and underwhelmed with staff that have the skills to work on these cars. And it's a big build. But, it's also been 2 years

 

By that logic though, you should be on their priority list and they should have communicated to you ahead of time how long that would take.

I'd personally take my car elsewhere. Not necessarily because the place it's at now isn't qualified, but two years is just crazy. If I owned a business like that, I wouldn't take a car on if I couldn't finish it in a timely manner because it leads to people in a very similar situation to yours.

 

so long as there has been some form of communication as whats been going on, i would actually call it acceptable. its one thing if they just havent been saying anything at all and he has no idea whats going on but its another thing entirely if they have been in communication with each other about the timeline. 2 years is a long time to build a car but there are a lot of variables at play when it comes to stuff like that. just really comes down to what hes having done and the cost.

some people dont have all the money on hand to pay for large builds. even if the car was done tomorrow, not everyone would be able to show up and cover the bill... not saying thats whats happening but just giving an example. if that were the case then that car would actually be a lower priority than the people that CAN cover their bills in full upon completion.

again... not saying thats whats happening but just laying out a possible scenario.

 

I agree with you on the communication part. But at what point does communication cease becoming enough? Assuming he's caught up on his bill, has the ability to pay it, and they just keep saying "it's coming" I think that's when communication becomes more of a delay tactic than anything. Not saying IRP is doing that, moreso in general, I'd apply that when dealing with a shop in general, or buying/selling parts. But I suppose the owner knows his car and the shop well enough to know whats going on, at least I hope so. Again, I don't *think* IRP would do anything like that, but for me two years is a long time.

Sidenote: Personally I'd never drop my car off if I didn't have the money to cover it. I didn't realize that was actually a thing.

Edit: In general, as big as they are, I'd think they should just communicate. I wanted one of their Alternators, but I'm definitely not buying one right now.

 

That was the case with me as well; A few months ago was I planning to get one of their upgraded alternators but wanted to know about turn around time before sending in my original part avoid the core fee - and I also did not want a lot of down time since there was really nothing wrong with my alternator other than that I wanted to increase the output. So I sent an email to their sales email address asking this basic question and after no reply for a few days called and left a voice message and never heard back from that either. As a result, I went a different route as I did not want to risk an unnecessary delay. After reading this thread, I'm glad I went the direction I did. I should also add that I have dealt with IRP before a few years ago and they were very responsive and provided great customer service as well as a good product, so I looked to them first for this new project.

 

I'm not being strung along, it's just taking a looong time.

 

Two years IS a long time and I don't think anyone is countering that point. Unfortunately for busy shops that have a lot of work this can be a thing because any decision change or part delay gets the car off the lift and back into storage. "builds" are never the bread and butter unless they use all in stock parts and are a package thing. Add an engine rebuild to that and you wait even longer. I think Tom is choosing to wait for skilled labor he trusts that comes with a warranty that isn't BS.

This happens all the time.

I've never had an issue getting in touch with them, Paul and Ihor have always been very responsive.

 

This portion of your experience, sadly, is not universal.

I'm currently sitting at 16 days since their last communication. Which could be aptly summarized as "Let me look into that and get back to you."
Which was the same response I received 2 weeks prior to that.
Which was their first acknowledgement regarding an order that was already 2 months old.

It's a shame that patience is so often met with being de-prioritized. I felt I was being empathetic, choosing to allow the holiday seasons to pass before raising my hand; knowing that season must be the most challenging for them, especially during Covid. Despite that, now that I am making inquiries, I feel that I am now perceived as nothing more than an annoyance.

 

I've also got an 8374 turbo kit I placed in June 2021 that I am still waiting for. I got a message this morning that they are looking into i and that there are 23 people in the queue.

 

this here confuses me..... pre selling with no plan whatsoever on how to fulfill the orders. taking in money without any way of knowing that you will be able to fulfill them in a timely manner or at all. before accepting money for a pre order shouldnt you first confirm you have the ability to fulfill the orders? or at least mention you only have the means to fulfill the first X orders and then anything after that is on standby? idk.... the pre selling concept as a whole has me weirded out. collecting money for stuff and things that dont exist and no schedule as to when they will and then everyone being ok with it.....

 

My understanding is the manifold is the long lead item in the turbo kit and it got impacted by supply chain and labor issues. That should have been communicated with opportunities for refund granted if requested.

That was one of the things that held up my build as well.

 

Bump.. Absolute joke of a company as far as customer communication. Ordered my shifter rebuild back in early december and paid for the 2 day shipping and never recieved it. Tried every form of communication and no reply, finally ended up replying on facebook and he agreed to refund me (Jan 10, said i would get it within 2 weeks). Never got it back and no sort of communication is possible. So glad i paid through paypal and was able to force a refund. Joke of a company if this is what you have to do in order to recieve a refund.

 

Sorry to hear about everyone’s recent issues.

Read all of the following with a critical eye. it’s just 1 person’s experience (mine) and they work on hundreds of rotaries…


First, They do good work. They’re capable of amazing work too! I do agree that timing is important. Hell, look what Amazon did to disrupt supply chains before the pandemic. I spent a lot of months at work setting up systems to allow consumers to have updated order information asap and to expedite the order to pick process.

In the past few years I’ve ordered a few parts from them. For these orders I always had fast turnarounds. I even received some personal calls to thank me for being among the first to buy new items.

Sending my car in for work was another story. What started as me struggling to get the Haltech to swap from primaries to secondaries smoothly (this was before their Nexus update!) became a much larger project. Don’t get me wrong, I signed up for the additional work. It’s not like I was held at gunpoint. However, what started as a 2-4 week turnaround to do my fuel, ignition, and tune, led to me being without the car for a year. This was after I signed up for a new engine harness as well. I knew my oem harness was fine, but I figured I could sell it to pay for some of the new harness and in general the change sounded nice. Although the addition of the harness was communicated as having a minimal impact on the timeline, it is ultimately what I think pushed things out so far. I believe this to be the case because at one point there was a comment about “having a full time harness guy now”. Updates over the many months beyond plan were in line with this threads comments. There was an eagerness to get the car there and to determine estimate/invoice costs, but then things slowed down. And yes, I paid immediately, each time.

So back to parts orders and support…
To me, they have always been a bit hit or miss with the support. If I needed a backup part (due to an error on my side) or wanted to add something to an order that I already placed, I maybe had a 25% chance of being successful w what I would consider an ‘ideal scenario’. I was okay with this, because I can only imagine how many people like me trying to change orders with a business of their size. It’s an unrealistic expectation on my part, I think. At the same time, I think it’s worth mentioning that certain current practices hurt this customer experience; such as calling a client to thank them for their support on a new product and telling them a complementary shirt is shipping with their order only to…not.

Now, I’m sharing this at a potential risk of having my recent revelation of my car service not being addressed. It’s several hundred dollars, I only recently discovered & communicated it, and I’ve been told it’s being looked into, but I think I’ll be okay. I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to recover this loss or more, and that some of this post’s discussion will help change the shops actions, the consumers expectations, or perhaps even both. There appears to be a considerable gap from what’s expected to what’s being delivered atm.


From my perspective, I believe there’s a bit more to the story/experience, but because I didn’t document things well on my side around them, I’ve left them out. In summary, if I were local to them, I’d have no issue sending my car there. If I had multiple FD’s, sure, let them have one while I drive the other. If I needed bespoke parts, I’d consider them and plan for downtime. And, of course, if I needed my engine rebuilt, I’d want Ihor to do the work! Up until posting this, I was planning to commission them for a core purchase and build, but I worry some of my comments might make that a pretty stupid thing to do now.

 

What alternator did you go with? My biggest concern is that it makes the upgraded amperage at stock idle speed.

 

This is one of our premier vendors I got my engine from these guys and they're workmanship and transparency are among the best if not the best. They took a while to mail me my engine but I got it. Last I heard they're short staffed atm. Ihor will take care of you though.

 

I've done numerous transactions with IRP. yes some have taking longer then it should ( in particular their efr turbo kit and custom made harness) but being that the stuff is custom made I expected that.
other items were pretty normal shipping considering these covid times.
I actually visited them a few months back and u could tell they were short handed. ihor and Paul along with rest of guys there do amazing work.
being one of the biggest rotary shops in the US and not having enough guys and getting hitting with even MORE work has been tough for them.

 

I got an email yesterday that my oil filler neck was shipped so they are making progress apparently. I doubt they’re getting “caught up” though. Nonetheless it’s progress.

 

We are extremely short handed due to the state of the world and the entire industry is affected by supply chain issues right now. I'm not going to get into a conversation about politics or economics but when the government forces shutting down businesses and imposing restrictions while giving incentives to stay home it becomes very difficult to find competent employees who want to work. Different parts of the country experienced the pandemic differently and unfortunately we are in one of the hardest hit and restricted regions. When you are already short handed and people are constantly out sick it doesn't help things. That being said, I have tech, shop assistant, and shipping/receiving positions available. If anyone is looking for a position or knows someone they can refer, please send a resume to ihor@irperformance.com. In the mean time we are moving through our build and sales queue as quickly as we are able and continue to provide the best products and services we can. Thank you for the support and patience.

 

I just dropped off my short block this morning for a rebuild. I emailed them yesterday with what I have / what I want them to do / and pics of my car.

Paul responded within an hour, and Ihor was in the back ground complimenting my car (the pics). We talked for about 20 minutes about my build needs, got an estimate and set an appointment. Very professional and patient with my noobish questions.

Droppoed the engine off this morning and met Ihor and mechanic John. Talked about apex seals and what I really want to do with the car, and tweeked my build slightly. I am very happy so far, after lots of disappointments from the Subie tune shops in this area. Professional and easy to talk to. Hope to have my shortblock back in 3 weeks.

 

3 weeks!?!?! LOL

 

I'm not trying to be condescending here, but I'm curious as to if that turnaround time will actually be met, considering the backlog others are mentioning.