Anyone Do Business with Steebar??

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Randy_

Randy_

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Dallas suburb, Texas, USA.
I placed an order with these guys for some scrollsaw supplies and picked up a few pen kits while I was at it. It's been 2-1/2 weeks since they charged my account and still no delivery. I started sending email inquiries about a week ago and none of them have received the courtesy of a response. I've held off on a phone call because they don't have an 800 number and I don't feel like it should be my "dime" for a LD call to solve their shortcomings.

So are these guys folks to avoid or am I just having an isolated piece of bad luck??
 
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Randy,

I placed an order with them last summer... They charged my account more then the order. Three days of me emailing and no reply. I called and got an ansering machine. They called back about 2 hours later.
They took care of the problem and I received my order about a week after I placed it....

Not the best in customer service in my book.....
 
I would just call your credit card company and report that your haven't received your items. Then file a charge back. This will get their attention. CC companies are very aggressive when it comes to fraud.
 
I did business with them once. No problem receiving what I ordered, charges were fine, but the slimlines were the worst I have ever ordered. I'm NOT a repeat customer.
 
LOML and I did business a couple times when we first started turning. After finding IAP and all the great sites you guys know about we haven't ordered from there again.
 
I contacted several companies trying to get prizes for the birthday party. I talked to the owner of Steelbar. He told me he had just bought the company a little over a year ago. After the fact he found there were a lot of problems he discovered about the former owners. (evidenced by Bob's post.) He said he had a bad post on this web site about Steelbar when it was under the old owner. The post was not about him, but Jeff refused to remove it. He wanted the post removed before he would consider donating any prizes.
I told him how Bill at AS and the people at Craft Supplies (and other excellent suppliers) get the product to us very fast. I also told him that they are members of the site and make posts and personally take care of customer relation disputes in a very timely manner.
He told me he was working to overcome the poor customer relations. I talked to Bill about the posts and Bill said they (IAP) would not remove any old posts, but like I had already told the owner he should join IAP and tell his story here.
As of now I have never seen a post from him and with Randys post he has not fixed his problems. While talking to him I did get the impression that he is more interested in the scroll sawing part of his business. He is a reseller for PSI.
 
Originally posted by oldsmokey
<br />.....I talked to the owner of Steelbar. He told me he had just bought the company a little over a year ago. After the fact he found there were a lot of problems he discovered about the former owners......
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That's very interesting in light of the fact that the website indicates the owner of the company has had it for about twenty years?? Do you remember the name of the person you talked to??

I have searched the Internet for information on the company and it is interesting to note that they have moved, apparently, three times in the past couple of years. I did not think to search old IAP posts for comments; but I will do so now. Thanks for the idea.
 
Originally posted by oldsmokey
<br />.....He said he had a bad post on this web site about Steelbar when it was under the old owner. The post was not about him, but Jeff refused to remove it.....
Click to expand...

I just did a search of the IAP threads all the way back to day one and found none that were negative excepting this one. Maybe the guy was looking for an excuse, maybe the thread was removed??

Sure is a lot of "funny" stuff going on with respect to this company!!
 
Originally posted by oldsmokey
<br />.... While talking to him I did get the impression that he is more interested in the scroll sawing part of his business.....
Click to expand...

Strange, as they sure advertise their pen stuff in Woodturning magazine a lot. At least, the last issue I got had their ads. Granted, those are set up in advance, but not THAT advance.
 
Yes, I remember the little part about not wanting to donate for our Birthday Bash until we withdrew some negative post or something. I figured we didn't need a prize donation so bad that we would compromise our stnadards.

I really have nothing against Steebar. But where the penturning items they sell are simply what is available from Penn State, they would have to do better than places like Woodturningz, Pens of Color or Packard to catch any of my business. And that would be true even if they didn't have a bad rep!

Scott. (And don't say "What standards?" [8D] )
 
Originally posted by oldsmokey
<br />I contacted several companies trying to get prizes for the birthday party. I talked to the owner of Steelbar. He told me he had just bought the company a little over a year ago. After the fact he found there were a lot of problems he discovered about the former owners. (evidenced by Bob's post.) He said he had a bad post on this web site about Steelbar when it was under the old owner. The post was not about him, but Jeff refused to remove it. He wanted the post removed before he would consider donating any prizes.
I told him how Bill at AS and the people at Craft Supplies (and other excellent suppliers) get the product to us very fast. I also told him that they are members of the site and make posts and personally take care of customer relation disputes in a very timely manner.
He told me he was working to overcome the poor customer relations. I talked to Bill about the posts and Bill said they (IAP) would not remove any old posts, but like I had already told the owner he should join IAP and tell his story here.
As of now I have never seen a post from him and with Randys post he has not fixed his problems. While talking to him I did get the impression that he is more interested in the scroll sawing part of his business. He is a reseller for PSI.
Click to expand...
He called me well over a year ago and asked me to remove an entry in our links section which had a bad review for the "old Steebar". I DID remove the old link.
 
Originally posted by jeff
<br />.....He called me well over a year ago and asked me to remove an entry in our links section which had a bad review for the "old Steebar".....
Click to expand...

From what I am hearing at other forums and privately, it looks like the old Steebar hasn't changed much??
 
Originally posted by Scott
<br />Yes, I remember the little part about not wanting to donate for our Birthday Bash until we withdrew some negative post or something. I figured we didn't need a prize donation so bad that we would compromise our stnadards.
Click to expand...

Scott: I assume you are talking about this years birthday bash and if so there is a time problem here. According to Jeff's post, the comments that Steebar were unhappy about would have been removed well before the request would have been made for a donation to the BD bash??
 
Steebar had donated a $300.00 gift certificate to The Pen Shop's birthday bash. Since Chip donated this, I told him I would place a full page ad in our newsletter for 12 months.

The gentleman that won the gift certificate donated part of the gift certificate back to The Pen Shop. He placed an order with me and I emailed Chip the order along with several other items to make up the $300.00. I was going to use the extra items for giveaways. I have not received the order yet. I have been trying for over a month to get it and still have not received it. This is the letter that I sent to him via his personal email.

Chip,

It has now been close to four months since the birthday bash ended and it has been over a month since I first sent you my initial request for redemption of the gift certificate that you donated to the site. I have had to place several long distance phone calls to you in order to straighten this problem out and it still has not come to a satisfactory conclusion. You told me that it was your email that was messed up and to email it to your personal email. I did that with the order and mentioned in the email to please reply that you received the order. I heard no replies from you. I then made another long distance phone call to you in which you said that you had received the email and was getting ready to ship the order out. I have still not received the order.

In return for your donation of the $300.00 gift certificate, I told you I would place a full page advertisement in our monthly newsletter. It has been placed in our newsletter for four times now and I have still not gotten the products.

I am emailing you now to let you know that I am taking your ad out of our newsletter and we no longer want the gift certificate. If by chance you have sent the order out, I will return it to you unopened.

Your advertisement will not appear in anymore newsletters from The Pen Shop and any links to your company will be taken off our site.



Deeply Disappointed,

Johnny L. Wooten

The Pen Shop



P.S.: This email will also be copied and pasted onto our website so that people will know what happened with the $300.00 gift certificate.
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Johnny: Thanks for that information. I am always reluctant to bad-mouth a business in public for fear that my personal experience is not representative of the company as a whole and I feel that way too many folks start negative posting on public forums before they have made sufficient good-faith efforts to remedy their problems privately. But in this case, I have seen so many problems detailed, both publicly and privately, that it really does look like Steebar is a "rotten apple" and should be avoided at all cost.
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To follow up on this situation, I finally got in touch with Steebar. They had problems with their suppliers and still could not fill my order 5 weeks after it was submitted. I never did get a satisfactory explanation of why they didn't notify me like most vendors do or why they didn't answer my many emails.

I requested a refund of all charges and placed an order with another company the same day. The shipment from the other company and the Steebar refund arrived on the same day!!
 
Nothing ticks me off more (that I can think of at this second) than a company that does not let me know if a product I ordered is on backorder and what all my options are. I had quite a problem last Christmas and had to go scrambling. To all the sellers and resellers out there,
KEEP US INFORMED!!!!
 
Glad you had good luck with them. Maybe they are finally starting to get the message?? Personally, I am going to have to hear a "LOT" of good stories before I ever consider trying them again.
 
I see that I left out an important piece of information in my earlier posts. Here is an 800 number for Steebar if you have trouble with them responding to your emails. This number is "NOT" listed on their web site and is apparently hooked up to a fax machine before 10 AM and after 4 PM.

The number is: 1-800-653-1930.
 
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