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A while back I'd posted that one rear shock of my set of 4 Koni FSD dampers lost most of it's rebound damping. I'm in the Canadian prairie where FSD stands for "Frozen Steak Dinner" and these shocks were ordered in from an E-tailer in the USA late last year. Now with a faulty shock from an expensive set, I wondered how the warranty would go.
The US vendor directed me to Koni NA in Hebron KY. I spoke with a pleasant customer rep who instructed me to go to the Koni website and retrieve the warranty application docs and fill them in and then fax that with my original bill of sale and vehicle registration. After a week or so, I got an e-mail with a Return Goods Authorization number.
You are given the option to ask for a new replacement shock before sending in the defective one for which they will charge you 50%, and then refund that once your defective one is deemed to be faulty. OR you can send in the defective unit for evaluation and wait for a warranty award of a new damper free of charge. I did the latter since I had one good standard OE rear shock to install while I was without the bad Koni.
Once I finally packed up the bad shock and sent it off via UPS standard ground ($27) I received an e-mail 5 days later acknowledging it had arrived at Koni. A week after that another message indicated the shock was deemed defective and a new one should be on it's way in 10 days or so. The e-mail said I'd get notified by UPS when it was on its way. That did not happen so I was unable to ask to perform self-brokerage as I always do with UPS ground shipments from the USA.
One day soon, I see a UPS delivery attempt notice on my front door with a request to leave a check for $49 brokerage/duty fees so they can leave the package the following day. I called UPS to object saying I always "Declare as Own" (their term) to save fees but was given no shipping notification to trigger that request call from me. The UPS rep kindly pulled the shipment back in to the depot so I could do the self-brokerage. That added a few days but no big deal since I am happily driving my car around anyhow with the OE shock doing a not bad job. All fees were completely eliminated by this process!
Soooooo, finally I picked up my new Koni shock a week ago last Thursday. I open the box to find a 1 shiny new FSD rear shock in a box that a set of 2 came in. Sadly the person who removed the extra shock took BOTH loose spring perch rings and I had sent my orignal back with the defective shock. The locknut and plastic top cap were there though. Sigh....
I called Koni again and the rep was very apologetic, saying he'd get the missing part shipped to me the next day. I mentioned the problem with UPS on the orignal shipment and he assured me there would be NO fees for this little shipment. About 4 days later, a small UPS box with the spring perch was between my front doors when I got home.
So really, despite the long story, Koni did right by me. I installed the fresh shock today and while I was at it, I raised the rear spring perch mountings to the upper groove which raised the ride height about 5/8". The ride and handling are great again and I hope that will be it with Koni as long as I own the car. However, I am assured that should I have any future problems, it appears Koni NA will do the right thing. The wobbles along the way are par for the course. I remained patient and was able to correct the silly issues with one phone call each.
Onward and upward!
Reg
posted by 207.161....
, Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:09:09
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