Hello everyone. Sorry if it seems sketchy to bash a company that manufactures auto parts, but since I have gotten laughable responses from Rennen themselves (New York and California offices) I figured the next logical step is to share my complaint with future customers.
I own a shop in Mobile, Al, called Foreign and Domestic Autocare. In November of 2011, a loyal customer came to me to purchase some Rennen Forged RM7 wheels for his Acura RL. The wheels were 20x9 and 20x10.5, brushed silver face with polished lip. After about four weeks, I called the salesman I was dealing with in their New York office to check on the status of the wheels. Upon calling, I found out the salesman I had originally dealt with had passed away, and that another salesman would be handling my purchase from that point on. The new salesman, Joe, assured me that everything was on track, and the wheels would be finished and shipped within the next two weeks. He told me he would call me back later that day or the following day to let me know exactly what the status was and told me he would keep me informed. I never received that call, but was fine with that, since he had already told me a pretty up to date status on the wheels. After two weeks I had not received the wheels yet, so I placed another call to Joe at their New York office. He said that he would check on them and call me right back. After a day, and no call, I called him back. He told me that they were still being finished, and that they would ship out soon. I was not very concerned about the time frame at this point, so I told him that was fine. Well to my surprise, I actually received the wheels at my location the next day. Seemed puzzling since the salesman had assured me that they were about to ship any day, when they had in fact shipped 3-5 days before that conversation. I had paid for half of the wheels total price up front, and was to write a check to the UPS delivery guy upon receipt. Well, two wheels came "paid for", one was set to "receive a check", and the other wheel was marked "cashier's check only". This frustrated me because I do not own a bank, I own a tire and wheel shop, and do not have cashier's checks lying around. If the salesman would have actually researched my order he would have found that they had already shipped, and could have told me that I would need a cashier's check to get all four off the truck. I sent the last one back with the driver, and he was to try to redeliver it later that day. Thankful to have received "most of" the wheels, I didn't put much thought into that and opened them up to inspect them. This is what I found..
In this pic, notice the horrible cuts where the spoke meets the outer ring of the face. The black in each cut is some type of finishing compund I assume, that has been cleared over. Also notice the scratches on the outer ring just above the spoke, they can even be seen in the reflection on the lip.
In this next pic notice where they scratched the wheel inserting the center cap, and the terrible job of boring out the holes for the lugs.
next, notice the "window" of the spoke near the center of the pic, there is a large "high spot" where the spoke was not cut evenly. This gives the spoke a "jagged" appearance when looking at the wheel from straight on..
In this little diddy..you can plainly see how terrible the holes for the lugs look, as well as another scratch from putting in the center cap.
In this pic, look closely at the outside of the lip of the wheel. Those little black specks aren't on your monitors, that is black overspray on the lips of the wheels.....there is NO black paint on these wheels. This tells me that someone else's wheels were painted in the same room as my customer's $4000 wheels..
Next, we see a gouge in the side of the spoke where it meets the outer ring of the face, that is filled with the already mentioned black compound, then cleared over and called "finished"
Here, you can look the the left and right of the spoke, and see how unevenly the cuts are the the outer ring, as well as where the spoke's face meets the outer ring. Also notice the "brushed" inside of the outer ring looks more "scraped"
This is another pic of a different lug hole than the previous one, to show that it was all of them, not just one.
So, needless to say, I cancelled my check that I had written for the third wheel, and refused the fourth one when they tried to redeliver it. I called Rennen, and they assured me that they would take care of it. I called him back later that day and he told me he spoke to the "finisher" and he had told Joe that the wheels looked fine to him when he checked them. The next day, the customer came and saw them, and was extremely upset. He told me that he was unimpressed (not exactly his words...) The fact that the faces themselves would have to be remade, and the time involved, along with the fact that we had lost all confidence in them, and assumed that the next ones would be of similar lack of quality, made him decide to just buy the wheels from a more reputable company, i.e. HRE, BBS, etc. So I informed them that I just wanted a refund of my deposit, and that I would send the wheels back, end of transaction. Fast forward to today, 2 weeks later, and I still have gotten no word on my refund. Today the salesman, Joe, put me on hold to ask his bosses about it, came back and said that they told him that they could not do any type of refund on custom wheels. I told Joe to transfer me to the bosses, so I could talk to them about it myself, and he told me that he couldn't even talk to them himself at the moment because they were in meetings. This is right after he put me on hold, then came back and told me they said no. So, I hung up and called Carl at the California office. He told me that the wheel he looked at looked "fine" but he would be glad to fix them. I told him that I did not want them "fixed", because that would involve removing meat from the spokes. These wheels are for a large car, and I do not want to start removing metal from the wheels. He told me that he ..WOULD NOT be cutting any metal out of the spokes to fix the high spots and inperfections in the cuts. I asked him how this was possible, and he said thay would "just make them even" At this point I am asking him how you can possibly remove high spots without cutting the metal, and he replied "I never said we wouldn't cut them" He had just said he wouldn't be removing meat to fix them. I got upset, he hung up, I posted here.
I am not posting this to whine about them, or bash them for no reason. These wheels cost $4000 dollars folks...$4000 BUCKS! I see greater quality and craftsmanship in Varrstoen, Rotas, TSW's, etc. everyday. They did not make a quality product, their finisher told them that he thought they were fine, which says he is saying that I am complaining about nothing. If these imperfections are nothing, then I do not want to business with them. I hope that is understandable. For that price, I expect a FLAWLESS product from the box. These are far from flawless, far from satisfactory. They now have all four wheels and my deposit, and my customer is indescribably upset. He works offshore 2-3 months at a time, and values his money greatly (as do all of us). If this company does this to me, someone who as become a vendor for them, imagine what they will do to the average customer. They have my money and the wheels, which gives them all the leverage. I will caution anyone who wants to do business with them and tell you that they do not stand behind their product. When they were sending me the return labels (which took nearly 2 weeks itself) I told them that I wanted a full refund. They never told me once, not Joe or REZ, the other representative I spoke to, that I would not be allowed to get a refund. They waited until I had shipped the wheels back, and are now telling me that it's just a finish problem, and that they will repaint them and send them back, but no refund. How do you paint away poor build quality? Sorry if this post is against any rules, or rubs any members the wrong way. I feel that everyone should know when a company tries to take advantage of the little guy, and this is definitely one of those cases.
Thanks,
Bobby Rogers
Foreign and Domestic Autocare
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Subject: Rennen wheels, terrible build quality and worse customer service 
Wed Jan 25, 2012 12:04 pm
