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| Warning to Vert owners who need new tops; I got screwed. | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 11 2012, 11:38 AM (512 Views) | |
| Zombie | Jul 11 2012, 11:38 AM Post #1 |
New Member
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Seller Diamondmall on eBay is not the place to go. Bought it awhile ago, shipping time took triple/quad what was expected. (It said available, Priority shipping) Had to after a week ask them if it was sent, and it basically went "Oh yeah" and was shipped two weeks later ground. After reading all the guides here (which were very helpful btw) and checking out some videos, we managed to get to putting the tops on ourselves. Which my dad's a certified mechanic/restorer, so it was gonna be cake. What I emailed back with, weeks later in the middle of our project, was complaints of how the top was not correct. It was the correct shape, but too small. As the photos in the guides here showed a loose and well fit end product, this one is as tight as my old one, which was OEM 20 years ago. They argued that their tops are lazor precision perfect fantastic things. I retorted with our finding that the two T seams near the back window when putting the top down clearly weren't sewed all the way and I could see outside through the holes. The specific that we were all mad about is the part of the top that mounts to the front bar. After the seam lip, on the OEM top is 4 inches, can fit all, can't remember but let's say 6 screws. On this top from them was 2 inches. I provided photos at this point in the argument and now they have stopped contacting me back. So yeah. After all this fighting, probaby 3 of the top bar screws barely managed to get into the fabric, between the side cables and otherwise if we pulled it any tighter it would not latch. Mind you it's been 100s of degrees lately. Latch should be better than ever. And of those 3, one is on the very edge, literally. The other two are close. They apparently did not like these photos, as they were ridiculous to take of the complete differences, and thus have stopped responding to me. Don't buy! My new top is tighter than my old one, barely screwed on.. |
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| nerys | Jul 11 2012, 11:42 AM Post #2 |
Grr
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dispute the charge. if its too late via paypal dispute via your credit card or bank. THAT will get their attention REALLY fast. |
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| Zombie | Jul 11 2012, 11:46 AM Post #3 |
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New Member
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I'm halfway considering it. Because it was 107 degrees here and I'm worried to put the top down now. I'm a week and feeble female. DX Can't seem to put the new one up myself without help no matter the temp. My last message including photos was on the 14th of June. I bought it around April and it took til late May to arrive. We couldn't start installing til 12th of June for temperature reasons. |
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| nerys | Jul 11 2012, 01:09 PM Post #4 |
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Grr
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well paypal won't help you (past 30 days) you going to have to go through he CC company if the seller won't work with you. |
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| Zombie | Jul 12 2012, 03:38 AM Post #5 |
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New Member
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Yeah, seems so. He's just proven to further be an idiot. "i've sold over 4000 of them over the past 20 years" "we've sold over 5000 of these Geo tops" "we have sold over 2000 of them, this is clearly installation error." All at different points in the messages I've sent. Clearly the warehouse gets the measurement numbers from this guy, can't get nothing right. |
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| t3ragtop | Jul 24 2012, 06:51 PM Post #6 |
Turbo3 Tweak
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i didn't see this post until now. which top did you get from david daoud? i bought a canvass top from diamond mall. as a seller, david makes the order as soon as he gets a paypal transmittal. the shipping and delivery time is set by the schedule of the manufacturer and they laser cut 5 black rags at a time. if you order a custom color (anything but black) the manufacturer charges a $70 special set up fee as they only cut 1 top at a time if they aren't black. delivery to my door from the time of my paypal transmittal was just under 3 weeks and the seller was really up front with me in email about the way things worked. he never gave me bad info nor did i feel that he was jacking me around. it was just a special order. when i got the top and started the installation a few days later i thought that i had fitment issues, too, the top seemed really small from one side to the other. when i first fitted it to the driver's side, it appeared that the fabric was several inches too small and that i'd never be able to pull it enough to get it to fit on the passenger's side. i was hot and i fired off an email to diamondmall about it. he replied pretty much the same way you say, "laser cut on a $1.2 million laser die machine, if one was off, they'd all be wrong, yada, yada." i calmed down and went back out to stretch the top on as instructed and finished the installation about 6 hours later. i didn't quite get enough side to side stretch on the front header the first time and after a few days in the sun, i pulled the front edge loose and stretched it even more. now, the top is about as perfect a job of installation as i've ever gotten, the top is elegant, and the canvass top closes nicely. when i wrote up my top installation in my resto-rod vert thread i mentioned that the job with the canvass top was difficult. i even went so far as to warn that unless you had done a few vinyl rag installs this would be hard to pull off. it's all in the stretch. i wore out a set of thumbs doing my canvass top but it really paid off for me. on the haartz pin point vinyl rags, they are so much cheaper that the manufacturer and suppliers can afford to keep a certain number of them in stock. i've been able to order the vinyl tops and get those, sometimes, in a matter of days from california. in general, the vinyl ezon tops have pre-punched holes that line right up with the screws and are much easier to install. they don't look as good and i generally only get about 3 years out a vinyl top before they've shrunken so much that it's difficult to pull the top closed. the canvass top has a 6 year warranty and maybe a 10 year life or longer. i'm not sponsored by diamondmall, i paid full price to him for my top. my experience with david was better than this poster's and after i calmed down when i ran into problems, i could see that what he was telling me was the truth about fitment. really, when you consider the manufacturing technique for laser die cutting the tops it makes sense that it would be difficult for them to turn out tops with drastically different fitments. on the stitching, i can see where there could be assembly errors. my top had a couple inch long area on the rear beading where the machine ran off. i had to hand stitch that area prior to installing the rag. it really wasn't that big of a deal. david offered me a refund or exchange, i opted to do the 5 minutes of stitch work just to maintain my scheduled plans. again, installing a top is something that requires experience and some finesse. fitment takes some skill, committment, and a lot of patience. it's not like bolting on a part. Edited by t3ragtop, Jul 24 2012, 06:55 PM.
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