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Last summer I was recommended to Robispec by a few of my fellow Evo track buddies from NASA Northeast, two of whom had Robi personally setup their cars. In August 2015 I gave him a call to talk about getting suspension on my Evo 9 MR. He recommended that I go with KW Variant 3 and front/rear sway bars, about $3400 total. Since I live in NYC, he would also arrange to fly out and work out of my local shop (which he has done before, my shop's owner confirmed he knew him). Since I had three of my friends in addition to my tuner recommend him, I paid him $3400 via PayPal for the parts.
Robi stated that he called KW and ordered the suspension later that week, and also said it might take some time for them to do a production run and then have the parts shipped from Germany where the company is located. I told him I understood, and when I checked for any status updates in the first couple of months, he was responsive to e-mail and phone calls. After nearly three months, Robi finally gave me word in November the parts were shipped and they would be here in December. December came and passed and the parts never arrived. He claims they were lost while shipping, though he wouldn't give me a tracking number despite my repeated requests. At this point he no longer responds to my phone calls and takes more than 7 days to respond to e-mails. Being on the other side of the country, I feel a bit handcuffed.
In January I told him his lack of communication is completely unacceptable given I paid him $3400 already and am completely in the dark on the current status. In the first week of February he finally got back to me saying the parts were found and they were being shipped directly to my shop. That was the last I heard from him and as you can imagine, the parts never arrived. I sent him more e-mails and left voice messages stating I was no longer interested in any parts or work and I wanted my money back. He was unresponsive, so I began to investigate how I could get my money back since I paid him through PayPal with my credit card.
After a phone call with PayPal's Resolution Center, they are not able to start disputes 180 days after the transaction. They said that they would flag the transaction and send notice to the merchant (Robi) that I have issued a complaint and never received the merchandise. The representative said I could call my credit card company and if they are willing to open a dispute, they could work with PayPal to potentially get the money refunded. After detailing this entire story to my credit card company's dispute center, I learned they also have a provision of not allowing disputes after some number of months, but because I had e-mail communication with him in February where he stated I should receive the parts, they said I could file the dispute and they would potentially open an investigation. I supplied them with our long chain of 40+ e-mails, voicemails, and PayPal transaction details and they did decide to open an investigation. After about 10 days the investigation was closed and they made a request to his bank to provide a charge back to my credit card.
Whether or not I get the money still has yet to be seen, though I imagine my CC company will grant a refund regardless. Lesson learned for me, when dealing with this amount of money, get something signed in writing. I'm still a bit shocked all of this happened since he has worked out of my current shop and had great recommendations - I never expected he would essentially attempt to steal my money.
For anyone looking to do business with Robispec, I urge you not to.
Here is his profile on Facebook, he still seems to post on a regular basis:
www.facebook.com / robert.fuller.9404 <--- you will have to copy and paste in the last part
I also originally wanted to purchase a $3500 suspension from him a few years back and because he didn't get back to me in a timely manner I bought it from somewhere else instead. I think the only reason I sent a friend request that he eventually accepted was because I was trying to get more info on the suspension.
Perhaps he was overwhelmed with work but he should really clear up what happened here because that is totally not cool.
Sorry for the delayed follow-up but yes, thankfully, I did get my money back. It took about 3 more months before everything was processed but Paypal honored my credit card company's request for the refund and I assume this was docked against Robi's paypal account. I've never had any contact with him ever again even after getting the money refunded. One of the guys from the track that originally had recommended Robi to me stated last summer he had heard multiple similar stories.
I eventually bought the suspension directly from the KW website and had no issues.
This is sad to read because when I first got my Evo back in 2010 Robispec was the go to guy for suspension in the area I was living then in California.
May 28, 2016, 11:22 AM
