CRF's Only Forums

Today I received my new BBR exhaust system for my CRF150F from CRFsOnly.com. As you can imagine - I was pretty excited to get it.

So let me tell you about this. BBR shrink wraps the pipe and muffler against cardboard in two pieces. I used scissors to carefully cut around the edges, and then peeled the plastic away from the pipe..... Uh, about 10-15% of the chromed finish on the ceramic coating stayed ON THE PLASTIC!! The plastic was ADHERED to the pipe! I was especially careful removing it from the tail section. Didn't matter. The plastic was completely stuck to the pipe and on one section of the pipe the "chrome" finish came off completely.

So here you have a $300 pipe ($285 + 20 shipping) that was either screwed up by shrinkwrapping plastic to it OR the ceramic coating on it is DEFECTIVE. Whatever the case, this pipe looks terrible and is unacceptable.

So I've emailed CRFSOnly.com and I am asking them for an immediate recovery from this.

I don't blame CRFsOnly for BBR's poor quality and packaging, but I do expect CRFsOnly to get me a GOOD PRODUCT ASAP.

This morning I talked to a guy at CRFsOnly and they are doing everything humanly possible to recover from this - shipping me a replacement - overnight! He says that this appears to be rare situation as other customers have not had this problem, so I am going to go ahead and try a replacement of the BBR pipe and see what happens. So the jury is still out for me on BBR, but so far I am totally impressed with CRFsOnly.com. This guy was in the office at 6:30am and was already working on this!!! By 7:00am their time he called to confirm the replacement is on the way from a distributor in my area. This exceeds my expectations of CRFsOnly! Wow!

BBR has a toll free number. I have called them a couple of times re product availability. They were very accomadating and were interested in my feedback as to how their products performed. I never got the run around. I'm sure that if you have a problem with any of their line of goods they would want to know about it and would resolve the matter quickly and appropriately. Having said that let's see what happens

So what was the outcome? BBR's reputation may be at stake

dev may pop in to share the details but basically we got him another pipe (bbr gold pipe) the next day (friday) and i was on the phone with him as he unwrapped it. unfortunately, he experienced the same result.

these two pipes came from different distributors and the first was only in our stock for a couple of weeks. the second pipe was sent directly from another distributor.

prior to dev's problem with these two pipes i have never had a single customer complain of something similar. obviously, we'll be in touch with bbr tomorrow and get their read on things and how they intend to deal with this.

everyone should keep in mind that it's very unlikely that bbr does their own ceramic coating on their pipes. it's highly probable those are done by a local plater which bbr relies on to do a quality job. the ceramic coating process has all kinds of opportunities for something to go wrong. it would be difficult for bbr to know there was a coating problem prior to it going out to their distributors, dealers, and customers.

so, i agree, things happen and bbr has a very strong reputation for quality and that shouldn't change because two pipes have coating problems. my guess is they will make it right with us just as we have and will make it right with dev.

ken

Whoops - sorry it took me so long to follow up on this. Yeah, what Ken said is 100% accurate. I'm going to get these two pipes back to him ASAP so they can help BBR figure out what happened in the mfging process. I left the plastic on alot of the second one so they or BBR can peel it off themselves and see the results.

I do want to reiterate that everyone I have talked to on another popular message board said they have had nothing but high satisfaction with BBR, so this must be some sort of anomaly. I don't want to knock BBR at all. I bet they'll figure out what happened, improve the manufacturing or inspection processes as required, and ensure that other people don't have a similar experience.

Another thing--- CRFsOnly and specifically Ken stood by me on this and have provided EXTRAORDINARY customer care. I am BLOWN AWAY and cannot recall another customer experience as great as working with CRFsOnly. They have a customer for life in me. And if we can get this straightened out, I still would like to have a BBR pipe on my CRF150F. I was a very disappointed when I posted this to begin with, and that was only because I was so eager to have the BBR product based upon their great reputation.

NEW D-SECTION SHOWED UP TODAY DIRECT FROM BBR. JUST AS PROMISED.

BBR was totally responsive (as was CRFsOnly), took care of the problem, sent me the better/newer pipe at no extra charge for my troubles, and I am totally stoked about this D-Section. Stainless steel - so the problem I had with the other one is not applicable here, and the pipe has a progressive tapering (smaller to larger of course) going into the muffler. It is a WORK OF ART. I'm sure I'll be happier with this one that the original, so really this has worked out well.

If you have not seen this pipe, you gotta check it out - it is BEAUTIFUL. I believe CRFsOnly can get them for you (at a great price).

BBR (and CRFsOnly) saved the day and I am VERY satisfied with the final chapter of this story.