As a new customer of Sim Lab, I thought I'd share my experience on here. They seem to have a glowing online reputation and, given my experience, I wanted to provide some balance:
I ordered a GT1 Evo cockpit on 2nd June when they were (briefly) in stock. Before ordering, I exchanged e-mails with Sim Lab to confirm the lead time and was told to refer to the website (website stated 3-4 weeks and continued to do so throughout the weeks following my order).
4 weeks go by and I haven't heard anything from Sim Lab, nor have I received my order, so, on 30th June, I reach-out to them to find-out what's going on. The reply was simply 'Your order will be shipped by the end of next week'. No reason was given for the delay, or any apology offered.
By the middle of the following week, I reached-out to Sim Lab, again, to confirm my order was definitely going to ship that week. The reply I got was 'It still hasn't been shipped. It will be next week. So sorry for the waiting'. Again, no reason given for the further delay.
At this point, I post a thread on here (entitled 'Sim Lab Lead Times') and, on the same day, 'Richard' from Sim Lab registers and replies to my post saying how busy they are and to PM him with any order issues. Given the nature of my post, I'm not sure why he didn't PM me, or refer to my issue in his reply, but I waited to see if he'd PM me (he didn't).
After a day or two, I sent Richard a PM saying I'd been waiting for my order for nearly 7 weeks and if there's anything he could do. I never received a reply to this, but received a shipment notification the next day, so I'm assuming he pulled some strings, but as he never replied to me, I'll never know.
Couple of days later, my cockpit arrives courtesy of UPS. However, the floor-mounted monitor stand I'd ordered at the same time was missing and they'd sent me an integrated stand instead! So, again I reach-out to Sim Lab explaining the order is wrong. They respond with an apology and dispatch the correct stand to me, which arrives a couple of days later. I'm asked if I want to keep the integrated stand for a 25% discount, or if I want to return it via a pre-paid label. I opt to return it.
So, now I'm starting the assembly process of the stand and cockpit and the first thing that surprises me is there's absolutely no assembly instructions included (or even a packing list). I had to go online looking at the Sim Lab schematics (which weren't very useful) and doing Google Image searches to figure-out the assembly process. Come on Sim Lab, aren't assembly instructions a pretty obvious and fundamental thing to include in the box?
At this point, you may think my problems are over... but no, there are several corner brackets and bolts missing from the supplied bag of fasteners. Thankfully, the integrated stand hadn't yet been collected by UPS, so I was able to take the missing fasteners from that. Again, I reach-out to Sim Lab to tell them about this, but, again, was offered no apology or reason for the missing components.
Finally, the supplied corner brackets have alignment tabs cast into them to locate them in the T-slots. Around 8 of these brackets had to be ground down (good job I own a grinder) since those brackets needed to mount at 90-degree to the T-slot.
Just wanted to post this to help others when making purchasing decisions and choosing a supplier. Make your own judgments about the competency of Sim Lab and the quality of customer service I received.
I ordered a GT1 Evo cockpit on 2nd June when they were (briefly) in stock. Before ordering, I exchanged e-mails with Sim Lab to confirm the lead time and was told to refer to the website (website stated 3-4 weeks and continued to do so throughout the weeks following my order).
4 weeks go by and I haven't heard anything from Sim Lab, nor have I received my order, so, on 30th June, I reach-out to them to find-out what's going on. The reply was simply 'Your order will be shipped by the end of next week'. No reason was given for the delay, or any apology offered.
By the middle of the following week, I reached-out to Sim Lab, again, to confirm my order was definitely going to ship that week. The reply I got was 'It still hasn't been shipped. It will be next week. So sorry for the waiting'. Again, no reason given for the further delay.
At this point, I post a thread on here (entitled 'Sim Lab Lead Times') and, on the same day, 'Richard' from Sim Lab registers and replies to my post saying how busy they are and to PM him with any order issues. Given the nature of my post, I'm not sure why he didn't PM me, or refer to my issue in his reply, but I waited to see if he'd PM me (he didn't).
After a day or two, I sent Richard a PM saying I'd been waiting for my order for nearly 7 weeks and if there's anything he could do. I never received a reply to this, but received a shipment notification the next day, so I'm assuming he pulled some strings, but as he never replied to me, I'll never know.
Couple of days later, my cockpit arrives courtesy of UPS. However, the floor-mounted monitor stand I'd ordered at the same time was missing and they'd sent me an integrated stand instead! So, again I reach-out to Sim Lab explaining the order is wrong. They respond with an apology and dispatch the correct stand to me, which arrives a couple of days later. I'm asked if I want to keep the integrated stand for a 25% discount, or if I want to return it via a pre-paid label. I opt to return it.
So, now I'm starting the assembly process of the stand and cockpit and the first thing that surprises me is there's absolutely no assembly instructions included (or even a packing list). I had to go online looking at the Sim Lab schematics (which weren't very useful) and doing Google Image searches to figure-out the assembly process. Come on Sim Lab, aren't assembly instructions a pretty obvious and fundamental thing to include in the box?
At this point, you may think my problems are over... but no, there are several corner brackets and bolts missing from the supplied bag of fasteners. Thankfully, the integrated stand hadn't yet been collected by UPS, so I was able to take the missing fasteners from that. Again, I reach-out to Sim Lab to tell them about this, but, again, was offered no apology or reason for the missing components.
Finally, the supplied corner brackets have alignment tabs cast into them to locate them in the T-slots. Around 8 of these brackets had to be ground down (good job I own a grinder) since those brackets needed to mount at 90-degree to the T-slot.
Just wanted to post this to help others when making purchasing decisions and choosing a supplier. Make your own judgments about the competency of Sim Lab and the quality of customer service I received.
