I ordered a front bumper on the 6th of December 2022 when they were having a 20% off sale for the holidays. From the time I added the bumper to cart till the time I got the confirmation email, the lead time went from around 10-14 weeks to 14-20 weeks. Pretty big bummer, but I already came this far, what's another few weeks wait. (I received it in 22 weeks)
First, let's talk about why I bought the bumper, and why Expo One. I wanted a front bumper primarily for a winch. I went back and forth between the AEV and the Expo One for quite some time. I decided that I'd go with AEV if I went with 40s and I'd do the Expo if I stuck under 40s. After a lot of back and forth, I decided that I'd keep it under 40s for a number of reasons so I did the Expo one. Call me what you want, I'm building a poser wagon and I wanna be the baddest diesel wagon at the mall…
Ok, so with that out of the way, lets talk about the process waiting for your new $3,000+ dollar bumper. It sucks.
1. Send the money
You pay for your stuff through their website. Now is a good time to mention they have 2 websites, a product sales website where you buy the bumper, and a product information site, where you can read about their products. They are far too small a company to justify having this style of website, and additionally, both are pretty bad to navigate.
2. Confirm you got your order correct
They send you an email confirmation with your order. It's relatively straight forward, but I'd recommend to Expo that they should format their parts list better, as it's a bit of a challenge as a buyer to understand if the details in the email match 1:1 with the details in your order online. It's not rocket science, but it's a large sum of money and the wait is long, so I'd like to be more confident in knowing that I indeed am signing "ok" to the right stuff.
Here is where some of the real trouble starts. You get a "Welcome to the team" letter that could be better laid out to really make you
feel like you're getting something special, but I'm just being extremely picky here. I'm not saying it's a requirement, I'm just saying that if you're going to position yourself like this as a company, you need to follow through, otherwise just send me some information. Ok, again, I'm being overly picky here.
Anyway, that welcome letter contains the line "
Automated updates will be provided as your order moves through the fabrication process." and both in that letter and as a separate attachment you receive the below image.
My assumption is that I'd get email updates throughout this process, but that is not the case. You get a confirmation email for your purchase (where you confirm), an email when it heads to powder coating, an email when it heads to shipping. Again, my wait time was 5 months, and I have thousands of dollars invested at this point, I'd have liked some better tracking along the way.
I followed up about 6 weeks later to get a sense of how things were progressing, and was informed "We are currently on track for your estimated lead time!". After that I decided to let things ride until 20 weeks.
In total, I waited 16 weeks between the confirmation of the purchase till the next email, not including the email I initiated as a check in.
3. Receive confirmation it is built
I received the following confirmation about 16 weeks after the initial confirmation email. The email stating fab complete, heading to powder. Sweet! Should be coming soon then! I waited just under 1 month between receiving the "fab complete" email and the shipping confirmation email.
4. Receive confirmation of shipping
So I receive the email that informs me my bumper has finally shipped! Right at the 20 week mark I get that fantastic email. Here is the important part of the email:
A malformed email, missing text in certain areas. The important part of the email is that the shipping company they used (MME) is not one of the ones listed in the email links below. This took me a few days to catch onto as I didn't have any clue what MME was. So finally, I go through the MME website to track, and it says I should receive it by end of the week, exciting and surprsing! However, I don't receive it end of the week. The location of drop off keeps changing, from NJ to FL to IL to TX, and then I get an email confirmation from MME that the bumper has been delivered!
I run outside and see nothing, I check again, and it shows delivered to some location outside Odessa Texas, not remotely close to where this Yankee lives…
I call up MME and then inform me I'm outside their carrier range… only after some prodding do they inform me there is another carrier picking it up for delivery. This time Estes is doing the delivery. Estes doesn't have any "email me updates" form that I can find, so I checked the website for a few days, and then gave up assuming that since Estes listed MA as the final destination there would be another driver to take it up to me in NH. Estes had a range of about 2 weeks for delivery, so I gave up and waited…
6. Shipping company randomly shows up without notice
Ok, so about 2 weeks after the initial email from Expo, and about a week after my phone call with MME, I hear my wife say "there is a big box truck outside", which I then realize is likely my bumper (or the ATF raiding my house because they know I've got 2 dogs and dislike government overreach). One of the big benefits of working from home, you're always around for deliveries!
I run out of the house to meet him right in time for him to roll the door up and see the bumper is not in any sort of box, but rather half covered in plastic, resting on a pallet without a single strap keeping it from falling over. A strap or two would have helped, since when he opened the door it had fallen over at some point and he rushed inside to pick it back up and wipe the freshly damaged front end up.
He manages to get it off the truck (hitting it a few more times in the process while attempting not to), and we get it in front of my garage.
I take a bunch of photos to note the damage, and argue with the delivery driver about my options for a few minutes. He tells me the options are to refuse the delivery, or sign and accept, there is no area to note damages (editors note: there is, I found a spot). He then gives me the push to just sign saying "if you refuse the delivery, it will prob take them another 2 weeks to get you a replacement". I corrected him to inform him I've been waiting about 6 months for this bumper, and I won't be paying full price for a used bumper.
There are a bunch of light surface level scratches, and a few deeper gouges. There are enough of them, and deep enough that it appears a pretty easy argument that it should be stripped and recoated.
Outside the damage that appears to be from shipping, there are two areas where the powder coating just didn't adhere to the bumper. It appears as they didn't do any sort of etching at all, so I'm pretty nervous that after a few years the early flaking that is happening on the short edges is going to continue to get worse, and any hit on a rock or anything may result in a lot of peeling. There are also 2 visible spots where it looks like there were letters in the powder coating or something. Not sure how to describe it. I've linked a few of the pictures of the damage at the bottom of this post for folks interested.
There also was one side of the bumper that had a full weld across a connector, top and bottom, and the other side showed it tack welded with 2 little beads. I need to confirm with them if this is structural or not, and if it is, then at least that area needs to be stripped and welded.
My initial inspection seems to indicate that the damage is cosmetic and not functional in nature (outside the one area mentioned above), so I list the damage as well as I could, make a bunch of notes and pictures, and sign off. I then had to run back inside for a full day of meetings.
7. Contact Expo about the damage
Here is where my real annoyance kicks in. A few hours later I call Expo to inform them of my issue. I called just before 5pm EST, and since they are mountain time, it was about 3pm their time. No call back…
Ok, no big deal, they are probably busy. The next morning I send an email at 8:40am EST with information, including my name, contact info, invoice number, and a link to a google drive with photos, including a photo of my delivery slip with damage indicated.
I have meetings all day but again I work from home so I can check my email whenever and have my phone right in front of me. Outside of 2 telemarketers that got me, no calls. So I call back just after 5pm my time, still goes to voicemail. Even trying a different line, voicemail.
I send a follow up email and even try FB messenger, still nothing.
So as of this moment, the bumper was delivered about 33 or so hours ago, haven't been able to reach Expo about the bumper as of yet, and it is still sitting on the pallet.
To follow up
I will update this thread as things progress, both with what Expedition One attempts as a solution, and what we end up with. There appear to be corners cut that I'm not thrilled with. The seeming lack of etching on the metal scare me living in salty new england. The fact that the bumper arrived damaged is a bummer, but more than that the missed welds and current struggle getting them to return my contact is a bit annoying.
[I'll post some photos later. I tried to post during the initial write up but landed on some 10k char limit bug]
