coastal electronics - lock pick - how do they stay in business

Here's my experience with Coastal.

In March of 2005 (before I had a Prius) I was on a Yahoo email group and someone announced that Coastal's site was down for a few days. I emailed that I remembered a company (that made movie prop replicas) that took a lot of pre-orders, but went out of business before even a fraction of the props (including a $12,000 replica of the B9 robot from Lost In Space) were actually produced. I also said I wouldn't order until people were actually getting items.

That was a bad move. I was blasted for trying to destroy a Mom & Pop operation. Another said that since I was a newbie, I didn't realize that if the Prius community was a real location, Dave would be mayor. Dave himself sent a long angry post. I apologized and in April 2005 ordered an auto-lock and the NAV Enhancement kit (early version of the Lockpick).

The auto-lock arrived in September (after calls in July) and the NAV kit didn't arrive until January 2006. They called and asked if I still wanted it (as the secret was out long before that). I ordered their EV kit in February 2006 and it was installed two weeks later (I live in San Diego so that includes shipping). My credit card wasn't charged until the item shipped.

It's been said before; if they could hire someone part-time to answer phone calls and emails it would help them quite a bit.

 

It used to be much easier to get ahold of them, and when their business was still growing I had many a conversation with the proprietors. They build a reputable, trustworthy product, engineered to match the Prius exactly (some of the R&D is local as I believe the proprietor is an EE with a Prius-tinkering hobby). You will have no difficulties with their products and you will be very satisfied with your purchase, if you're not too tight in the wallet.

I'm extremely happy with everything I've installed from them -- auto-door locks / trunk-opener / outlet mod on a 2001 and EV-only / LockPick 3 / two outlet mods on a 2006 Prius. The equipment functions as expected, with one exception: due to thermal creep I had to solder the conductors within the wiretaps in place for the EV kit.

But I'd recommend all their products without hesitation to anyone who is even somewhat electrical savvy.

~ dan ~

 

I have been VERY patient with CE but i think my patience is coming to an end. I ordered my utlimate Lockpick 3 in october and it has never worked. I have been calling them at least 2 times a week since then and have only received ONE call back since where they asked me to send pics of my MFD. Once i did that i went back into the habit of calling them at least twice a week. NEVER did i get a call back.

I really don’t wish anything good upon this company anymore and after my regularly scheduled calls this week, i will be calling my credit card company to file for my money back and then proceed to the better business bureau

I am usually very lenient to small companies as i am a small business owner myself, but folks, this is just ridiculous........

 

ya know, i've read threads and threads, and literally hundreds of complaints on this board about these guys. why don't they either run their business like a business, not a hobby, or close up shop? sooner or later they're gonna get sued, and quite frankly, I can't imagine they would even care from what i've read on here.

 

Just purchased from Coastal and I was immediately charged ... hopefully they ship as fast!

 

Well, I know I will be ordering mine by next month when my taxes come in, so sure hope they are shipping quick.

 

Well don't expect to hear from them at all ... my e-mails and phone calls were both completely ignored, but I got an automated e-mail from UPS today saying that a package was on it's way from them. I am very pleased with the speedy shipping ... the customer service otherwise was less then impressive.