Jay@ExtremeAutos - StegaPerformance.com

[boomer]

Jay is an easy person to do business with, his items are priced fairly and just as
described.

[foda420]

Jay@ExtremeAutos

Before you guys spend even $5 with this guy I ask you to spend 5 minutes reading this. Whether or not it changes your decision to purchase from him isn’t as important as making sure you know what kind of person you’re dealing with, this being the internet and all. I will do my best to keep this contrite, but this has dragged on since February, so I can’t make any promises.

Full disclosure: I have an exhaust leak in my midsection – this is not Jay’s fault, it existed before all this happened. It makes the car rather loud and obnoxious and has gotten considerably worse over the past few months as far as noise is concerned. Jay however, has been aware of this fact since the beginning. He’s also been made aware that I daily drive my car in California, and risk a ticket just about anytime I drive past a cop. Why don’t I just fix it you ask? Well I’ve been consistently lead to believe throughout this whole thing that my headers were just about to arrive, so why would I pay to fix the problem twice? I’m building a custom midsection and want to have the headers first so I can make sure it lines up right the first time.

I’ve wanted shorties for a while and came across these headers while searching eBay, like many of you did. I eventually contacted Jay about them via eBay in early February. I asked him a few questions about them, gave a brief description of my exhaust issues, and requested better pics of the welds in particular. He responded quickly and emailed me various pics from different angles of both banks. I wasn’t ready to purchase just yet, but we continued to exchange emails discussing both of our cars in a rather friendly manner.

Couple weeks later, I purchase my set. Of course, my timing sucked and he was fresh out, but another shipment was on it’s way. I finally got my set at the end of March. After having them for a few days and inspecting them a bit more thoroughly, I noticed a few things that stood out to me. Like the fact that the welds didn’t go all the way around the outside of where the primaries meet the flange, simply ending in areas where it would be difficult to get to, and the primaries on the front bank not lining up properly with the flange. As a result of both things, the ports didn’t look clean and they weren’t lined up right, so I doubted they would maintain let alone improve performance. The pictures he had sent me before didn’t seem to have these issues so I wasn’t sure if it just wasn’t captured in the picture or if I got a bad set.

I sent Jay an email asking him basically that – Did I get a bad set? Not knowing, the tone of my email was purely inquisitive. I included pictures and a description of what I thought was wrong. A direct quote from my email “If what I got is indeed how it’s supposed to be then I guess I’ll be ok with that, I was just under the impression that these details wouldn’t have been issues, minor though they may be. I’m assuming you never opened the box so you probably didn’t get to see the actual set I got.” I get a call early the next morning from a concerned and apologetic Jay. He tells me that what I got was indeed a bad batch and that he hadn’t had time to open the boxes and check before sending them out. He was adamant that the quality should have been better and seemed even more concerned that he had sent out 4 or 5 other sets from the same batch. When we got off the phone he had agreed to send me a replacement set. Maybe it was just all a bad April Fools joke – that was on April 1st.

Thereafter we settled into a pattern. I called the morning of 4/16 and after getting no answer, sent a text asking if he had an update. Around lunchtime I called again, still no answer. I got a text about an hour later stating “Hey Gil I ordered the headers plus a few others, they should be in by next week and yours out to you when they arrive.” I thanked him and put it to the back of my mind. This continued, generally in this fashion, every two weeks with the excuse eventually turning to the manufacturer. He claimed every batch he had gotten since had the same problems and that he was fighting with them to get it made better. I decided to accept his reason and wait longer.

On 6/18 I get a response to a text I had sent the day before with a picture of a set of headers and this: “Just got my batch of m20 and m50 headers in and welds look great. Catching up to orders you should have a tracking number coming your way.” I thank him profusely and text him my address to make sure he’s got it. On 6/30 another text asking for an update, no answer. Same story to the text the next day. Call 3 times on 7/2 and all are ignored. At this point I’m pretty fed up and I send a text threatening to blow up his for sale threads if I don’t hear back. I get a response 4 minutes later stating that he’s waiting on Schmiedmann, they’re on national holiday in Germany. Apparently he had only gotten 2 sets on 6/18 and had to rectify 2 other orders first (if one of those supposed people exist, please post here). He offered to refund me the money and resell me a set when he received the replacement. Not seeing the point in doing this transaction twice, I declined and told him to send me a set when he gets it in. In the same text conversation, he sends me a screenshot of a FedEx tracking page showing he’s receiving a package on 7/8 and tells me that he’ll move me up to send me the set sooner since I need it to fix my exhaust system.

7/8 comes and goes and I don’t hear anything. Text him on 7/9 and he tells me he wasn’t there for the delivery and hasn’t had time to go pickup the package yet. Text on 7/11 asking if he’s picked them up yet, no answer. This is where it gets good. I log onto Bimmerforums and what is the first thread I see in the E36 M3 section? That’s right, a review of Schmiedmann headers bought from Jay at Stega Performance. Remember, this is posted on 7/11: “I ordered them from stegaperformance.com last week, and they showed up today.” Up to that point I hadn’t even thought about searching to see if he was selling them anywhere else. I’m sure you all will understand when I say that I almost blew up with anger. Here was a guy who had JUST ordered and received his set while I’ve been fighting to get my replacement since April 1st.

I call Jay and he actually picks up on the first time. I struggle to not completely lose it as I inform him of the situation. Sheepishly, sounding like a kid caught in a lie, he promises to send me a set that day and send me the tracking info. He even offers to give me a full refund + the headers as compensation for the inconvenience. I told him to keep his money, I just want my headers. Since then, you guessed it, ignoring calls, texts and sending me straight to voicemail. He’s now blocked specifically my phone number and blocked me on IG. He apparently believes that if you ignore a problem it goes away. I’ve gone as far as calling FedEx and confirming nothing is being sent to me at my current, or previous addresses. I’ve been more than patient, accepted each of his many excuses along the way and given him many chances to resolve the situation before it came to this. If you’ve read this far, you’ll probably have realized that he was selling them on here the entire time. That means that either he was lying to me about receiving bad batches or he was selling you guys shite headers. Either way, not good business practices.

I know we don’t have many affordable options for these headers, that’s why I bought them in the first place (along with his convincing spiel about “German Made”). You guys will spend your money as you see fit, but I urge you not to support this lying d-bag. For months he has goaded me on about sending me a replacement and to date all I’ve received is excuses. I doubt anything will be resolved after this, but I will make sure that this message is available every single place he tries to sell something until my situation is resolved. As far as my own reputation is concerned, you can search my username on Bimmerforums and M3Forum and see that I have completed many transactions, as both buyer and seller and have gotten nothing but good reviews, even taking a part off my own car to resolve a mistake I made once. On eBay I’m Bsbllr777, 100% feedback there as well. Of course I can post screenshots of all this as clear proof if anybody wants to see it, I can also post the pics of the problem spots on the headers should anybody want to see those as well.

Thanks for reading the book! Hopefully this will save some of you from the immense headache of dealing with this guy when things don’t go right.

Take care of the problem and the post comes down from everywhere. Ball’s in your court Jay, time to step up and do something.

[dpmcdonald]

Jay@ExtremeAutos - StegaPerformance.com

... he promises to send me a set that day and send me the tracking info ... then ... ignoring calls, texts and sending me straight to voicemail.

^ That is, unfortunately, the tell-tale sign. I am getting the same treatment now. I just wish I would have read this before doing business with Jay. My situation is somewhat different, as I actually never received any package from Jay what-so-ever.



He took my $80, strung me along for 2 months, and disappeared.



On January 29, I had a phone conversation with Jay to discuss if could sell replacement glass to a cracked DEPO headlight. He said he could get standalone Hella projectors from his Euro source. I agreed to order a set of those with some 3M clear protection for the glass and sent him $80 via PayPal.



The following is the text communication that we had over the last few months leading up until Jay's silence: