Year One/PUI Upholstery - use it?

[e-tek]

Hey guys - I ordered seat upholstery from YearOne and got "PUI" made stuff, instead of Legendary, which is what I was expecting. The PUI stuff has a sticker on the bag: "35 years of excellence".... Has anyone else recieved this brand? How did you like them? Did they install well - Or did they look like this?

They are missing several parts that allow the covers to be pulled in to the seat foam, as well as having no relief cuts in the piping so that it can sit nicely on the curved potions of the foam. As you can also see, the parts that they DO have for the seat-retainers, are made from the same vinyl material (scraps) that the seats are made of, rather than a thinner, more pliable material as per the originals. One more thing - there are no relief cuts near the piping so that it can sit nicely on the curved portions of the foam. The vinyl used by PUI is much thicker than the original material and doesn't fit easily or sit nicely.
I can only guess (hope) that this is from a one-off batch, because I cannot imagine anyone would install them like this (though now I recall seeing a car at a show with covers that looked like this. I thought maybe the owner had just hurriedly thrown on the covers for the show...). I could not imagine however, that they used scrap vinyl instead of a proper matreial for the retainer-flaps they did sew on as a mistake...

The first part I noticed missing was this grey flap, sewn in to accept metal rods, that are then hog-ringed to bars in the seat. This pulls the cover into the foam, for a snug fit. This is a photo of the grey flap on the original cover (on top), missing from the new cover (on bottom).



This picture shows the original cover, the flap and where it goes.



You can see here what happens when it is missing.



On the bottom of the cover, you'll notice another one is missing.





So, tonight, I emailed PUI and YearOne and asked for some info on this. I'm sure I will have to return them for properly assembled ones, but if this is really how they build all of them, then I'll be asking for credit to have them professionally repaired and fitted. The problem with returning things to YearOne from Canada (I have found out!), are the brokerage fees. I returned a gas cap for exchange and got a bill for $46.00 from customs, for brokerage!

[e-tek]

Spoke to PUI and the guy looked at another set that had the top retainer flaps, but not the bottom ones. He's going to sew on the bottom ones and send me the new set....very strange...wondering if I should bother at all....sounds like they want to get it right, but if that's the history, maybe they won't be fixable (around the seam).

[ehostler]

Are you going to have to ship the flawed set back or are they going to cover that cost?

Now for my other question...

If you were expecting a Legendary interior set, why didn't you buy directly from Legendary? The price would have been less and you would have gotten the correct stuff the first time around.

[e-tek]

They didn't ask for the other stuff back, so......

I put in ahuge order, everything I needed, all at once with YO, when they had the 15% off deal, plus my 10% over 1000.00, gave me 25% off everything. I thought I was getting Legendary stuff as that is what they advertise....Not until 6 months later did I look REAL CLOSE at the labels (I checked my order, but not the details/lables) and see they where PUI-made.

Now, do you think I should talk to YO and relay my dissatisfaction at them NOT sending Legendary stuff out and get them to send me the 'good' stuff - or should I await the PUI stuff and see if it's any good?

[ehostler]

It would be a tough battle with YearOne, as it has been so long. You could try. Tell them that they clearly advertised that it was a Legendary interior kit and what you got was a PUI kit. That could be considered false advertising or bait and switch. As you are in Canada, it could also be considered international mail and wire fraud.

Before you go to far down that road, you need to confirm that Legendary still makes their own seat covers and that they haven't sold that off to PUI. I say that, as they have sold off their carpet manufacturing to another company.

[e-tek]

Called YO today and apparenlty they have switched to PUI some time ago (News to ME!) due to Legendary's turn around time being 15 weeks vs 3 for PUI. I said: if you get substandard product, how does that help you? He said they've sold a lot of PUI and have had few issues.... I guess that depends on how many they hear about...