I bought smittybilt xrc bumpers for my 1989 xj, front and rear off Amazon. The front bumper was exactly as ordered, but the rear was missing the tire carrier which it was advertised with. Amazon refused to help, because the vendor offered to refund me if I paid shipping back (at a cost greater than the purchase price) or $20 off the price of the carrier at full retail. I bought a carrier off eBay, but it came with no hardware...
I called smittybilt and they sent me the tire mount and jack holder, FOR FREE!! I was really Impressed with the speed and level of help involved.

 

You summed it up very well when you told us you bought it on ebay

 

eBay was fine, Amazon screwed me.

 

My tire carrier shipped months after the rear bumper.

 

I'd say you got pretty lucky. Most manufacturers would tell you to go pound sand when buying from ebay/amazon type websites.

 

The guy literally said "you got boned hard enough".

 

Yeah im shocked they are sending you anything for free.

 

We sell on both platforms. If you were to pick an option for automotive parts I would steer you towards Ebay as they are a lot more clear on what product you are buying and what you will receive from the purchase. As the standard is held by the seller enforced by Ebay. Amazon takes a lot of the info out of the sellers hands. We have issues on the selling end.
In regards to Smittybilt, from our experience they provide excellent customer service for anyone with their product. Quality is pretty good, we have a few issues, but they always fix it for us.

 

For my old 96 XJ, I ordered 2 XRC rear bumpers with carriers through 4WD in SoCal. The first one had a bad tire swing, too long, and wouldn't fit. Replacement one had a bad bumper and would not mount onto the jeep.

Frustrated with the lack of quality, I returned the second one and wrote Smittybilt Corp a letter to ask them what happened to their brand. The director of operations in Compton called me and said to take my jeep down to the factory in El Cajon where they would provide and install the bumper w/ carrier for free, plus a tour of the factory (also where they make procomp stuff and G2 axles). Factory manager was probably annoyed he had to do this so I brought him a 6-pack of Sculpin. They installed the bumper, but they had to shave some metal from the carrier to make it fit properly as well.

Two takeaways from this experience:
1. Smittybilt quality is hit or miss, maybe lacks QA oversight in Chinese factory (?)
2. Smittybilt customer service is bar-none, really impressed with the degree to which they wanted to make it right. Appreciated the personal phone call from a big wig.

Would I buy Smittybilt again? Not sure. Probably not that bumper, but I would feel confident the company would try to make things right if I ran into trouble with any of their other parts.

 

That's great i'm glad they worked with you on that butttttt what if that happened to someone on the east coast? They just going to keep sending bumpers? lol. I doubt it. I bought one of the first smittybilt front bumpers when the came out for the XJ. The packaging looks like the bumper rolled around the back of a freight truck for a week. But luckily, the bumper was in solid shape with minimal scratching on the corners. It came from Cali and the shippers weren't careful, not Smitty's problem and I won't fault them except they could have used better packaging and not such thin cardboard boxes.