Okay, okay, okay.... I know the pitfalls of any of the "lower class" front bumper products and before you all shake your fingers and replay all of the "buy JDM" write ups, I did not believe it would go this bad.

Buy at your own risk ANY AIT Racing fiber glass products. Read the "fine print" on their web site first BEFORE buying any of their body kits or parts. This is likely true for all of the lower class products and vendors out there.

The fitment of their body kit parts onto your vehicle will likely require extensive modifications, patching, and in some cases WILL NOT FIT your vehicle. This happened to me when buying a an SC front bumper and the unit they sent was a complete piece of poor workmanship and had numerous defects and issues. They were so bad that the body shop judged it too much to save.

When we requested them to replace the faulty unit they immediately went into defensive mode and claimed the unit should have been rejected from the carrier as "damaged" during shipment. The shipping box was pristine and the defects in no way were the result of shipping but from being a piece of garbage when they put it in the box to ship.

When a request for a full refund was made the response was the part "is completely usable" and offered a small, insulting refund to keep it or ship it back at our expense for a "full refund" which is even more of an insult.

DO NOT BUY their products from any distributor or direct unless you can inspect the product in person and avoid the large expense of shipping. (The purchase price can be less than the shipping costs that an item like this can entail).

Maybe others of you have received acceptable units from them in the past (based on previous threads and PMs I have sent to other members) but my experience with them on this one is a total disappointment and yet another lesson in "buyer beware". I was hoping for them to step up and admit this bumper was a total piece of cr*p but that is not the case.

 

Oh, and I have pictures:

Crack in the upper slot.

 

Notch that prevents any chance of fitting around head light.

 

Back side view of these notches - no way should these be there.... (maybe further past where the head light lens ends...).

 

No surprise! its kind of funny now when people are warned in post all over the forum yet still buy these kits! Don't do it! Lost count on how many times i warned people Let this be a lesson to you and anyone reading this, odds of getting a perfectly fitted bumper with little work is slim to none!!

 

sucks man , but yea , thats not acceptable , you should call them 24 hours a day till they refund u , and tell them your gonna flood the internet with negative reviews if they dont.

 

I did a lot of research and knew there were risks with these vendors. The AIT version seemed to be a middle of the road choice and reading other's posts and a few PMs to the more experienced members replacing the current bumper (a VIS Racing model) with the AIT would work out.... It just did not and worse the AIT responses were troubling - the expectations of their company was not unreasonable.

I have had a lot of expenses with restoring/improving this car and it has been a learning journey; I now can see I just should have stayed with the one I have and down the line pop for a more expensive, quality product.

Like some of the other posters have said, this is just one more example of buyer beware.

 

I've always avoided their products but I didn't think they would come out that bad looking. Some of these lower end body kit companies can be really hit or miss. Some make perfect fitting products while others send you junk in a box.

 

I think everyone who replied to this thread saw my thread before, which is somewhat recent (this past June).

I had actually thought about getting the AIT bumper after my first failure but weighed my chances. Even though i heard more good outcome from AIT parts than other rep makers I decided not to take a chance... I went legit Vertex; even though the price was hefty, I have no complaints in workmanship compared to all these replicas. There are still imperfections but no where near what you have in those pictures.

Keep contacting AIT and complain. I hope the end results are in your favor if not some sort of compromise.