Oct. 12--The flashy Web site for World Auto Parts hooked Ken Littlejohn.
He needed a used engine motor for a pickup truck.
The Jacksonville company's Web site stood out from the crowd, drawing him in with images like the photograph of a sleek, two-story office building on the company's "About Us" page.
"It looked like it was a classy place," Littlejohn said.
The reality is different.
Littlejohn said he felt deceived when he learned World Auto Parts actually operates out of a one-story, metal- walled building on Tresca Road.
And Littlejohn said he still hasn't received the motor he ordered two months ago with a $1,156 payment.
World Auto Parts is among the growing number of Jacksonville-based businesses oriented around Internet sites for selling used car parts.
After taking orders, the companies use a national network of salvage yards to track down the parts and arrange for shipment to purchasers around the country.
But those online sellers face complaints when the part doesn't match the vehicle, or the condition of the part is worse than what the purchaser expected.
Angry customers of World Auto Parts have called on the FBI and state Attorney General's Office to investigate.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has contacted some customers.
The Better Business Bureau of Northeast Florida has handled 56 complaints about World Auto Parts the past two years.
Fourteen of the complaints were unresolved, and the company didn't answer nine of them, according to the bureau.
The BBB flags World Auto Parts with an unsatisfactory rating.
That unsatisfactory rating also shows up when consumers look up several online businesses affiliated with World Auto Parts -- AutoTech Microsystems, Engine Control Units Direct and World Auto Tech Parts.
World Auto Parts officials say the company has struggled recently after a computer hacker repeatedly shut down the system, but the business has worked with customers whose orders weren't filled.
"We have the highest ethics and standards and are committed to our customers," said co-owner Alex Szlegr.
Problems bound to occur Tom Stephens, executive director of the local Better Business Bureau, said the biggest challenge for the online companies is making sure the salvage yards ship the correct parts in working order.
"It's a system that's bound to cause problems," Stephens said. "The issue is what do you do when the problem arises. That's where it appears to me this company [World Auto Parts] may be falling down a little -- or a lot."
By sheer number of complaints, National Parts LLC of Jacksonville, which operates
www.searchparts.com
, has generated more calls to the Better Business Bureau -- 108 in the past three years, with 62 of those in the past 12 months.
The bureau gives it a satisfactory rating, however, because the volume of complaints isn't unusual for a company in the online part-selling industry, and National Parts has worked to resolve all the complaints, according to the Better Business Bureau.
Two other online businesses based in Jacksonville are new to the scene.
Got Engines Inc., operator of
www.gotengines.com
, has fielded one complaint since the bureau opened a file on the company in May.
Auto Part Nexus, which runs
www.autopartnexus.com
, has not had any complaints since the bureau opened a file in June.
Stories from customers Customers of World Auto Parts have complained about long delays in getting parts, receiving parts that mechanics deemed unusable, and getting recorded message that the company's phone line is experiencing technical difficulties. (That message was on the phone line last week.)
Bogden Nastea of Maryland said he paid $13,000 for a remanufactured BMW engine in early August.
He said he was supposed to get it in two and a half weeks.
A month after placing the order, he canceled it when the engine hadn't arrived.
He said he never got a refund, forcing him to get a chargeback from his credit card company. Jesup, Ga., resident Sandra Overstreet said she paid $785 for a used engine in June.
She said the engine arrived five weeks later, but it was "so corroded you could take chunks out of the engine block." She said her mechanic refused to install it.
World Auto Parts replaced it with another engine that works, but she said the ordeal took far longer than she expected.
Szlegr said generally speaking about complaints, some are legitimate because dealing with salvage yards creates "some risk and uncertainty" about the parts shipped to customers.
He said some complaints are illegitimate because customers don't abide by terms of the contract.
Szlegr and World Auto Parts co-founder Robert Yoder got into the auto parts sales business after owning a Web design company.
First impressions California resident Al Bojorquez said when he logged onto the site a year ago, the snazzy graphics and sound effect of a roaring engine caught his eye and ear.
Bojorquez later filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau after his mechanic said the used engine he bought from World Auto Parts didn't work.
But he said when he originally dealt with the company, the Web site was so sophisticated "at first glance, you think you can't go wrong." Szlegr defended displaying the picture of the two-story office building on the site's "About Us" page.
He said World Auto Parts isn't located in that building, but it's an example of how Web page designers choose photos to "present a good image" of a company.
The Web page doesn't specifically label the picture of the two-story building as World Auto Part's location.
Stephens said he's seen other companies "puff up" their image by implying a photo shows where the business is located.
"They will give you a glowing picture with a bunch of employees standing in front of a big office building when they're really working out of a hotel room," he said.
He said it's important for consumers to look beyond the Web sites to learn about the company's background and policy.
Down to 10 employees Szlegr said at the company's peak, it employed 27 people and was taking 40 to 50 orders per day.
But around the start of 2008, a group of salesmen left to launch the startup of Auto Part Nexus, Szlegr said.
He said the company suffered another blow when a computer hacker got into the computer system and forced it to shut down repeatedly, causing sales to fall.
Szlegr filed a complaint with the FBI for a cybercrimes investigation.
The company is down to 10 employees.
He said he and Yoder are trying to "regroup and rebuild." The World Auto Parts site is offline, but they have a sister site at enginecontrolunits.com that focuses on selling the electronic devices that control an engine.
They declined a request by the Times-Union to photograph them at their business during the interview.
"We've worked too hard to let it go down the tubes," Yoder said.
"We've invested everything we have in the company.
It's our baby." They said customers who didn't receive merchandise can contact their credit card companies and get chargebacks, a provision allowed by federal law.
Szlegr said consumers can also get chargebacks if they paid by debit card.
But the federal law doesn't apply to debit cards, which automatically withdraw money from a bank account at the time of purchase.
Some debit card issuers voluntarily let consumers dispute payments if merchandise isn't delivered, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Szlegr said if a customer can't get a chargeback, the company reviews refund requests on a case-by-case basis.
Littlejohn, the South Florida resident still trying to get his money back after paying World Auto Parts by debit card, said the company has unfinished business with customers like him.
He said he's frustrated by the runaround.
"I want one of two things," Littlejohn said. "I either want my money back, or I want visitation rights to see them in jail."
