TL;DR
I had an experience that makes dealing with Comcast or Ticketmaster seem easy and friendly. I'd probably make my own (and I hate fiberglass work) than ever do business with them again. Leer and ARE are the same company. Private equity firms are killing American quality, and jobs.
Details:
I recently put an ARE MX on my Ram. With a 4" mid rise, rails for a rack, headliner and fold down window it was almost $4,000.
It was possibly assembled by drunken, blind, idiots. They forgot a part (the flap that covers the top of the tailgate and keeps the rain out). They used the wrong length of gasket material in the windows (the part that keeps the rain out). They drove the self tapping screws into the aluminum window trim so far they destroyed the female threads, and some of the screws just fell out. There was a 1/2" diameter hole in the fiberglass on the front surface, where it faces the cab. The dealer insisted on having my VIN and paint code so they could color match, and in some light it's pretty close.
How this got past any kind of QA check baffles me. I assume they don't check anything before they ship product. It obviously leaks. A lot.
When I picked it up, we only saw the missing part and the small hole. We agreed that I would keep it for 2 weeks then return it for warranty work. I desperately needed it for a trip.
I returned it, and then it disappeared for 7 weeks, with no info from the factory. It eventually came back, but they had no clue they were supposed to fix the window trim, so they didn't. It took an additional week to get them to agree to ship the parts to the dealer.
I haven't gone to pick it up yet, so I'm not 100% sure they actually fixed all the problems.
My dealer is OK, but it's been a constant fight, and I've spent many hours dealing with it. Because the dealership is an 80 mile round trip from my place, each trip (2 extra trips so far) takes 2 hours and costs about $20 in fuel.
It took 12 weeks to get delivery, and there was an $80 mail in rebate that has taken 2 months with no signs of life yet.
ARE sucks in the quality of assembly and quality assurance department. Unfortunately, they are owned by the same parent company as Leer, so there may not be any difference.
They were purchased by a private equity firm a while back. There's a decent pattern of PE firms destroying everything they touch by extracting every bit of value, and leaving a smoking crater behind.
canopywest.com
