About Flip Pac quality....
I've had 2 FlipPac's over 15 years. The first one for 7 years, and the current one for 6 years.
The product is a great "idea" but is extremely poorly executed.
The good:
1. The idea is great, and when new works as advertised which is what you would expect.
2. The tent manufacturer produces a quality product that lasts for many years with very little maintenance. (Although I am starting think I have just "been lucky" as there are plenty of forum posts about tent problems as well.)
The bad:
1. Fit and finish is mediocre at best. The fit onto the bed and over the cab of your truck is as generic as it gets. The quality and finish of the fiberglass is terrible. (Place your head next to your FlipPac and look down the side, now place your head on ANY OTHER shell on the market and look down the side. The FlipPac has waves in the fiberglass, and neither of mine were square or even really straight.) This is not a function of thick "reinforced" fiberglass or any other excuse. Many marine products use much thicker "actual" reinforced fiberglass and are perfectly smooth and straight.
2. Poor quality peripheral components. The torsion bar is a joke - just read the forums. If yours has lasted more than 3 years, you either aren't using your FlipPac hardly ever, or you are just lucky. Also, the thinnest, crappiest aluminum tubing available is used for the stabilizer tubes, and then cheap plastic hinges and end caps are used. If you're camping, and the temperature drops BE VERY CAREFUL not to crack or break these plastic parts - which after a few years in the sun become brittle and break easily. I finally machined my own aluminum pieces to replace the factory crap FlipPac uses.
3. Poor quality lid to shell seal. It looks like a generic 1950 era fridge door seal - carry some Gorilla Glue so you can periodically glue it back on.
4. Supposed "fiberglass reinforcement". If you want to mount even a light duty roof rack - again, be very careful. I had a professional Baja 1000 truck builder fabricate my roof rack. I was there when he drilled the holes in the side of the lid exactly where FRP told him too. He let me drill one of the holes so I could feel there was almost nothing that the sheet metal screw would anchor into except an extremely thin piece of metal.
5. Fit of the lid to the shell. Is OK when they are new, but after a few years of use the hinges become sloppy and the fit becomes worse.
6. I saved the best for last: THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE ON THE PLANET! Diana is a liar, as is the other woman that sometimes answers the phone. I don't think anyone wants to read the pages that would be required for me to tell you about all of my issues with FlipPac - suffice to say I've had some bad customer service in the past, but nothing comes close to FlipPac.
A. They will NEVER call you back, even though they will tell you a day and a time that they will call - it won't happen.
B. Someone on this forum was happy FlipPac sent them free parts and thought that was good customer service. How long did you wait for those "free" parts. FipPac sent me some "free" plastic end caps that might have cost them .30c after 2 months of my asking for them and offering to pay. Just because something ends up being free does not equate to good customer service.
C. Not only does it take MONTHS to get cheap plastic crap parts, it takes MONTHS to get a torsion bar. Sure you can follow the torsion bar delete instructions listed at Expedition Portal, but the point is that after paying over $4k for a FlipPac don't you think they (FlipPac) should at the very least sell you a new one in a reasonable amount of time?
D. Not only does the basic operation of every other business in the world elude FlipPac, they lie about their responsibility. They can't keep a basic inventory of parts known to fail.
They can't improve the quality of parts known to fail.
They can't be honest to their customers about delivery time of parts known to fail.
They can't be honest to their customers about being responsible for not stocking parts known to fail.
They can't be honest to their customers about the basic courtesy of returning phone calls.
In short, FipPac is a company ran by incompetent, dishonest people who took a good idea and screwed it up as much as possible. Their product isn't worth 1/10 of what they charge for it. I hope that at some point the FlipPac "idea" will be adopted by a competent, honest manufacturing company. But for now, since there isn't another choice on the market, we have to keep dealing with a poor quality product and people who will evade responsibility and lie to us.
