After having chatted with Rudy, one of the Wholesale BBQ Islands salesmen, at a couple Maricopa County Home & Garden Shows, my wife and I decided to visit the company's showroom on north 83rd Avenue in Peoria. It took a minute to figure out how the custom BBQ and delivery process worked but it was clear from the start that this transplanted California company was committed to making a good first impression on Arizona consumers since moving into the AZ market. We scheduled a time for Rudy to come out to our house to measure and help design our custom BBQ. We got what I considered to be a good Father's Day pricing deal on the unit and on delivery and we were told our unit would be ready for delivery in five to seven weeks.
Right one time at the start of week seven, I got a call from Jesse (one of the Wholesale BBQ Island managers) to set up delivery. Our contract said I needed to inspect our BBQ before it got unloaded from the delivery truck. However, Jesse said my wife and I were welcome to come to their factory in south Phoenix to do a thorough once-over before our BBQ even got loaded. Jesse spent time with us during our inspection at the factory and we were really impressed with the unit's construction--this bad boy is constructed on a welded steel frame and certainly looks like it's built to last!
After we inspected the unit, just to make sure there were no delivery issues, Jesse asked if he could come by our place that afternoon to make sure his crew could get our 12-foot unit safely into our back yard. He arrived a short time later (we're not really close to where he was coming from). After realizing there was no way to get our unit into our back yard through a side gate, he measured and figured out logistics. It would be a tight fit but we agreed on a delivery plan through the house and into the back yard.
On delivery day, there was a mix-up on the delivery time. I texted Jesse after the delivery time frame had passed and within minutes, his crew showed up, apologized, and explained the delivery kerfuffle. I was working from home on delivery day so I was just a bit annoyed but not actually inconvenienced. And, when I saw the two delivery crew members busting their tails to get the tight-fitting unit into my back yard with no damage (to either my house or the BBQ) on one of the hottest days of the hottest Arizona summer on record, I was pretty darned impressed! The crew was polite, took their work seriously, respected our property and completely cleaned up after the unit was installed.
The one thing the delivery crew didn't have on delivery day was the proper connector to hook up the 60,000 BTU side burner to a propane tank. A call to the company resulted in Rudy coming back out with the correct connector and installing it himself the very next day.
Although the entire process wasn't 100% perfect (but few things are), any minor glitches got taken care of almost immediately (as noted above) with no grumbling and with a high level of reassurance that the company would do whatever was needed to keep the customer satisfied! The BBQ looks great and works as promised. My wife and I are thrilled with the product and we certainly believe we got a better deal with this custom fabricated unit than what we would have paid to have the unit built from scratch in our back yard. It's pretty clear this company wants to make a mark for itself in Arizona via great customer service and quality products. I highly recommend Whole BBQ Islands! read more