SD Truck Springs of Ronkonkoma closes doors amid lawsuits, customer complaints
A screen shot of the Better Business Bureau website shows its "F" rating for SD Truck Springs of Ronkonkoma. Credit: Newsday
SD Truck Springs, a vehicle parts seller in Ronkonkoma, appears to have closed its doors amid hundreds of customer complaints and a pair of lawsuits seeking almost $1 million in unpaid bills.
The owner, Vincent Davi, did not return calls on Thursday to a number that is listed under his name and has a voicemail greeting by “Vincent from SD Truck Springs.” Calls to a backup number received an error message, saying it was “temporarily unavailable.”
Davi’s company website, sdtrucksprings.com, which sells an assortment of items including shocks, struts, air compressors and leaf springs, also is no longer operating. The company's office in Ronkonkoma appeared to be closed as well — a red “stop-work order” from the state Workers' Compensation Board was posted on its glass storefront.
The Better Business Bureau, which has been tracking customer complaints against the company, recently downgraded SD Truck Springs from a “B” to an “F” — a mark reserved for its most troubled companies. The consumer advocacy group stated that many of Davi’s customers paid for vehicle parts and accessories that were never delivered. Customers also told BBB they had trouble getting a response from the company when seeking to cancel orders or get refunds.
“We’re still getting complaints” about SD Truck Springs, said Claire Rosenzweig, the president and CEO of the BBB of Metropolitan New York. “We reached out to them in the summer when we started noticing this spike in complaints — no response.”
A stop-work order from the state Workers' Compensation Board is posted on the entrance to SD Truck Springs in Ronkonkoma. Credit: James Carbone
The Better Business Bureau says that more than 500 customer complaints have been logged on its website against the company, including 395 in the last 12 months. BBB said the company has failed to resolve most of them.
A spokeswoman for New York State Attorney General Letitia James would not comment about whether state authorities have opened an investigation into the company.
Meantime, two companies Davi has done business with have filed breach-of-contract lawsuits stemming from what they allege are a series of missed payments.
Firestone Industrial Products Company, a vehicle parts supplier, is seeking more than $645,000 from Davi’s company for numerous products it says SD Truck Springs ordered between March and August of last year. And Kalamata Capital Group, a company that provides financing to small businesses in New York, is suing Davi’s company for a breach of contract and seeking about $188,000.
Both cases are winding through the court system: a hearing in the Kalamata case is scheduled for next Thursday in Suffolk Supreme Court, and a pretrial conference is scheduled in the Firestone case on Jan. 9 in federal court in Central Islip.
Lawyers for Firestone and Kalamata would not comment about their claims against Davi.
Rosenzweig said SD Truck Springs should be a cautionary tale for consumers. Anyone who shops online should make sure to first look up local merchants on the BBB.org site, she said. And they should use credit cards instead of cash to buy items, since credit cards allow users to dispute transactions and get their money back.
“Things can happen so quickly,” Rosenzweig said. “You can have a company like this that was doing just fine and then all of a sudden, something happens. We don’t know what, but they just stop responding.”
