I read about this post in Socal MK7 and having read about this here, I cannot believe that you had to go through this horrible experinece. Customer service should always be the top priority at a business.
That being said, I'd like to shed some light onto the whole forged wheel subject. It's a common misconception that there is only one type of wheel forging, however there an in truth, two main types. Japanese companies such as TWS (Not to be confused with TSW) and Rays use mold/die forging which is a very expensive method of manufacturing wheels but it leads to an incredibly strong product. Some examples of mold/die forged wheels are the Volk Racing line such as the ZE40, CE28 and TE37, any forged BBS wheel (they are all made in Japan), the WedsSport FT-117, and all TWS wheels. The now commonly used forging method is CNC/Billet forging, which is how Speedwell wheels are made.
With mold/die forging, the wheel's spoke design is set when the aluminum billet is compressed. A mold with a rough imprint of the wheel's spoke design is pressed into the billet with 6k-12k tons of pressure, compressing the grain structure of the metal. The end result of this first stage of forging results in a metal pancake with a rough design of the wheel's spokes already imprinted. Afterwards the barrel shape is formed and final machining is done before heading into surface treatment and paint. Here's a photo below of the metal "pancake" via video supplied by Rays.
In the video they state that the most important part of forging is "directing the grain or to direct the flow of the forged material."
With CNC forging, the aluminum blank is compressed like in die forging, however there is no mold involved, it simply turned into a true blank. The wheel is turned into an unfinished wheel blank with the barrel structure and concave design already formed; the spokes design is then cut out using a CNC machine. Picture of a wheel blank before CNC below from Vossen:
One of the major reasons why the stuff from BBS and Volk Racing costs so much is that due to the die forging process, the upkeep on the mold is very expensive, as wear and tear on the mold requires it to be constantly replaced, increasing production costs. With either construction method, the wheels do take time to make, so I would be wary if the price is too good to be true.
