This is why...

[Thumper]

Yeah that car is so ghetto, sheesh how could he drive that. (look at sig) I have been on both sides of this argument. I can understand that sometimes you can not make every customer happy, but when it becomes multiply customers over a short period (1-2yrs) then it might not be the customers it might be you. Furthermore some of these alleged dealings were not minor mistakes or cheap mistakes, they were expensive and fairly large easily avoidable mistakes. But then again these are alleged complaints (although jason did reply to them, so they seem valid), and there is no way to find out what really happened.

[johnc]

Here's a current example that I'm working on right now:

 

I have a customer that's starting a new project with me. He's swapping a 20B three rotor engine into a 3rd gen RX7. He's an intelligent guy and has been customer of mine in the past, but he keeps saying, "This should be the easiest engine swap out there, everything I've read on the Internet..."

 

So, two days ago I drove exactly 1/2 mile to pickup the engine that the customer bought off eBay. 1.5 hours later I was back at the shop because the guys that imported the front clip couldn't get their forklift started. Later that day I drove 15 miles to pickup the car from another shop that didn't want to do the swap. 2.5 hours later I'm back at the shop after being stuck in traffic behind a pallet truck that spilled its load. So far I've billed the customer 5 hours and all he's got to show for it are the car and the engine in the same shop.

[blueovalz]

Reminds me of when I was a kid (mid 20's) and having something similar done to me on some bodywork after a wreck (i.e. the frame rails were formed out of bondo to look straight when in fact the rails had been crushed, of which the bondo finally fell off after a couple of weeks of driving it, and this was only a fraction of the problems). The lawsuit was favorable, but it taught me a lesson: roll up the sleeves and learn how to do it yourself!

[Sparky]

Yup,

 

Ive got a story as well to go along with my old 69 plymouth valiant. I had big dreams at 17 Y.O. to get the car all painted and nice.....saved and borrowed some money from my parents and entrusted it with a young guy starting his own business. To make a long story short he lied to me for over a year about how the car was coming along and always asked for a payment for the work and supplies he needed, he was always away from the shop so I never really got to see the "work" a couple weeks after I made the decision to pull the car out out he disappears with my money and some of my valiant parts. my brand new carb, fuel lines and tank were all destroyed and I was out 2K dollars. I then took the car to another body shop the was suppose to be reputable but they screwed me too....another 1200.00. told me the car was ready to paint and had been stripped to bare metal....lies lies lies.

 

well, three years into it i ended up learning how to do body work on the car because I had to redo everything that had been done to it, but ended up having several job offers as a result of my new found talent. the car was such a hassle and I never did see it finished....I eventually sold it two years ago at a loss of 10K. Ever since that first dealing with "performance" or "Custom" shops I have done everything myself and vowed to never get screwed again. I have yet to find a shop that has real world knowledge and respectable workers/owners. The recent import explosion has created a slew of new mini shops that wouldn't know how to properly put a car together if their life depended on it.

 

anywho....Always visit the shop on a weekly basis and pull the car on the first sign of lying. if you as a customer take the first lie, the problems will only get worse.