SmurfZilla

iTrader: (33)

Wasn't DG in trouble for messing with the CF on their posted dyno threads?

Boltz.

iTrader: (42)

The aftermarket performance industry is horribly run compared to many other industries in business and I have commented on that plenty of times on these forums.

By not ousting these shops, you (the op) are helping them continue down their path and allowing other people to be ripped by them.

Now, on behalf of the shop's sides, it is very hard to keep people happy. Customers love to blame unrelated problems on shops all of the time. Most shops do not know how to properly manage situations like this and end up making an enemy instead of keeping a customer. It also sours the shop owner/manager over time and makes them easily irritable which is the worst.

Its a tough cycle and a tough business. Thats why I have no interest in entering this market professionally on a full time basis. I'm keeping this a hobby because I want to still love it.

r0xah

iTrader: (5)

I think Maryland in particular is a hard place to find a trustworthy shop. I went to IAG to have an alignment performed. Well they didn't pick up on the busted wheel bearing and I had to have that replaced and get another alignment.

I was so grateful to find Greg at UCS (who now has a new upgraded shop) because he specializes in Evos and treats you as a friend. I would travel over an hour to his shop to be rest assured my evo was in good hands. I was also glad to meet everyone at AMS in Gaithersburg. Dan is a real great tuner who will explain/breakdown everything to make sure you understand and Corey and Mason are real nice guys.

Once you find the right guys, the hobby becomes really fun again

MuslimEvoFreak

iTrader: (39)

To the OP, I completely understand where you stand but it was only with one shop. When Devo Tuning was around Adam (shop owner) promised me I would have my car "fixed" of it's issues within six months. Now I am a very patient guy and gave him an extra two months because of how busy his shop constantly was. Here comes the ninth month and my car wasn't even touched. At that point I was upset but he re-assured me everything would be dealt with and I would get my car back.

Fast-forwarding....I received my car back after two years with countless s*** missing. He took the parts off of my car and would put them on other customers vehicles to get them out of there but when it came to my car, others parts were put on. I was missing my shift knob, license plate frame, a knob off of my seat, two bolts missing off of my transfer case, my suspension bars under the car, two lug nuts and A LOT more other things. My evos headlight would flicker and I couldn't figure out why. The wiring was all sorts of crap and my SRS light stays on. I found out that one of the grounds wasn't bolted down....yippie.... He even took my brand new oem rims and left them at the body shop my car was worked at. I called the guy up and he told me if Adam could give him his money that he owes, he will gladly return my rims. Then I ordered new oem evo ix headlights and only received one?! It took him another four months to get my other headlight. I called him countless amount of times and even showed up to the new shop he worked at after his other shops kept getting broken into....I wonder why?.....After me telling him I will forcefully obtain my parts if they aren't given back, he gave me my parts. Even the shop owner at the shop he worked at was fed-up with him and told me to grab whatever parts I was missing from his personal car. I have much more I can add to this and have many friends who have been in worse situations with Devo Tuning and Adam. I spent a total of $11,000 when I was promised a lot less.

I am still in the evo game and Strictly Modified and Map Performance have been the only shops to fulfill my needs PERFECTLY AND ON-TIME. I have nothing but good words to say about them. I can understand your frustration and wish you stayed and enjoyed the customer service of the true heroes in our community. I must say that I only order parts now and perform all of the labor myself. If I didn't have the time though I know the shops I can count on every time.

My03evo

iTrader: (1)

I honestly don't know if true or not, I found like a 7 page thread about MY CAR since it was worked on by them on here and it was all about that, back when it was owned by the previous owner, which was true about being good friends with DG, but I assume that's where you got that info from.

Either way if he can tune good, that's more important to me than the numbers, although its nice to know the true numbers, but at least im very pleased with my tune and im a picky person

My03evo

iTrader: (1)

They had your car for 2 years? and used it as a parts car? and still didnt do what they were supposed to? I would have gone out of my way to put them out of business to telling EVERYONE your story and not to go there. They would have regretted doing that to mine I know that

supersnow

iTrader: (6)

No surpirse, in 5 years with the EVO most of my experiences have been negative.

Currently, my car is on jack stands since early April due to TRE inability to deliver on the agreed time frame. I sent out the rear diff for upgrade, it only took 4 days to arrive to his facility.......THREE weeks later still no email, no phone call, no tracking number no nothing.

I had to cancel my trip to San Antonio (today), I don't even bother calling or sending emails anymore...it's very clear that once they have your money, they don't give a F&**.

On a side note; MAP performance are outstanding; good experience with them 100% of the time.

browningderek

iTrader: (7)

X2 for MAP!!!! They are the ONLY ones i have dealt with that have been 100% straight up.

JohnBradley

iTrader: (30)

I know what you mean though

Things are like that mostly dependent on where you take it and who you are dealing with. Missing deadlines should be days or weeks at the most, not months and years. In talking with a customer recently I found out that he has waited YEARS for just intercooler piping and exhaust changes.

That is unacceptable.

However some shops are like that. Its dedication to one simple thing, Making the customer happy. Failure to strive for that goal will lead to threads like this. Saying "I am doing the best I can" is irrelevant. You either are the best or you arent, its either done right and on time or its not. I have been ripped off numerous times in the past. I lost close to 20k on a STi build and had to take it to someone else to get finished. Then I started working on my own stuff. If I didnt understand or know how to do it, I didnt.

There are some customers that will never be happy, that is a fact. They are normally the same ones that will tell everyone else why they arent happy. People see through it though when its weaksauce excuses or explanations. The OP is legitimately not happy and I feel for him. You can only bend over so far backward before you break your own back and nothing gets done (owner being happy, profit on the job) anyway so sometimes as a business you have to cut your losses.

The group of owners that talk on the net reasonably are our (industry) greatest allies. The group that doesnt understand anything about modified cars never being the same as stock again are the ones that seem to be the hardest to deal with. These are the ones that like cars but are not car guys. They want things fixed yesterday, they want it to drive better than stock, they want, they want, they want. Nothing wrong with wanting, but being realistic is very important to a good customer relationship. This is both sides. I use the scotty method as much as possible.

Twice as long on the estimate and then try to get it done in half the time. That way I do not seem dishonest if it does take a month and if its done in 2 weeks all the better.

/rant

Aaron

boostedwrx

iTrader: (27)

I feel for the OP - I'm lucky to have ER close by with their Under Promise, Over Deliver mentality

sk82712

iTrader: (1)

I'll add my .02 here.

I'm US military and stationed in Germany. I'm semi-fluent in speaking German and can understand about 60% of what I hear. Keep that in mind. The shop I consistently go to is a locally owned German Mitsubishi place. I always work with the same mechanic. He speaks very little English and my technical German is lacking, so it's a lot of pointing and trying to say a word that is close to get what I need done. Despite the fact that it's an OEM shop, they don't have any problem working on my car or even installing aftermarket parts (most recently a Shep Trans and Exedy twin). I have nothing but positive things to say about working with them even though there is a language barrier. I actually dropped my car off today to have the 60k service done, windshield and a wheel bearing replaced. I love having a shop where I can go in and the mechanics know me and my car. I always go straight in the bay even if there are other cars in front of me.

As far as tuning: I've only worked with Mitch @ AMS for email tunes. It's been a great experience so far.

Back on topic: The last modified car I had in the states was a VF-30ed WRX. I found a local shop where I went in and spoke directly to the owner and his mechanic. No issues getting exactly what I wanted done and in a timely manner.

I think some of the tuning world's problems extend from the 'fast and the furious' scenario. Guys mod a car in a driveway for a few years, then suddenly think they can open a shop. It doesn't quite work like that.

-Adam

jcnel_evo8

iTrader: (2)

I feel for the OP ... so far ... but there is this little birdy in the back of my head saying anything involving tearing open a motor without a good documented process might end up a little funky.

If I try to break down a modification scenario (as an engineer) I see this for one customer event. One could call this "this standard." (Too bad there is not something like a Power Point web interface ... would be awesome instead of using "text.")

1 - Mod X (magically done in the "now") will make customer happy. -> Shop Y wants to make customer happy so they want to do Mod X. (They haven't met so far, I'm must trying to separate the objects.
2 - Mod X costs Z(dollars and time) from Shop Y. -> Mod X is negotiated for Z(dollars and time) and agreed upon by Customer and Shop Y. Even here you can have a disparity in what Shop Y thinks its going to do for Mod X. A shop could also outright lie. etc. etc.
3 - Work Starts | Work Ends
4 - Mod X done, and Customer may or may not be happy. Here we have at least two scenarios, Mod X is really not Mod X. It may be b*Mod X where b is between 0 and 0.999.
Customer was not able to transfer what his brain thought as Mod X to what Mod X really is. So I guess Mod X is still b*Mod X where b is between 0 and 0.999.

Good shops (and even good customers) seem to be able to break up Mod X into a series of very specific negotiated steps.

Heck, I even had a friend once that took his RX-7 into 14 semi-major changes. By putting it down in a contract with some "looks like this" pictures, when he got hosed, small claims court rewarded him damages when the guy tried to take his money and run. Each bulleted and numbered item was discussed in court as, "negotiated, agreed upon, completed or not completed, or damaged." The items that were not completed were refunded or if damaged, compensated.

Its also a lot less controversial to pull up a table (Excel spreadsheet) of bulleted items and hold a company to status, rather than a "you missed the major date." Customers also feel better if they can be shown a bulleted list of item's status. Those shops that can do at least that (honestly) have the best chance of business success. So yes overall the OP is right in that its really poor for a shop to wait 1 year plus 364 days before they tell status.

Somebody has to sign up for the "bulleted list" and most of the time I have to do it myself.

0.02

~j.

FJF

iTrader: (18)

I know; it's beyond absurd.

After reading all this, frankly, I'm baffled. I mean, my car kissed a guardrail a couple of years ago and needed bodywork and paint. The work took a couple of months, partially, because of parts. I was at the shop every 2-3 days checking on my car. Yes, I trusted the man who did the work, otherwise I wouldn't have taken the car to him. Still, as an owner concerned for his property and as a car guy concerned for his pride and joy, there was no way I'd let anyone else fully control the situation. To me, it's just beyond reason. This is why I have a hard time understanding how a car could sit in a shop for a year or two, how numerous deadlines are missed by months and months, and the owner isn't taking measures to rectify the situation in an aggressive and timely manner.

As a community, we need to get our ducks in a row and reward the shops that give us the service we pay for. Hell, every time my car is at STM it's treated like a frucking Veyron. I have no doubt that some of the other shops are equally as competent. These are the folks who deserve our business. Let's vote with our hard-earned dollars.

Serbj

I really hope we can have a Greg in Connecticut or Massachusetts. I have to drive 7 hours to get to his shop. Your one hour is absolutely nothing.

lol. Where is Greg? He should see this thread!!

C130flyer

iTrader: (8)

To the OP:
Plain and simple......

Its motorsports and its expensive.

You either gotta have some serious skills or some serious money.....
or you gotta have a little of both...

If you can't make your own parts or do your own work and you don't have alot of expendable income quit now!

When the pioneers of this hobby start doing this they had to make their own parts and figure things out for themselves. If you aren't prepared to do this and / or can't afford to have someone else do it for you then stop trying and quit.

You obviously don't love it, because if you did, all of these issues that you have had would have only strengthened your resolve to learn how to do it yourself...

If you have to rely on someone for every little thing like tuning, installing parts, maintenance etc then you need to be able to afford it and if you can't afford it then you need to learn how to do it for yourself.

This isn't just a hobby its a way of life and a part of who we are "gearheads" make the world go round, without us half the world would be speaking German and Japanese and we would all be communists.

My 3 cents
peace out
Good luck with your gun hobby...