my response now:
this is the email i sent you backRussell, I appreciate the email and your feelings expressed, but bottom line is you knew by my emails and phone calls that I wasn't happy w/ a handful of what I found to be mostly trivial things. It upset me further that after doing all that work to my car and me giving you praise up and down on TTnet while it was happening that you declined my solution so these trivial matters. Had you accepted my offer I would have had only good things to say about you and your crew since you would have backed up your work and stood behind it rather than blaming it on a time issue and some work being done by a different shop. Keep in mind too that I thought I did possible serious damage to my engine while out in TX when a poorly installed oil cooler line ruptured and caused me to lose 4 qts of oil. Had I not just left the dyno shop I may have blown the engine all together as I was on the highway in the middle of practically nowhere. As for me now putting that info on TTnet - I let it slide for 8+ months, I never brought up 1 negative thing involving you or your store on any forum. It wasn't until I finally sat down w/ my mechanic and realized what the charges were going to be to fix/replace/change things done while my car was down there did I get extremely upset. Not to mention I found it very insulting that after I spent the money I did with you guys that you turned me down on such little things. All good business people know the old motto - ‘its the little things that count’. Turns out that my engine seems fine, but the compression test, the new DP's, the labor, the fixing of the oil cooler, repainting and replacing painted engine plastics, etc have run me quite a bit of money and quite a bit of head ache. I also have an issue with you guys blaming there being a ‘time crunch’. When we agreed on the project you said roughly 4 weeks, yes we added some things along the way but you had roughly 4 months to complete this project. I honestly felt that the reason it took as long as it did was because of all the increased ‘spring time’ business you had and my car got pushed back by new business that rolled up during the days. Moreover, up till this point I am positive that my praise of you while my car was there did nothing but help your business tremendously and since I was 1 of the first big projects you did I'm sure that helped as well. It wasn't till just recently that I expressed my dissatisfaction with some work done and it wasn't till my most recent post that several other named who did the work. I've had several people contact me over the past 4-6 months asking my opinion of your work, and I simply told them that I was quite unhappy with how you decided to handle some trivial things that I found after picking up my car and that if I had to do it over again I would not choose you. You also claim you gave me 1 hell of a discounted price, I'll go along w/ that and say you did give me a good price, but hell man, that is $8200 of my hard earned money, 4 months of my Z being 7 hours away, and then poor responses to little things I was unhappy with. Keep in mind, yes my battery was dead and you put another dead battery in the car to send me home with. If it wasn't for Halo following me to dinner that evening I would have been in much worse shape. Yes you did give me another battery when we called you and had you and Reuben come out, but keep in mind Russell - I gave you $8200 check and my bill was $8137, so I don't think we'll call that a total free battery. your comments here: ‘When you have a highly modified Z you will have problems, period. Our job is to make sure those stay at a minimum. When you car arrived here it had really been butchered up in many respects. It left here in a much better condition.’ I'm sure that many highly mod'd Z's do have issues, I have yet to run my Z that you helped build w/ any N2O yet nor over 17lbs of boost, and so far I have had no ‘mechanical’ problems aside from a few boost leaks, oil cooler line split/loose of 4qts of oil, and poorly done dp extensions. I also made it very clear to you that I hoped to never have to bring my Z back down there, it was a sunny day fun non-daily driver that would only see the high HP I talked about wanting to hit for just a dyno run to get the #'s and other than that it might see some race fuel for some fun runs, so I didn't anticipate many problems either. Yes I would agree that when I brought my Z to you there were some ‘butchered up’ things with it, hell it had a blown turbo for one, and for another it was on a dying stock engine w/ 133k miles. But honestly when many people saw my Z at the Dyno day they thought there was some butchering up done by you. Since then many people have seen my Z and those that are mechanically inclined questioned many things that were done, but I haven't bitched about that or even caused a stink. As long as my Z runs strong and the issues I had were fixable I dealt with it, but I also wasn't going to BS anyone who asked about my experience with you. I even was trying to defend you out in Zcon when people were either making comments on some work done or saying in general that GA people in the ‘know’ don't use your except for parts. Your comment here: ‘Some of the complaints we have explained already and you are still bringing them up. We didn't get the time we wanted to drive the car break it in, go back over everything, etc.’ Again this goes back to my car being there 4 months, I thought this was 4 times longer than what we discussed and you still think it wasn't long enough - obviously we'll never see eye to eye on that. Moreover, I thought that should have been plenty of time to do what needed doing and to test drive/break it in. The only issue that I think you explained accurately was the bushing issue and I've only brought that up in 1 single post and the reason I did was because I wasn't made aware of it not being on nor did I get it back until such time as I noticed it not being on. The other things I truly think were just lack of detail, the oil cooler, the freshly painted plastics, the dp issue. And I have never once blamed the N2O issue on you, that was an issue prior to my bringing the car to you and I've made that clear to anyone who has asked - its just so happens to be part of my current project. your comments here: ‘We didn't replace every hose on the car and we didn't charge you accordingly. We try to keep costs reasonable, while trying to balance reliability. The little things add up the quickest on big jobs. We would rather replace everything with a new part but almost no one is willing to pay for it. There are things that we know need replacing every time which we do, and many parts that are in a gray area. But when a part fails people are always quick to ask us why there wasn't a new one on there. Well if we replaced everything that was even remotely suspect to failure on a big job like this it would cost much more. ‘ I can certainly appreciate this, but we did replace almost everything in that engine bay in one way or another. I've only been upset about what did possible damage or what appears to have been installed poorly. I haven't claimed that my mafs were bad or that my cas is ruined or anything along those lines, I only brought up issues that were apparent and that caused other issues (ie oil cooler which itself I got used from you and was fine, it was the way in which it was mounted and the kink on the hosing that was at issue).
your comment here: ‘Frankly, we were all a little upset about the fact that after you left that you never gave us any credit for all the work we had done. I guess we are just on different levels about that. Everyone loves the way your car looks when you pop the hood and I think we have a lot to do with that, but instead people on the net are told to look at the work we did under the car, which can't be seen. You have a lot of stickers on your car, and the shop that contributed the most to it isn't represented. But if you were really this upset about it I guess it makes sense. I thought we were on better terms than we were.’
This goes back to ‘its the little things that count’. Again, bottom line Russell you left a bad taste in my mouth when I saw some of the poor work done and when I thought I almost lost my engine, furthermore I was very upset that you declined what I felt to be a very fair offer to make good on things. I mean come on man, I offered that if you gave me a hood we'd call it ever. Had you done this or even something close to it I would have said to anyone that asked that you made good on issues and overall I'm happy with things. As it turns out I got an explanation that you felt you had already given me a very low charge to begin with and you felt the work done was adequate. And again, how much business do you think my weekly posts with pics drummed up for you prior to getting my car back? I would say it was more than any other merchant I've given praise to on that forum. And I wear 3 stickers - TTnet (I wear theirs because I think its great they give us a kick ass forum for free and its saved my ass many times w/ help from members/merchants),1 from coz and 1 from Avalon and that is because both offered me some incredible deals for some awesome parts I needed, there was no way I would have worn your sticker and again its because you failed me. I hate stickers on my car and am choosy about what I put on it.I'm sorry if that offends you, but you offended me. Remember, great deal or not, I spent $8200 with you (show me how many people spent that with you and paid a bill that size prior to my car being there) and that was the pricing you quoted me plus the extras we did along the way so I feel I paid was reasonably fair either way. to finish my reading my response click here for the full response: [ http://www.myttz.com/wagz/ruzzell.doc ]
1990 300ZX TT w/ some mods
1999.5 Audi A42.8Quattro supercharged
1998 CBR 900RR |
