This stuff kills me. Shops, business, people, etc are very quick and ever so happy to take your money. They talk a good game and are the most reassuring service provider in the whole wide world. Ohh, but no!! Once they've gotten your money and provide the service and it isn't right, they act as if you're a bother to them, a hassle and it's getting on their nerves to fix their f#@k up. Furthermore, it pains me when they start blaming you like, "You must've done this or that!" No idiot!! I paid you several thousands of dollars and it isn't right!! One company I love that has great customer service is Jegs. Not an engine builder, but they sell parts for our hobby and they're great. At least in my experience. Matt's Classic Bowtie's is another. These people still know the values of a customer.

Dang, sorry to hear about these issues. I see a lot of high dollar builds here and the skills needed to make your dreams happen and you pay someone to do it right. When stuff breaks, you expect the builder to fix the problems no questions asked.
Oh and I personally want to thank Greg for helping me out with my (easy for him) fixes. I'm new at all this and the wealth of info on this board is appreciated. :thumbsup:

Hey Mario,

A-he's probably burnt out
B-can't fix some issues, doesn't want to deal with it rather than learning, which takes time, but can't give more time due to being burnt out.
C-you always hurt the ones you love

BUT,
There are NO excuses for the lack of customer service(specially for a great customer). I do 4,000 something invoices a year, some as small as 20$ and into 6 figures.
Wish i could get 1/2 my customers to pay on time, but noooo, i have to pay somebody to chase the money which should have been done when the job was done. this ain't Macy's
We have to treat ALL problems the same. The customer is our boss, just the way it is....
I just wish i was smart enough to see the bad ones before i do business with them in the first place.

Sux. Hope it works out for y'all

Lessons Learned
 

Good guys with good intentions don't always make good car builders.

As someone on this site once said:

"A complete build can either make you famous or infamous..."

Even if I had Lillards money, I wouldn’t commission a shop to build me anything. I trust about 5 people in this whole world, and only one of them likes cars. Too many stories like this. Gives our hobby a bad name, and just makes me sick to my stomach.

There is no guarantee that a talented builder is a talented businessman. Probably the opposite in most cases. Most builders don’t set aside any reserves to cover warranty work. They have to keep billing to cover their overhead etc and as such aren’t willing or able to do warranty work that generates zero cash flow. Of course that is small consolation to the dissatisfied customer who spent six figures and didn’t get what he expected.

Don

Pretty much sums it up right here...

Don I couldn't of said it better myself.

Thanx guys I'm still processing this whole thing . Just having a hard time with the whole deal. But I'm not going to sit back that's for sure.

There's a very well know builder that's a sponsor on here that I've heard about an issue with from a member on another forum I belong to. In short the builder built a frame for a customer. The customer sat on the frame for about a year and his project went south, so he had to sell it. The frame was never installed, modified in anyway or painted/powder coated, etc. the new buyer then tries to put the chassis under the car and the tolerances are off in certain areas by about .25"-.5" in those places. New buyer calls up builder and builder is basically gives him the, "What do you want me to do about it...!!" type of attitude. Although not the original buyer, I still think it is a bunch of crap to not honor your work after selling a $20k chassis. The new buyer had to do lots more work to get it to fit. I read his posts and of course I had to know which builder it was...it floored me when he told me. I was shocked. He even sent me pics. It's not so much the fact that the spec's were off...i get it, it happens. But, the refusal to fix it was the wrong in my eyes. The new buyer had the original receipt, all paperwork and everything and said builder wasn't trying to hear it.