cowboy garage!!!

When I wanted some work carried out on my car I asked other people with supra's which garage they would recommend, a few people said see Leon at J.P.S, so i did!

I cracked my rear disk on my jap spec supra so I headed down to J.P.S to get a idea how much it would cost to get a brake conversion to either full uk spec all round or uk spec rear + AP Racing front. After the advice I got, I decided to get the ap's front and uk spec rear as the future engine mods could be endless, so I didnt want to have to change the brakes again.

The only prob was I had to change the wheels as the AP's wouldnt fit. So I asked Leon could he do the uk spec rear to get me back on the road while I saved for the new wheels and AP's, and he said if he put the uk rears on they would overpower the j spec front brakes which would make the car unstable under hard braking!

Two months later with my car off the road and saving every penny, I bought some lovely 19" Racing Hart CX alloys and rang jps for a price for AP's front uks rear and a decat pipe and a nearly new blitz nur spec blower.

After agreeing on a price he told me to bring the car on a Fri and pick it up Sat, so Fri eve I get a call saying the the AP's haven't turned up and collect the car as they will take up to 5 days for them to come in, as AP Racing made a mistake and they didnt have a set in stock, so I had to wait for a new set to be made, so while the car was there I asked for him to take the tow bar off that the previous owner had for his jetski and give the engine a checkover.

I collected the car on the sat with all the work done apart from the ap's front I asked again was the car dangerous with new uk brakes at the back and very old j spec front and Leon said it was, he said he would ring me the following week when the AP's arrive and agreed that I could only get the car in on a Saturday as I could not take time off during the week.

I didnt get that call so plenty of chasing up and very few calls back I finally got the car booked in four weeks later! and was told then he could not do the brakes on the Sat as there wasnt enough hours in the day! so after taking time off work to get the car to the garage which is 50 miles from my house and money I lost from taking time off as im self employed.

I got the car to him Fri eve and said I'll pick the car up tuesday as I had time off as I was going on holiday. Tuesday eve I picked the car up I got charged £ 450 for an engine check up and to remove the rear towbar which involves removing the rear bumper and undoing 6-8 bolts (aparently 6 hours work) they didnt even put all the fixings back in the bumper. On the way home I noticed there was a slight shuddering in the steering.

A week later i came back from holiday I took the car out to give two young family members a lift to Enfied. On the way back home the steering went mad on the M25 and the car veered into the middle lane @ 70-80mph I quickly pulled into the hard sholder and called the RAC thiking there was a prob with the brakes. It took me 3and a half hours to get home and coz it was so late by the time I got back there was no chance of getting up for work. I checked the drivers side wheel the next day and to my amazement, shock and anger every single wheel nut including the two locking nuts were lose! I could undo them with my fingers!

I rang Leon and told him, and to my amazement he said he dosent know how that could have happened, I told him oviously it came out of his garage like that, and that he put my passengers and my life's at risk, and the least he could do was compensate me for the days wages I lost. He didnt want to listen and told me if I wanted to take this further I should contact a solicitor then he put the phone down!

I'm so angered by this, all the money I paid and this is the guy's attitude, obviously there is no comeback if something goes wrong. I would not recommend this garage to anybody after all the trouble i've had with them. so be warned!!

That it was one long sentence!

I started to read it but got a headache

im sorry to hear that. On the supra, no grub screw holds the discs flat either so the disk would of been having movement in it!!!

i know from personal experience (not in supra) it only takes one loose nut to cause all of them to come loose over a period of 2 weeks.

Can i asked what was done in the eingine check up. You could of had a service for hell of a lot less!!

I always ask prices for work before having it done, to make sure im happy.

I hope you get this sorted between you and the garage.

I wont comment on garage in question i have not used and read enough on them to comment.

That's bad luck mate

I use JPS quite often. I must say I wasn't always happy with the service. My supra broke down a few weeks ago due to turbo failure wich JPS installed last august. I'm taking the car there thursday, it has warranty on it, but shouldn't have happened in the first place!

Also I think he's too expensive but as its the closest garage that services supras I don't have much choice

I too have never used JPS and therefore cannot comment on the standard of workmanship but I do applaud you on posting up the thread. Why? Well, because all too often on this BBS we give out public plaudits but very rarely express displeasure.

If you think that is not the case, have a look on the traders areas. You will see "thank you's" all round but very rarely a negative comment. This is ridiculous as there must be members out there who have experienced bad service. By not giving the other side of the coin, it gives a false impression to newer members that all is well.

As an example, I have recently had major problems with Envy. I had ordered (and paid for) wheels in February of this year and have now had to resort to asking for a refund of the outstanding balance as they have admitted that they cannot get them. They tried their best but, to be honest, I still felt the standard of service and information being given out was poor.

Now, normally that would not have been made public and all people would have seen was "thank you for ordering my spark plugs" or "thanks for supplying my brake disks" etc. but lets get real eh?

Not sure what was done in the engine checkup he just said the timing belt was fine and the timing was right. my airbag light was on before i put the car in and would think if he gave it a proper checkup, that the light shouldnt be on when i picked the car up. Well ill be asking prices from now on, so that this wont happen again!

For an engine check up, it might be better to go to Thor Racing in Warwick...

well i personally would like to know what was done in the engine check up and how much of the £450 was for removal of tow bar. As that is a simple mechanic job and can be done by any half brain numpty (i.e me) if i can change my brake discs and pads and flush my system, for the first time of doing brakes ever and on the supra then taking a tow bar off aint that hard.

Like i said a service is £180 tops!!

mfs - are jps replacing turbos under the warranty then??

CJ,

intresting comments. I'm not going to say anything about anyone as i know we all have different experiences. However i think that the problem with negative comments is that on past forums the mods get worried about getting into legal troubles and so delete them and then that causes even more 'why'd you delete my thread' type issues.

but yes i agree negative comments on forums should turn up as its us the little guy parting with our cash. but then if it happens the supplier must be allowed to post up in reply and then perhaps the thread locked to prevent things turning into a slanging match ?

soz it's saturday its raining and i'm bored.

all the best

P

That does not make good reading. I'm not really sure though what to suggest, as it seems talking with Leon did not help! I have used Leon in the past for services and a few mod installs, and have been happy. But while he may know his stuff, it is his mechanics that do most of the stuff these days.

MFS, what does JPS charge p/h these days?

Originally posted by whitesupraboy2

...

mfs - are jps replacing turbos under the warranty then??

Thats what I understand from talking to them on the phone yes...

EDIT: he asks £45 an hour (excl VAT)

well im glad im not the only one thats had problems with him before. i did think he was very expensive and i dont think he carried out any of the work on my car it was the young guy that was there. Even pricing up he just didnt seem to know how much he could get rear uk spec brakes which you would think would be a thing he deals with alot seeing that theres so many j spec coming into the country.

Paul

I would agree that disagreements will always have two sides of the story and I am quite happy for anyone to challenge my observations regarding my attempt at buying wheels.

I still think though that people are far too reticent to post a negative and therefore we get a biased view of experiences. If the mods feel otherwise and wish to delete my post, then I will bow to their authority and keep my comments to myself.

Just a side note,

Regarding rear bumper removal, I am my no means an expert, but it took me about 40mins to get mine off the first time, very easy. For 6 hours labour, that towbar must have been welded on!

bet u could get it quicker off now u done it once already!

Plus they will have perfect tools to undo the 6 bolts holding tow bar on. so a hour for that job 1hr and half tops to complete it

Originally posted by CJ

Paul

 

I would agree that disagreements will always have two sides of the story and I am quite happy for anyone to challenge my observations regarding my attempt at buying wheels.

 

I still think though that people are far too reticent to post a negative and therefore we get a biased view of experiences. If the mods feel otherwise and wish to delete my post, then I will bow to their authority and keep my comments to myself.

I think we're saying the same thing lol

ahh well, on another thing cj, whats the name of the garden center place by you ? me ol dears banging on she wants to go there

Originally posted by whitesupraboy2

bet u could get it quicker off now u done it once already!

 

Plus they will have perfect tools to undo the 6 bolts holding tow bar on. so a hour for that job 1hr and half tops to complete it

I agree! It would be nice to perhaps have someone from JPS on here to give their 'side' though. As mentioned, there are always two sides to a story, so hopefully JPS pop in and give theirs.

I know some forums have a specif "bad experiences" type forum, perhaps in the members area?

A simple disclaimer that:

"The views and coments in this area are those of the individuals posting them, we take no responsibility for other peoples opinions. By reading any of the threads in this forum you accept these conditions".

That should pretty much negate any legal issues. Perhaps it would also encourage traders to keep people well informed.

Personally, I don't care what goes wrong so long as people tell me, from reading Colins thread - he seems to be similar in that way, it was lack of communication as well as lack of wheels that was the problem.

I think it is also important for traders to know when they have pee'd someone off, they can then work to resolve that, I think it benefits both the customer and the trader/company.

Just MHO

To be fair fella there are 2 sides to every story and I am sure that Leon will be along later to post the other side. It does sound as though you have had a bit of a rough deal.

However just take stock for a moment and calm down a bit because getting aggro about it isn't going to fix this.

You cannot blame Leon for the racing harts not turning up on time unless he was the one that had ordered them or should I say failed to order them. You will find also that traders are maxed out at this time of year I beleive Leon runs a couple of race cars so he will have extra commitments at this time of the year- My point here being that when your car couldn't get in for the slot you had booked there is a high chance that Leon simply didn't have another slot that wasn't allready pre-booked. 4 Weeks is a touch excessive but as you said he is the only acknowledged supra specialist in the area and at the height of race season a little understandable.

You could at this point have decided to get the car done somewhere else. You chose to stick with Leons.

The advice about unbalancing the braking system is 100% spot on so if you wanted to put your improved brakes on you had to wait for the wheels.

£450 seems a lot to pay for the work you had done for the engine and tow bar removal but without an exact list of what was done and wether there was complications with the tow bar removal i will refrain from further comment on this.

The airbag warning light has nothing to do with the engine system as far as i know and as such unless you mentioned it then why would anyone look into it?

To be fair the wheel nuts being left loose is inexcusable but seriously after having work done on a car and noticing the steering shuddering you really ought to have turned around and taken it straight back.

I can understand your anger at finding yourself in a situation where your life may well have been in danger. I am also guessing that you expressed most of that anger on the phone. Just think however if that was you on the end of a particularly angry and possibly aggressive person you too might go on the defensive and take the actions that Leon took.

This post will more than likely get his attention but I am guessing not in a way that will produce any reults for either of you.

Before you go saying I am an affiliatte of Leons I am not. I am just trying to take a sensible view of the situation and see if you might try and sort this out in a way that will leave both parties feeling better about it.

On the towbar subject i was going to take the thing off myself the week before but i didnt end up doing it. it was just an afterthought when the car was there, i just thought sod it i get them to do it as its not a big job! (how wrong i was) i found out afterwards the guy i bought the car off fitted it himself and it took him two hours and he's in the building trade. Even the rear brakes when i got them fitted the pads clicked at slow speeds when i braked going forward only. Leon said i need clips for the pads and charged me £24 but they now click in reverse and not forward so all i think what he has done is just swapped the clips around.

I have direct links with JPS so Im staying out of this, but the other moderators will step in if required.

If comments are kept to the facts then it should be okay. We do have a disclaimer that all comments on the BBS are the responsibility of the poster, but legally if we are asked to remove posts and refuse then we are open to legal proceedings so we are going to need to be certain that whats posted is accurate. Not saying any of this isnt accurate, just making sure its clear what the next steps may be if it gets out of hand.

JB

I'm glad people post up their bad experiences about garages, as most know on here I wasn't happy with the service from JPS either, so I too posted it up last year and lots of people (friends of his) attacked me for doing this.

I get the impression that a lot of these probs that occur with JPS are not down to Leon, but the mechanics he employs.

However. this is a VERY serious issue as it could of cost you and your friend your lives.

Leon has done some spectacular work in the past, but its jobs where he has breathed on himself.

Leon needs to sort this out for you, and respond a little better when things go wrong to everyone else..he is not good at the Customer service thing.

He is a very good Mechanic and prob one of the best the supra community has known but he lets himself down by getting inexperienced people IMO to work on High Performance cars.

He has done some good jobs for me in the past and some bad ones, which were never put right.

Needles to say I stopped going to him,, if my problems had been addressed at the time, I would of carried on going to him...thats all it takes.

As for posting it on the BBS...This is why i thought it would be an idea to have a Mediator who could approach garages/tuners that we have disputes with on our behalf and on behalf of mkivsupra...this would surely be a good thing as it would give us all a little bit power to get things sorted and the companies reputation wouldn't be called into question on a main public thread.

and we can all live happily ever after!

There is always two side to every story, so it would be interesting to see what Leon says. As for turnig back it was a shuddering that was noticed on the motorway at 60mph+ and i had a plane to catch so time was tight. But the first thing i thought was there was something wrong with the brakes not that my wheel was lose!!

Originally posted by dannyspeed

There is always two side to every story, so it would be interesting to see what Leon says. As for turnig back it was a shuddering that was noticed on the motorway at 60mph+ and i had a plane to catch so time was tight. But the first thing i thought was there was something wrong with the brakes not that my wheel was lose!!

Seems lady circumstance has made what was a less than ideal situation into a far worse one then. Its always terrible to see things like this happen. Its a shame that stuff like this can happen really and that customer relations can be reduced to this level. No one should ever really be left as angry and unsatisfied as you are now fella.

whatr accutaly annoys me about this is. The customer should always be put first. The phone should never be put down on a customer. If the company puts the phone down on angry customer. It can only help the customer in legal action against the company. A good solicitor shows it as unwilling to deal with the customer. After all complaints only come from unhappy customers. You dont get a happy customer complaining. If a log is kept of calls made,who answers(if anyone), what was said (recorded is best) then it all helps. As a customer trying to show how the matter is being dealt, after the incident you do not need to inform the person of the recording of the phone call conversation as you are the customer trying to resolve a situation