Well.. I know 2 wrongs don't make a right... but these guys just lost a customer (maybe more than just me if I have anything to say)

As most may know.. I am redo-ing my entire suspension.

There are allot of pieces to install... so we start at the butt crack of dawn.

I have an 2:30 pm appointment at P-Tuning to make for an alignment, and I hate to be late.

Well.. Bolt on's not being "bolt on's" .. you all know how it goes.. were running late... I called P-tuning and they said OK.. just try and get the car here as soon as possible..

Car is off the lift by 4 pm, and I'm headed down to Manassas after confirming with P-Tuning that were still a go.

Remind me never to move south, because Rt. 28 is a total jam. I sit an hour in traffic, nursing a full race tilton clutch in traffic.. to make it to manassass (near manassass park) only to hear from P-tuning that .. they can no longer perform an alignment on my car, since they need to leave by 6 pm.

This is where my rub is... I even offered them extra money to stay late and align the car... no dice.

Maybe they should have told me that if I was not there by time X, then they would not be able to perform the alignment.

Then I would not have sat in traffic.

Maybe if they care for their customers, or potential customers they'd stay late... thats what I do at my job..

I guess I expect too much from people that I spend my money with.

 

Update.. my car is getting aligned now.. by Auto Expectations.

Tonight.

I think that they are also going to have a car or two at redline time attack as well..


but.. they volunteered to stay late, and knock my car out.

... and they don't even cater to the Z market.

 

lol duuuuuuuude I live 2 min away from P tunning, you should have just taken
66W and gotten off at RT 234, it would have been faster I have had some odd experiences with P tunning. My buddy took his Acura to get his suspension installed and they ended up replacing parts he never authorized them to do charging him like 5oo or so dollars we were like WTF. After several attempts and letters we finally got them to eat up the install for the suspension which is what they were SUPPOSED to do anywho. I will not be taking my car there. Its hard to find a decent place to get stuff done now adays ..............sheesh. Sorry bout ur luck though bro!

 

Your expectations have been exceeded. Bottom line is that she is running and driving straight. Way to be persistent.

 

I've had my alignment done 5x there within the past 6 months (don't ask.) Everytime I'm there, they squeeze me in at the last minute and I'm usually one of the last cars to leave the shop before they close.

The owner even took me on a personal tour of the facility and I haven't had a single problem with them. That's odd that you'd experience this Mike, sorry to hear! I figured they were straight up guys.

 

Sorry to hear about your problems with them, Mike. You've had some crappy luck lately. Guess Auto Expectations has a new customer. Hope you get your car together before next weekend.

 

Hmmmm. Maybe a fluke incident? I've heard a lot of good things about them so perhaps this was a one off bad situation for you... Hopefully they come back and make it right with you.

 

I've had nothing but good experiences with P-tuning. They installed my camber/toe kit and did a 4 wheel alignment and changed my oil (I supplied the oil and filter). I've also bought a set of momo pedals and a Tanabe y pipe which they price matched from vendors that could sell it cheaper (saved me quite a bit of money).

I guess every shop has days where they can't be as flexible as they would have liked to.

In other words ... stop b!tchin Mikey .... haha j/k. I would have been a little ticked off too.

 

you should have taken it to my shop Mike! My guy is top notch...i seriously doubt there is anyone better than him as far as alignments in the whole area. I don't know if your car would get on our rack though! lol

Edit: my last day was today....four years there and it is time to move on since college is done...i start at a new shop monday but i have an interview with Nissan North America wednesday! woohoo!

 

I stay late at my job for customers and sometimes they only need a thirty cent plumbing item, but it's what you do when your business is based on customer service!

 

in all fairness i think i see both sides.

side #1

on one side i understand how it's frustrating to drive all that way only to have them say they can no longer do the alignment. i understand first hand about traffic in the area and used to sometimes do 3-4 hour commutes to dc in horrific traffic. not fun, and I completely see the frustration in that. especially when you were depending on them to do the work.

side #2

on the other side, i understand how they were expecting you at 2:30. so it seemed like they were being flexible at first and said just get it there as soon as possible. but then it nears 6 p.m. and they are ready roll. from their perspective they gave you an extra 3 hours or so and you couldn't make it in time. which to most could be seen as good customer service? given they were planning to attend and prepare for some of the events going on this weekend, and also have other personal stuff to do, they wanted to be flexible but not be there all night.


i would say you both have valid points. but i wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. i think most on the forums have have good experiences with PTuning. i dealt with them some in the past when ordering parts and my experience was good as well. for me they kept me updated on what was going on and when i had to cancel my order at the last minute, they promptly refunded my money no hassles at all, even though the parts were in the process of being shipped by the vendor. i think in most cases shops are flexible, but then as someone else pointed sometimes flexibility suffers when there are other things going on.

Mike i would say don't write them off just yet since i think they have worked hard to build their reputation and most have had good experiences there. i think this weekend has just been a scramble for everyone with both the Megameet and Summit activities going on. So probably just a bad day to be late in this case. i would give them another shot. from my experience i am sure they will be willing to work with you.

 

You should have called and reschedlued if you werent there within 2 hours of your original appointment. I dont agree with them not telling you to be "here by XX time" but I also dont agree with your expectations-you should have asked when they close and re-confirmed the alignment was possible. Last alignment (custom alignment specs) there for me I was late coming from over 1 hour away, I called, re-confirmed it was good to go if I got there XXX late and they waited and did a great job on my car.

 

The first thing I always say when I call a business is "what time do you close today?"

If you're scheduled for 2, and you show up and 5, its nobodies fault but yours. Yes they said they would take care of you, but did you tell them you were going to be 3 hours late?

Obviously everything has worked out for you, so there is no point in complaining about it, its just going to get you riled up more every time you look at this thread. Chalk it up to a bad experience, but be thankful that you found yourself a new shop, that you like

 

mdracer76,

You need to take a step back and think about what you're saying here. You make it sound like we're the bad guys. If anyone should be upset, it should be us since you cost us to loose other appointments that day. There's always two sides to a story and I just want to tell them our side of the story.

First off he had originally called in to schedule an appointment for an alignment this past Friday. We told him we only had an opening for 2:30pm. He asked us if we can schedule him for 3:00pm since he might be running a little late. So we went ahead and put him down for 3:00pm and shifted some of our other customer's schedule to accommodate him. We had mentioned to him numerous times that he absolutely needs to show up on time at 3:00pm, since we were extremely busy that day.

So at 3:00pm on Friday, he's a no-show. I had one of my staff called him to see if he's running late or if he was coming at all. He tells us he's still installing stuff on his car. He asked to re-schedule for 4:00pm--again, we had to shift our schedule around--lost a customer in the process. 4:00pm comes and go and still no-show. Again, we get in contact with him and he's still working on his car. We told him that we close at 6:00pm, and again, we turn away other alignment jobs just so that we can keep the alignment rack open for his arrival. So again, we tell him the absolute latest that we can accommodate him is no later than 5:00pm, but he absolutely, positively has to show up on time. 5:00pm rolls around and still no show, at this point we figure he's not going to show up at all. At 5:35pm, his friend shows up stating that, "the car to be aligned is on the way". At this time, there is no way that we can do a proper alignment on a Z in less than 30 min. Most standard alignment on the Z is about 1.5+ hour and his custom alignment will probably take longer since he's sporting aftermarket suspension upgrades.

We had to turn away customers who wish to do alignment on that day from 3:00pm on just to try to accommodate his tardiness. We run a business, we are not here to cater to one single car. We fully understand he had an urgent need to have the car ready for the weekend and we went out of our way to accommodate him. We put our own project car on hold for an alignment just to accommodate him, even though we had a big timeattack event the next day.

We go above and beyond most shops when it comes to customer service, but a customer need to show us some courtesy at the same time. Our staff has a life and family outside of work and I cannot ask them to change their plans everytime a customer shows up late. And in this instance it was 3hrs and multiple reschedules. I think we were extremely accommodating in this regards. If anyone feels that they can find a shop that provides better customer service, all I can say is good luck finding that shop.

MrC

 

I would have hated to be those people you canceled on, waiting for mdracer76.

 

So.. I spoke to darryl no less than 10 times while I was installing the parts, and he said he was moving appointments around, and that either me calling him or him calling me. Several times I asked him.. "Are we OK.. I'm not screwing up your book today am I ?" and he said that it was no problem, and that it worked out, and he moved 1 customers appointment and it worked out for the better... not sure how now you guys 'lost' several customers .. I smell BS..

I was going to let this thread die.. but since you've revived it.. we can discuss it further.

1: I called and set an appointment for 1:30. Appointment was set, one of your guys called me back the next day and asked if it was ok to move it to 2:30. (works for me because it gave me more time to install stuff). I agreed to 2:30.

2: I called well BEFORE my appointment to advise that I may be running a bit late, and see if there was a problem.. no problem was indicated by your staff.

3. Your employees should have let me know a drop dead time, BEFORE I started to drive down to your shop (in rush hour traffic), only to make it to manassass park area, and be told that its too late to perform the service. You say that your guys told me 5 pm .. I would not have even tried to drive down if someone from your shop had told me that. I CALLED your shop on the way there, to be told "Too late, we can't perform the service on the car because we have to leave at 6"



You can take this as good advice on how to run a shop / business...

You say that you turned down a customer at 3 for an alignment? I would not have.. esp when I told Daryl several times ... that since I was running late, I would not mind getting there and having to wait ... as long as the car could get done that day.

I was willing to compensate your shop extra.. knowing that I was inconveniencing you, and your employees. I even told Daryl that over the phone several times.

You say that it would be hard to find a shop that is willing to stay late? To take the extra mile? You are right. it is.. and I did. And they will get my business, and my recommendation since they also can corner weight the car.

 

Remember, we were not the one that started a post that a 350z customer of ours was 3 hours late and he kept missing his rescheduled appointments. Telling us that you can't make it here at 3pm is one thing, but not making it at 4pm and then at 5pm is another. We went out of our way to make the alignment happen for you. You need to put yourself in our shoes and think about how you would have handle this situation. I doubt if you would've had the patience to deal with a customer not showing up after the first reschedule.

Good luck with the other shop. I'm sure I'll see another posting on hear about how this other shop did you wrong. I doubt if any other members or vendors on here will sympathize with you.

 

Wow.. I was hoping to hear "Hey.. OK.. so.. yea.. we both were in the wrong.. maybe we both could have compromised a bit better. How about you give us another shot, and don't be late next time."

Going out of your way to make an alignment happen for me would have, in my eyes meant that you stayed after 6 to work me in, even though I was a retard and could not make it to my appointment ... that would have resulted in a thread with FTW, not FTL. Again.. You could have informed me of a 'drop dead' time.. before I started to head toward your shop. Thats what I was mostly upset about... to start down towards your door, only to make it almost there and be turned around.

 

I think if anything someone owes P-tuning a few bucks for thier time doing all that work with no pay-off in the end.

It's like me showing a customer one hundred products and pricing them all and then they just leave, total waste of MY time.


For anyone looking for an alternative:

The shop next to functiontuned has the same machine and knocked my alignment out in about 45min, I even got a print out of the before and after. The alignment was about $120, I didn't have to even set foot in the other shop, Dave and Juan took care of it all and the car handled great and still does.