I want to start out by saying that I have seen other cars that have been worked on by dtm, and they are perfect, but I was one of the less fortunate ones.

These people are dishonest and will do what it takes to empty your pockets for an average job you can get anywhere. I took my car here to get my fender and bumper and fender repaired after being clipped while I was parked. The paint and work on the fender is decent, but is under par, and the front bumper had some low quality work with low quality materials. I found out they let my car be a practice project for some new guy, and let me tell you, it shows, the paint is starting to get stress cracks like they forgot to add the stuff that makes the paint flexible, the fill is wrong becasue they were supposed to use a poly fill not fiberglass (on oem bumper), and they painted my grill black without my ok so not it looks like a hot wheels car.

Then when I arrived I expected the only wrong thing was going to be the painted grill, wrong. But I took it because of my work schedule, and was promised that they will re do it on a later date when the car was available. The guy I spoke to there said that the problem of not having my car can be avoided by buying an aftermarket front bumper, and that they would paint any aftermarket front bumper I wanted, free of charge instead, and was clearly stated that my only cost would be the purchase of a bumper. After going through all of the trouble of getting the bumper, paying for it and bringing it to them for the fitting, the guy I spoke to wasn't there. Instead I got the pleasure to speak to a the general manager. He started telling me all of this bs about fee this and fee that. He starts telling me the costs for fitting, primer, paint, clear, and detailing it after, so I assumed had not heard or read the agreement that the first guy and I made. I told him about the conversation the first guy and I had, and he decided that my situation is invalid and he will not stand by the deal I was given. After I heard this I tried to calmly reason with him and explain the situation in case he just didn't understand the circumstances, but I never got to do that because every time I started to speak he would interrupt me and start telling me "You don't understand, the primer, paint, clear, fitting, ect. blah blah blah". He was extremely rude and clearly saw me as an idiot.

Now, they will not return my call, have not tried to fix their mistake, and have left me out $350 for the bumper.

Long story short, I'm stuck with a bumper and fender that I'm not satisfied with, and am out money due to their shady business tactics and dishonesty. I never have particularly wanted an aftermarket front bumper, the only reason I bought it was because I would be able to keep my car and have a well painted front bumper. Since they will not return my call or fix their mistake, I wanted to let everybody know how they have conducted business with me.

They are dishonest, they let guys that are just learning how to do bodywork practice on your car without somebody that knows what they're doing standing by to supervise the job, prevent stupid mistakes from happening, or fix it if something were to go wrong. This business will ignore you the second you ask them to right their wrongs. This place did business in a very immature way with me, and how does the manager of this place not know what his employees promise, or not know to interrupt a customer.

Just needed to vent and wanted my fellow z lovers to know my story about DTM in El Monte. They might do great work, but only when it's massive projects or they get to put their decal on it, it's a bummer this last experience with them showed me that they couldn't care less about the rest of us.

EDIT: They offered to refund the bumper cost, or deliver it before I picked it up. But I am not willing to drop this issue so willingly. I was very much looking forward to this bumper, so that is why I opted to keep it. They attempted to help the financial aspect, but neglected the most significant part of the issue, which is the principle of good business and just a little bit of honesty. I hope that if they ever read this, they will know that if they were either straight forward from the beginning, or would have contacted me sooner to let me know of the confusions that have happened all of this would have been avoided.

 

sorry to hear about your horror story.

i've had some work done by them before but won't get in too much detail. long story short, my paint was chippy and installer broke a few bolts without telling me so i ended up having to tap it out of the smallest go-in place ever. not the biggest deal, but they failed to live up to everyone's hype.

only positive thing from dtm is the eye candy @ the reception desk.

 

Forgot to add that when I got my car back the first time the bumper was not bolted all of the way on, the shroud under the car didn't have any of the screws, and the plastic rivets on top of the bumper were missing. How do forget that kind of stuff? There's a whole new level of don't give a fkcu there.

 

there are some cute chicks workin there. i had some work done by them a couple of times and couldnt complain much. I dealt with Manny and David without any issues. They even emailed me pics of my car in the spray bin. Sorry to hear about your unfortunate situation. If i were you i'd go back and talk to the dude you spoke to and get his side of the story man. With the GM present ofcourse.

 

Manny is the one who told me it would be taken care of and David is the second guy in the write up. I never got to speak to both at the same time because Manny was always out on lunch and David is the one who made this situation go so far down hill.

 

file a complaint with the bbb/ take them to small claims court. more than likely they will give you satisfaction. pics of the stress cracks, the painted grill, and bad fill work should be enough for you to have it redone. don't fix their mistakes definitely document all of it, trust me no company wants to have to go to spend any time going to a courthouse. worst case you only gave them trouble but at least setup precedent for anybody else that has problems with them in the future.

 

call em up and schedule a sit down man. if you all can't come to an agreement move on and dont go back.

 

I like that idea. I'm going to do this. Although they already probably got rid of the paperwork that Manny wrote up, I had a buddy of mine with me and he can tell them exactly what happened with this issue.

Prodigy- Manny told me over the phone today that whatever David says goes, so I told him it's either stay good on your word or I can take it further, he said he could get me vis credit for the bumper I bought, but what would I do with that. So I went and got it, and told David that this is going further and it didn't seem to bother him ( in an stuck up way) so I'd love to see his reaction to what's about to happen lol

 

You should also mention to them that you'll be posting (as you have) your story all over the interwebz.. Any forum your a part of, post it up or have your friends who are part of other forums post your story for you.
Make it clear that you want to warn others about their horrible customer service and you'll be telling people to stay away from DTM.

 

I was planning to get some aero work done, so i have subscribed to this thread to see what happens next. I guess I have read so many horror stories about shops, that I am now afraid to get any work done anywhere.

 

^ I'd honestly take your money somewhere else. I've been to other body shops with less hype and they do a way better job for much much less $

 

so there is no decent bodyshop in socal it seems, lol

 

DTM has falken off, similar thing happened to me OP a few years ago.

I was told one price prior to paint, after paint they charged me $100 more.

Your situation is exactly why I stopped sending people there and instead send them to Auto Explosion in Gardena.

 

^ Sorry to hear that. I was hoping that my situation is rare but it doesn't appear that way. I've seen the work that auto explosion does and I've read a lot of good things about them. Maybe I will try them next. But I will not be able to afford to paint my sl2 front bumper because of the holidays coming up :/

 

Maybe you can put them on blast through Facebook like the GTR guy?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/DTM-A...357475?sk=wall

DTM is on Driver, if your on there as well I would start a thread over there to spread the word.
http://g35driver.com/forums/members/...-dtm-auto.html



They don't seem to have a lot of reviews but I found these(for future reference)
https://my350z.com/forum/exterior-an...d-chances.html

http://www.automd.com/shops/d-t-m-autobody_122527/

http://www.clublexus.com/forums/cl-o...-autobody.html

 

I don't have an account over there, but I will let anyone that wants to spread the word just copy and paste to any forum they'd like, just let me know first. I want everyone to know what kind of stuff they do and I don't want any other car enthusiasts to have to go through this headache

 

OP, you should also add something to this thread to encourage others to stay away from DTM:

https://my350z.com/forum/southern-ca...cal-shops.html

 

man... i remember a few years ago my350z was the shiet... now its a bunch of vendors selling the same vis crap (no offense) no new performance mods and thread after thread of vendors/shops/members screwing people over. imo the economy shouldnt effect your service to paying customers if you want to stay in buisiness.

 

this.

Remember Auto Infantry? Lulz

 

LOLZ