ILuvMyTransam

I just had an experiance that i'd like to share with Speed Ink. loacated at: 803C Albion Ave
Schaumburg IL.

2 and a half months ago i called in to ls1speed and put togather a package that cost a rough total of around $8,000. i went down there and spoke face to face with someone at the desk and went through the package again to make sure everything is on there that is needed and gave a deposit of the amount they asked and the date was set to bring my car in and get started. the date set was for about a month after the deposit. the day i was supposed to bring the car in i gave a phone call up there to check if everything was a go. i get on the phone with someone and they tell me that the Torque convertor i wanted was discontinued the day i placed my order and they don't have it also the heads and cam weren't ordered by "accident" so the delay is on. i ask them what is the new schedual now, they transfered me to another guy that works up there that talks like a used car salesman who pretty much tells more lies than truth and always says "i'm not gonna lie to you". we reschedule for about 4 days later, which to me sounded fair enough. at this time i informed them that i want to video tape my dyno and would need a little notice of atleast an hour to get down there. so i drop off the car with a personal guerrentee from this new guy that my car will be worked on the following morning. i call in 4 days after i dropped it off to see where things are at, it turns out that the car hasn't been started even yet. and they informk me during this phone call of $300 extra in parts i'm going to need and also that the headers haven't came in yet. at this point i'm calling every single day trying to line up when the dyno is going to be so i can get it on tape and i made it very clear that i wanted this to them. another week goes by of car rentals and frutration finally they give me an ETA of friday (today) yesterday. awesome i called them first thing this morning to remind them that i need notice of the dyno and i am assured that i will get a phone call within an hour atleast of the dyno. no phone call i call back it's getting late and i need to set up a ride to follow me it's 3:30 PM now and i call in this guy mike (used car salesman) tells me the nitrious guy is finishing up and it should be ready for dyno today but he's not sure. so i ask him to ask his nitrious guy how it's going, he says "i know my workers and if i ask him that he's going to feel rushed and i want him to do this job right we don't want to rush him" i said "ok" well i'm going to call you back at 4:20 then for the final answer. he says ok talk to you then. OK, 4:20 PM ring''' hi mike what's the word.Mike: " Jon, i've got good news and bad news which do you want first?" Jon: "Just go ahead with it man" (at this point i'm sick of the BS going on) Mike: "well the bad news is that there was a lack of comunication and you car has already went through the dyno. the good news is your car is ready" Jon: "whatever already" Mike: "you can pick up your car by 5PM today or tomorrow morning. oh By the way, we didn't get the cut offs you ordered in so you'll have to wait for this to come in and we will reschedule you to have that installed" Jon: " OK Mike i'm going to call my ride to pick me up and we'll be there to pick it up" at this time it's already 4:40 PM i live about 25 minutes from them. i go to call my ride and he's not there so i decide i'll hop on my motorcycle leave it there and take the car and pick up the bike later when my friend is around. i'm getting on the bike and i call one last time to them to let them know i'm coming and will be there about 5-10 minutes after 5. he gets on the phone and tells me that at 5 the doors are closed and evryone is going to be gone. Jon:" so let me get this straight, you make me rent a car for 2 weeks instead of three days how it should have been, didn't order none of my parts when i originally called in 2 months ago and gave the deposit, Did not once call me when something was going wrong instead waited for me to call, messed up my dyno taping and didn't install the cut offs, and i'm trying to come down to you with $8K cash and give it to you and you can't wait 5 minutes for me????" Mike: "sorry, i have previous engagments and the other guys are outta here at 5 on the dot."


I was sitting back thinking about all this and thought maybe some of you should know what you're getting yourself into when dealing with Speed Ink.

All this time i never got one call from them unless i called in first...

JacobK

iTrader: (10)

Really thats terrible, i kind of had the same experience with them also right about now. I just had my trans rebuilt from them with all the goodis, cost me around $4,000 total, had it like 4 months, and now my clutch is slipping like mad. So i was told to bring it in and they will take it apart and send my Spec stage 3 and flywheel out and they will put the new ones in.

So they get it all apart and tell me my clutch is toasted and the flywheel is completely glazed over, and that there is no point in sending it out because the clutch (spec) wont replace it. It was the same guy, Mike, he said ive seen tons of clutches and i can tell you right now there is no way they will warrantee the clutch for me. The guy Mike says we can fix it right now, new clutch, flywheel and everything, and its gonna cost you around $1,050. AFTER I JUST SPENT $4,000, so im like no, i want them to send it out to spec for me.

So Spec gets the clutch and they tell me that first of all the clutch i got is a Spec stage 2. I paid for a stage 3 and got a stage 2, so im kinda pissed. SO i tried calling, and no one is answering the phone at speed. So my father calls to bitch them out, and he is trying to get ahold of Larry, but he can not get ahold of him at all. He got put on hold twice and got "Disconected" then Left Larry a voicemail with no return phone call. My dad had to deal with the Mike guy there.

So i finally talk to Larry on AIM and he tells me they put in whatever i paid for. Well apparently not, if i paid for a Stage 3 clutch and they installed a stage 2. So he said he will call Spec and find out. Well im not gonna let them talk to Spec, so i wanna hear from them. So i get ahold of Spec again and tell them whats going on, they say that its a bunch of **** that they are jerking me around like this, and they decide they will just send me out the stage 2 clutch, and that im going to have to just get Speed to put in a 3. But they are also sending me the report of what they got from when they inspected my clutch to make sure it was a stage 2. I think im done with Speed Inc, i mean i spend all this money there and deal with all this bullshit its ridiculous, at least have the ***** to say you guys screwed up and that you will fix it. But no they have to try to cover up lies and all that. So i think i may have to get ahold of Tom when he gets in, or try to take them to small claims court or something. I have a feeling its cause im a kid that they are screwing with me. Sorry for the long rant, but im tired of seeing people get ripped off.

Z8'S

iTrader: (6)

I have real trouble beleiving at least 50% of your post!
Speed Inc. Has one of the best customer service reputations in the business.

95_Firehawk_Dude

I wouldn't go that far at all. Me and a few of my buddies havn't even gone there just becuase of their attitude twords you if your not building a race car through them. Nothing but bad vibes out there from speed inc when i talk to them. I'm sure my friends will agree. And this isn't the first time i have heard a story like that.

Dragula

iTrader: (5)

When you post negative things like you did, your only adding fuel to the flame, I would try to work it out on a one on one basis.

Z8'S

iTrader: (6)

When you deal with hundreds of people on a daily basis sometimes people will get the wrong impression of what you are trying to telll them or "help" them with .when you depend on someone else to do the work on your car you have to put up with some of the problems of a big business. Solution! build your own stuff!!!!! then there is no one to blame but yourself.!

BGImportkiller

iTrader: (5)

I have also heard several horror stories, and not to say your guys aren't true, but I always take them with a grain of salt. There are some people there, that if I call and they answer I just hang up cause they are useless(not gonna name names). I just make sure I get a hold of Larry, and he has always taken care of me, and I'm only a kid, too (19). I think that it depends who you deal with, and what it is they are doing for you.

This is not to make an excuse for them, I think that all is total BS. I'm just saying its all in who you talk to. I think if you get in touch with Larry or Tom, they would be more likely to help straighten things out than other guys.

88monte

iTrader: (10)

ive been going there for the past year now and larry has always been helpfull even when i was being a real pain in the ***. what people dont understand is they cant deal with you one on one all the time, its a busy place. sometimes you get a bad experience sometimes you dont, but i still go back because ive never had a problem with them.

LS1 SPEED

iTrader: (22)

I will have to say both you made a bad choice of going on an posting stuff without giving us any time to help you in either matter...this is very unprofessional. I am going to do my best not to flip

Jon

I am not going to disagree that we where behind schedule with your car & others. We expressed to you that we where sorry and you had no problem working with us on this matter. The car got finished as you asked and we promised. I was mainly concentrating on getting the car completed ,not having you there to watch and film the dyno. whats really more important?

The cutout was not installed since we have had a few warranty claims with the QTP's and are still awaiting our stock order. I see no reason to complain or cancel an appointment over a cutout. We can always install it when they arrive and at your convenience. very easy

We where delayed because parts did not arrive as scheduled,not because they where never ordered (complete BS). There is really not a whole lot we can do. The parts arrived and we jumped right on your car.

We keep in touch with customers as much as we possible can,but at times we just can't get a free minute to call and tell you where we are at every hr.

We did contact you about some add ons and problems,but in one situation we could never get ahold of you. (trans) called 2-3 times


I am sure many other vendors/sponsors can agree with me it is tough to get parts on time this time of year.


Jon you have been very demanding and not very understanding with things. We had told you would would finish the car by friday as you asked and you had no problem with that. We got a call every day basically from you rushing us on the car. We called when the car was done and you had no problem picking it up Sat. We then get a call back and you start getting all upset because we will not stay late to wait for you to pick it up today. I am sorry ,but we close at 5 p.m and everyone had plans. I see nothing wrong with saying we are not staying open longer when it is 4:45 and you live near O-Hare and trying to make it to Schaumburg in 15 minutes in rush hr. not going to happen.

We will talk more tomorrow. I refuse to argue about this online.





Jacob

you are not being fair here either....the clutch that went in your car came out of a SC093 box direct from SPEC so if anyone is at fault it is them not us. We are in the process of verifing the PO # . We left 3 messages with SPEC today to get this resolved. We by no means did you wrong and whatever it takes the car will get fixed and the stage 3 installed that you paid for.

do you really think we would have installed it,pulled it due to failure knowing you would be in contact with SPEC yourself about a warrany if it was known that we installed a STAGE 2 ? common

I will speak with you regarding this tomorrow

I am going to leave with this for now....

We are extremly busy this time of year and keeping on schedule 100% is not going to happen. We refuse to rush cars out. We do everything possible to satisfy every customer,but sometimes it will not work no matter what you do. I am sure many can agree with me.
We just ask for everyones patience. We do not want anyones car sitting at our shop....what good is it for us? We want your car in your hands running properly as quickly as possible.

I am done with this

Larry

LS1 SPEED

iTrader: (22)

I am sorry you feel that way. We have dedicated more time then you could imagine to customers that spend $20,000 and some buy nothing. We really don't care. We want everyone to feel appreciated as we would want to feel ourselves buying or inquiring about something.

LS1 SPEED

iTrader: (22)

if anyone ever feels mistreated by any means.....

please contact Tom or I .

tom@speedinc.com OR larry@speedinc.com



The last thing we want is anyone not feeling welcome at our shop. We don't care how old you are or how much money you spend. We have many kids 16-20 yrs old who buy $30 here $200 there and we feel closer to them then guys who have spent $20k. We like to have close relationships with everyone.

There will always be stories...it's called drama. We can't make everone happy 24/7 as mush as would like to.

everyone have a great weekend

Larry

SPANKY LS1

iTrader: (24)

I have never had anything but GREAT experiences there, I have bought a TON of parts from there, and had some installs done, as well as some tuning and dynoing. Every time the parts were delivered as promised, and most every time my car was done even sooner than promised. They have taken the time to talk to me (and put up with my mind changing and pickiness) weather I was buying a $150 MAF or spending $6,000 at a time (damn finance plans, lol).

Shawn

Fast94

iTrader: (3)

Why is it so taboo here to post anything negative about Speed Inc? If people are able to post positive experiences with your company and not get harrassed, than the ones that have negative experiences should be able to also. Obviously I'm not involved in the situation,,but I think that is total BS that you couldn't wait 10 minutes for the guy...especially if he has thousands to give you.

I too have had a bad experience with 'Mike'. If I go in there to buy a couple parts and not ask questions about them/install, then don't give me your opinion *repeatedly!*. Don't give me **** because I'm buying something for my needs that you've never used before,,I don't care how many installs you did. *just venting a little on that situation, that's all.* -done

P.S. I was also promised parts on a certain day and it took over a week after that for them to come in.

And as with any big business, you have to accept the fact that you will get complaints. It's part of the field..

WS62000

iTrader: (21)

I like speed Inc!! Larry is a great guy, and very helpful. I will be returning soon to get my clutch installed!!!

Jon @ Speed Inc

iTrader: (2)

Besides the rules of this board I think you see a lot of controversy overy negative comments because its more of a debate and there are two sides of the story.

You can see both sides are very passionate about their views.

If you go in neutral you can see that in the end the car was finished, to be honest in about 3 days than it would have normally been done. It was done when we said it would be done.

Now its unfortunate that none of the sales staff was available after hours, we are as accomodating as we can be. I know personally I have come in in the middle of the night, during weekends, and even a holiday or two to help a customer pickup or drop off a car. I cant promise we can be as accomodating all the time - but we try.

As far as parts I hope you know we are all in the same boat. As hard as we try to keep stock (which is the largest it has ever been) there are still backlogs in our peak season. I know I've waited for parts for my personal car. So far I'm at a month for my heads, I waited 3+ months for my wheels, 2 months on my QA1 shocks.... It's not an excuse but we work as hard as we can with manufactueres to not only get products promptly but to be accurate with ETA's. Sometimes that does not happen.

As far as the relationships and personalities, I really think some customers favor certain staff than others, as shown by the posts. I know that if I never saw your invoice before I'm problably the last person you want to re-explain everything to. Its nice to work with the same person thru an entire work order. Some people like to work with Mike, as much as a smooth talker as he is he is deticated to making sure his customer does not leave unhappy.

Its also difficult to deliver a consistant response to everyone when we are so packed - we are working to fix many of these issues. I know I can be responding to an email, trying to help someone on the phone, while helping a customer standing right infront of me. For all the fans of our phone system we will be getting a new one soon We are investing quite a bit to take the next jump with Speed Inc. More space, more lifts, larger showroom, and much more - and with our growth we hope not to loose the personal connection we have with a lot of our customers.

But in the end there will be some people you can not happy and we accept that. We are happy it is an extremely low percentage.

CHIWS6

iTrader: (31)

well i had a bad experience with u guys as well, i had to wait 3 weeks just for a ph rod and when u got the piece, u guys never call but hey i guess once u have our money, who cares when we get our parts!!!!!

Jon @ Speed Inc

iTrader: (2)

Was the 3 week wait our doing? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if you didnt have to wait the 3 weeks. A delay from the manufacturer is a little out of our control. I will say that every special order / order waiting part that comes in is called with the number we have on file. I'd say we hit alot of answering machines when we call, we also try to make sure we have a daytime phone number on hand which helps out in that instance.

JacobK

iTrader: (10)

I completely understand about the whole being busy and trying to accommodate everyone and their problems, i have absolutely NO problem with that, im not even really too concerned with my car being there. The only thing i do have a probelm is when someone tells me that it is pointless to try to send something out to get it looked at for a warrantee, when i talked with the vendor personally and they assured me they would replace it under warrantee. I mean instead of going and trying to get me to spend even more money at least wait until all the parts get back and they say they cant replace it, then i would have absolutely no problem. Ive never had a bad experience with Larry, its just frustrating trying to get ahold of him and talk with him personally, when he is busy and has other things. So i just want to say to Larry personally i am sorry for attacking you and gettiing all bent out of shape, its hard for someone to hear something from 2 different sides, and you want to get everything that you paid for. So hopefully everything just get worked out, cause i still wanna be able to buy all my parts and stuff from you guys, since your right by me.

ILuvMyTransam

A couple things i need to clear up here.

As larry put it YES i was on the phone EVERY day calling you guys towards the deadline becasue i didn't feel i was going to get a call for my dyno from you if i didn't. Tons of people on here from my experiance on this board have videos of thier dyno and get a date and time for it. frankly from what i hear it's BS not to.

In regards to the parts not being ready. 3 weeks from the time i left the deposit to the drop off date, are you trying to say that no one knew my parts weren't coming untill that very day that i called in (the day before my original drop off date)?
that's not what was told to me and i'm not buying it.

As far as airing my issues here. well, that's what this is for isn't it? for information...

Also, being that i am spending close to $8,000 with you, Yes, i do expect that this should have been told to me before hand NOT the day before. and to You calling ME NOT Me calling You. fine you're busy? this is your business, you wont be if everyone has an experiance like mine.

Also i was promised a second pass on the Dyno with the nitrious a day ago am i not getting this now too?


Last thing but NOT LEAST. You say i got the car back by the date you promised...LOL well i have to respond to this. Yes you are correct i did get the car back on friday like i was told but what you didn't mention to everyone is that it was the 4th date you gave me!!!

Either way i feel i had a bad experience and could only hope your work done on my car is better than the service i recieved ( i've went to you becasue i read good things here). I will pick my car up in the morning and will bring my future business elsewhere...

Jon

ILuvMyTransam

To everyone else reading this thread. Please understand that this is my experience only. i'm sure Others have horror stories along with great experiences with Speed Ink. and by no means am i reflecting on the quality of work done Because i haven't Picked the car up yet.
I am not happy with the customer service i recieved period.

It also needs to be undertsood that i don't speak for everyone just myself as it is the only experience i know of currently...

With This being said, I feel i've neither said or done anything wrong here today...

Now, I too am done with this...
Jon