Last week we didn’t have a post due to the fact that the dreaded Covid had hit part of the social media team and were in no fit state at the time to post for us. But, all is good with the team again, updates collated, photo’s selected and edited ready for todays post. We start with some sad news.
Sad Passing of Robbie Coltrane
You will have probably noticed in the news that Robbie Coltrane has passed on at the age of 72. This came as a shock to us as Adam was only speaking to him a couple of weeks ago, as we have one of his cars in our yard. We had a photo taken with him many years ago in his much loved convertible we have looked after for him for many years. The photo wasn’t taken on the best of cameras and is pretty rough as a result. We tried to improve the picture as best we could to remove some of the pixelation. The filter removed a little detail at the same time, but we think it looks a bit better. In Adams main workshop you can see the much larger banner we had made of this photo.
We will miss you Robbie as a somebody we called a friend and not just a ‘celeb’ customer. Thanks for making us laugh and keeping us enthralled with your stories while we shared a good few cups of tea with you.
Our deepest condolences to Robbie’s family – May you forever drive your Mustangs on the great highways of your personal Heaven.
The original was very small and quite pixelated.
Park & Pic
This week we had a two cars waiting for collection either side of the matt black wrapped ’66. The wrapped ’66 was in with us for a once over, a couple of upgrades and a little Mustang Maniac magic to make it the car it should be.
Stock
We have a little story to share with you about a customer whom has now had the “C” button applied and added to the “C list”. A few weeks ago we agreed to make a special order for an SN95 (2000) fuel tank to be imported. We made the order using our buying power, paid the import duties, notified the customer and shipped the part to the customer as soon as we got it. While Adam was on his holidays a few days after our dispatch, the (now ex)customer emailed us to complain the part was damaged, he was really upset. We asked him if he could send us a couple of photos, just so we could verify the damage. The customer refused to take any photos. He then demanded we pick up the part at our expense and make the refund in full. We contacted Adam and he of course authorised the pick up and refund as we could only take the customers word for it. Adam returned from his break and inspected the part that was now sitting in our despatch room. The reason we might ask for a photo is for this very reason, not to be awkward. We could have told the customer at the time that the part was on fine and he would have been happy again.
The “damage” was inspected and as Adam expected, there wasn’t any damage. The box wasn’t even damaged from shipping.
The part is exactly as it was manufactured and intended to be. The so called ‘bent’ damage was in fact the original design that are there in order for the part to fit into the car. Adam was not impressed that he tried to do somebody a good deed and they then created because they didn’t know what they were talking about. We lost out on money having to get the item picked up, these things can happen. It was clear that the customer didn’t even check the part with his one already in the car, or he wouldn’t have complained. We have managed to re-sell the part on to another customer who was very happy to pick one up of the shelf.
Our own products
We have our own page on the WebShop here that is being updated with our own products. Not everything is on there yet, but we are adding all the time.
We are now developing our own ‘upgrades’ to common parts like a thermostat housing. This part has a the option for senders or anything else you may want to bolt into it.
Yogi will be back this week so we should be getting some more car related news for you.
Stay Safe & Take Care!
Mustang Maniac 
I loved Robbie Coltrane, Cracker has to be some of his best roles. Sad day indeed.
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First of all I would like to pass on my sincere condolences to Robbie’s family. I hadn’t heard the news of his passing; a very sad day and a great loss to the entertainment industry. RIP Robbie.
Your ex-customer story rang a bell. My family ran a car body shop business for many years. Most of our customers were return business (!!), but came back because they appreciated a job well done and a very fair price. But then there were the very few. The ones who, no matter what you did to try and help them (even going as far, at our own cost, of paint analysis and a full workshop deepclean), could do nothing but complain. Too fast, too slow, too dear, too cheap …. and the colour matching ! Oh dear. The effects explanation of uv, dirt, dust, weather etc on 20 year old paintwork against a small area of manufacturer’s colour-coded new paintwork (without a full body respray- well, they weren’t going to pay for that, were they !), just fell on deaf ears. And I can honestly say, you really couldn’t see any difference. And how about the one who happily drives around for a year, then comes in demanding a full, FREE, respray. Found out later he wanted sell his 15 year old car. Very rare occasions, but customer were always offered the option of re-doing the job, or a full refund, no argument. Some customers you can just do without.
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Thanks for the comment Jennie. It seems that this day and age no matter what you do somebody will find fault, even if it’s not your fault in the first place. They want perfection for peanuts. Experiences like the one we described make you want to step back and not do it. We will of course order for certain customers who are 99% of the time good as gold. The difference is that if something goes wrong, we will sort it out for them. These customers know that and there is no problem. It’s just these (ex)customers we are not willing to deal with as they are unreasonable. We have to sell a lot of parts to recover the money we lost on collecting that part. it was a fuel tank so it wasn’t a cheap item to collect. Still we move on and upwards.
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Goodness, what a tale of woe. I have heard that if a customer is happy he may tell 3 mates, if another is unhappy he will tell 20. Multiply that by social media and I think that it is ALWAYS better to bite the bullet and settle. You did the correct thing well done!!
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Thanks Simon for the support. We are just a little company that tries its best. We give the best service we can and we try to make the customer feel special. Most of the time they appreciate it, but just sometimes no matter what we do, we can’t win. On top of that we had another one this week; this time we didn’t even do any work or send parts out to them and we still got grief! 🤦♂️
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