mstewar

Warning, this may be a bit long to describe how I got to this point..

Well, first off I really wish it didn't come down to this that I have to make a post explaining what happened and that Jamie would've just sent me what he was supposed to in the first place, or taken some other action. But he is apparently now blowing me off, so I have to do something. I figured posting here was good since he reads this forum and it's neutral ground(as opposed to the forum he moderates).. Some might ask why I've taken so long to post about it and as you'll see by the timeline, i've been strung along quite a bit and then had fear of repercussions for posting in this way about a honda-tech moderator.

Alright.. Here's how things went..

-- Winter 2004 -- Jamie shows off some of his cage work and he and I begin discussing him doing the rollcage for my ITR. Reference post here:https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=697634

-- February 2004 -- Jamie posts/tells me about a new design he has for baffling oil pans and I ask him to do mine while doing my rollcage. I buy an ITR oil pan from .RJ at VIR and then drop it and the car off with Jamie at the end of the month. Expected completion date: End of April.

-- March 2004 -- Jamie posts, saying he's doing a baffled oil pan for me:
https://honda-tech.com/zero...age=2
Jamie posts, advertising his work. His claimed turn around time: 1-2 working days. See posts here:
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=799928
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=799904

-- May 2004 -- Car is still not done and I haven't even seen my oilpan. At this point he tells me he's just going to put it on while it's out there.

-- June 2004 -- Car is still not done, but I'm cool with it after expo gets postponed and even post helping advertise Jamie's work:
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=883451
Later that month I get a new job in Illinois and have to move, and due to the overruns on time already, I decide it's best to take what he's got done and my car back with me to IL and have it finished here. I pay him for the work that has been completed up to this point(in addition to the deposit I had initially given him), which included payment for the pan. I receive NO oil pan and Jamie tells me he will send it to me soon.

-- July 2004 to December 2004 -- I contact Jamie various times via PMs and phone calls inquiring about the pan. He claims to have started a new job, been really busy, etc. - basically stringing me along. But I put up with it because a) he's recently been made a mod on here of the Welding/Fabrication forum, and b) he's generally well respected within the ECHC/NASA and Honda-tech community.

-- January 2005 -- Jamie is no longer returning my phone calls and ignoring my PMs at this point(which really started a month or so earlier, but I couldn't remember exactly when he stopped answering me). I have asked that he either provide my baffled ITR oil pan as promised, or at least compensate me with the cash value of an ITR oil pan or one of similar condition to the one I gave him to baffle(just hoping to get SOMETHING back). Still no response.

So, here I sit, out an oil pan(expected to be baffled) and I continue to hear people talk about going out to get work done by him. At this point, I felt I had to post as I had no other recourse aside from legal action or something of that nature if I wanted to get anything back. Who knows what happened to my pan. My hope is that some pressure from the people in here that know him will get me at least what I gave him, if not what I was promised.

Please feel free to ask any questions. If I have forgotten something, I would love to have if clarified.

And yes, I'm a moron/sucker for waiting this long to do anything.

LoooseGSR

Damn that sux, my friend just bought the hatch he had for sale, and he seemed like a pretty stand up guy. Hope this gets resolved.

Xian

Sorry to hear about the issue... hopefully he'll offer his side of things and you two can get this resolved.

Christian

mstewar

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Xian &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Sorry to hear about the issue... hopefully he'll offer his side of things and you two can get this resolved.

Christian</TD></TR></TABLE>

i hope so as well..

xerox445

WTF, isint Doctor CorteZ the moderator of the Welding/Fab fourm. Cant even trust the ******* mods...this place just gets shadyer by the day.

davidnyc

Guys, granted mstewar's story may be true, but we cannnot pass judgement without hearing from Jamie.

No matter what, it is unfortunate and appears to be a slip in judgement on both parties... Jamie for possible questionable business practices and for Mstewar for waiting too long and possibly letting friendship cloud sound business practices.

I too was in a similar situation with a cage builder... a one month build time turned into 6 months. I learned a lot about how to do business.

No matter what the situation is

mstewar

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by davidnyc &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Guys, granted mstewar's story may be true, but we cannnot pass judgement without hearing from Jamie.

No matter what, it is unfortunate and appears to be a slip in judgement on both parties... Jamie for possible questionable business practices and for Mstewar for waiting too long and possibly letting friendship cloud sound business practices. </TD></TR></TABLE>

I would love nothing more than for him to respond.. my whole point of this is only to at least recover what I gave him, if not my finished product..

thanks for the comments/PMs.. hopefully I/we will hear from Jamie on this..

Johnny.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ghettoracer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

i dunno mang, why would mstewar make up stories? it seems pretty straight forward... **** happens so maybe lag a month or two. but july until now is 7 months. what kind of legit excuse can there possibly be? of course i don't know jamie personally at all and can't make any judgements. but from the info posted.... it is not impressive at all. i think some others were also problems getting work done on time from him, no?!
</TD></TR></TABLE>

I can personally vouche for Mark. He is a very honest man with a lot of patience. But taking 7 months to get something to someone when other people have had less than a week turnaround getting things is just plain ridiculous. PLUS, it just looks bad that he has been ignoring him.

Batoutahell

Mark, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I almost sent my ITR oil pan to Jamie a long time ago to get baffled, but I ended up buying a mugen pan instead. I'd be very happy to send you either my stock ITR pan or my mugen pan for you to use until you work things out with Jamie. I won't need a baffled pan on my R until the Expo.

CagedRuss

Don't take this the wrong way, I am not flaming you on this. I just think this is a wrong way of dealing with this. Public hangings only show a 1 sided view of the story. It would be more professional of you to do this privately. You are basically slandering his reputation and character on the world wide web. You could also be inadvertanly keeping him from doing future business with anybody else.

I do not know Jamie at all, but he seems to have a following with the members here on the forum. Lots of people make mistakes from time to time and some innocents get screwed. Send him a letter asking for the money and pan. He could be going through some personal problems and having issues taking care of his responsibilties, or could just not give a ****!

I do hope it works out either way!

rapid_roy

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CagedRuss &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> It would be more professional of you to do this privately. You are basically slandering his reputation and character on the world wide web. You could also be inadvertanly keeping him from doing future business with anybody else.</TD></TR></TABLE>

"Truth is an absolute defense." In other words, reporting his side of the facts, such as he did is not slander. He didn't attack his character or use deregatory remarks.

xerox445

If he wasnt a mod, and or known to do good buisness in the past, everyone would be jumping over this. Just because he has a few friends on here, they all want to back him up. Take care of buisness. If i was this guy I could care less if he did awsome work in the past and was so reliable, bla bla bla. This is the situation thats happening now, and what happend in the past dosent really mean **** if your out 7 months of time or so and an oil pan.

I think its funny when people say, oh yeah that sucks that you got screwed, but this is a good dude, dont worry man, it will be ok....

This IS the kind of stuff that should be on HT, so people know not to deal with him anymore. Thats how buisness works. If he is so dependable, reliable, and does such good work, why is this guy having a problem then... If your all concerned that his "rep" is going to be slandered have him step up and take care of the situation. Thats the only way he can keep his name good on HT.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CagedRuss &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

You could also be inadvertanly keeping him from doing future business with anybody else.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

EXACTLY

CagedRuss

Dudes, where is the other side of the story? I am not defending anybody here, why should everybody jump to conclusions that Jamie screwed this guy over. That is all I was trying to convey. Guilty until proven innocent?

If he has 50 satisfied customers and 1 guy that is not, who do you believe? I have been in the Fab business for 10 years and I cannot say everyone is happy with me. All you can do is try and do what you say you will.

TeamSlowdotOrg

There's nothing keeping Jamie from posting in this thread. Once he's posted in this thread and/or resolved the problem and Mark's let us know so that this thread isn't hanging over Jamie's head, it's done. Until then, it's a problem and Mark's been patient to a fault already.

ghettoracer

i'm sure we're all are eager to see what Jamie's side is... including Mark. It looked like he ran out of excuses/reasons to blame, and then started to ignore Mark. Only over a oil pan? Surely a grown man can come up with a little cash to take care of it instead of not dealing with Mark and forcing him to come out in public. 7 months is a long time.

I've been nice about loaning little $ to my friends in my life... ppl owe me $ for years. What amazes me is, through out time they always say they appreciate it but when it comes down to paying, they always find excuses. To me it shows their character... which I'm glad so little money buys me the truth.

slammed_93_hatch

hey mark if your in need of an oil pan, i have an ITR one laying around the lip on one part is bent but could be fixed. oo and you'd have to clean a sht load of metal out of it. cost= wate ever it will be to ship. PM me and let me know, its just taking up room in my garage and i can't seem to sell it.

stormy

I'm sorry but in a full years time your still dealing with this ?

Over the matter of an oil pan ?

Anybody and there mom would have to have been dumb not to see this post comming, and after 12 months it seems he does'nt care.

Everyone has delays and for reasons sometimes we can't control, but after a year if I could'nt do it I would have paid someone else the money to finish the job, scratch that. After 3 months.

Xian

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by stormy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Anybody and there mom would have to have been dumb not to see this post comming, and after 12 months it seems he does'nt care.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Still no response from the other party (Doctor Cortez)??

Christian, who'd in the past considered sending his pan out for baffling (and is now glad he didn't)...

Ross

Jamie is someone I call a good friend in the context of this car stuff...dammit

DsITR

Mark,

I appreciate you posting this.

On another note I IM'd Jamie some time ago to baffle my pan as well. He has not responded to my IM either. Maybe there is something more going on. Hopefully the situation will be resolved.

cheezthis

Hopes this gets resolved. Mark is one of the most stand-up guys I know.

apexinghonda

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CagedRuss &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> Public hangings only show a 1 sided view of the story. It would be more professional of you to do this privately. You are basically slandering his reputation and character on the world wide web. You could also be inadvertanly keeping him from doing future business with anybody else.

I do not know Jamie at all, but he seems to have a following with the members here on the forum. Lots of people make mistakes from time to time and some innocents get screwed. Send him a letter asking for the money and pan. He could be going through some personal problems and having issues taking care of his responsibilties, or could just not give a ****!
I do hope it works out either way!</TD></TR></TABLE>

I don't know either of the folks involved in this dilemma. But reading mstewar's thread he has attempted repeatedly ad nauseum to resolve this privately to no avail and this is his last resort since Jamie posts like crazy on H-T. Even if someone is "going through personal problems" it is no excuse to stonewall someone for this long. This public "calling out" does perform a function and mstewar is justified if what he says is true on the attempts. I have been looking for an baffled oil pan too and considered Jamie's services after the big post he did on it. I ended up going with a Mugen pan which I just ordered. I am now glad I did. One's reputation is earned by the last business transaction. You can screw it up a long standing reputation quickly. I note Dr.Cortez last posted on 1/31/05. Hope it gets resolved and an answer given. Anyone on here know Jamie personally? I guess I am curious why someone who is a personal acquaintance has not posted that they talked to him.

Barry H.

Ross

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by apexinghonda &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Anyone on here know Jamie personally? </TD></TR></TABLE>

Lots of us do. He's a great guy, a fast driver, and one of the coolest instructors I have ever had.

I am "baffled"

Reid

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by xerox445 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">WTF, isint Doctor CorteZ the moderator of the Welding/Fab fourm. Cant even trust the ******* mods...this place just gets shadyer by the day.</TD></TR></TABLE>

No offense, but just keep your comments to yourself until both sides of the story are told.

Both members seem like standup guys, so I'm sure some reasonable settlement can be reached.

Bambooseven

iTrader: (1)

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Ross R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I am "baffled"</TD></TR></TABLE>
^^^
LOL

BTW, I hope this gets resolved.