I usually don’t do this, but I just can’t stand this behavior any longer. BTW, this problem concerns more on the Prelude UCA’s.

Background:
I was looking for a shop who can modify the factory front UCA’s for the Prelude and TSX to have camber adjustability. Someone recommended OPM at Georgia http://www.opmautosports.com. Since I’ve seen their name on some race cars and their ad on Sports Car magazine, I thought I would give them a try.

Sequence of Events:
Beginning of Oct. 2004 – I acquired a quote and timeline to perform such modification. They quoted the turnaround time would be 10 working days. At the time. since I know my motor in the Prelude would take at least 1.5 months to get torn down and rebuilt, I went ahead and took the front UCA’s off of my Prelude.

10/25/04 – I FedEx’d the UCA’s to them by 2-day air. I emailed to Tom Fowler at OPM that the UCA’s were on the way to their shop. At the same time, I asked if they could do the same for the TSX front UCA’s. He replied saying they could do that too.

10/26/04 – I ordered a pair of front UCA’s from http://www.acuraautomotiveparts.org, and had them drop-shipped to OPM.

11/8/04 – 1.5 weeks went by, so I thought I call them to get the update. Tom said that they couldn’t work on them because they were getting ready for the race the weekend before. And he said that they would get on them right away, and should be done in several days.

11/15/04 – I called again for an update. He said that they were almost done with the Prelude arms, and should be able to ship out by the end of that week. He asked if I wanted to wait for the completion of the TSX arms to be shipped together. I told him no, I wanted the Prelude arms ASAP so I could put the front suspension back together, and could wash the engine bay before the rebuilt motor get dropped in.

11/22/04 – I called to see if they shipped the arms out. No, they said. This time I was talking to a woman named Tiffany. Then I requested that I needed the arms by the Thanksgiving weekend because my engine builder was expecting to finish the motor this week (week of 11/29/04). She promised to ship the package out either on Tuesday (11/23/04) by 2-day air or Wednesday (11/24/04) by next day air, so I could have them by Friday (11/26/04).

11/23/04 – Tiffany called to confirm that the arms would be shipped on Wednesday (11/24/04) by next day air.

11/26/04 – The package never arrived. I was pissed because I set aside that Saturday to work on the car.

11/29/04 – I called and wanted to find out what the hell was going on. She kept saying that the package was shipped out on Wednesday (11/24/04) by next day air. She gave me a tracking number. I tracked it with UPS, and it said billing information received at sometime around 6pm on 11/24/04, but was voided couple hours later by the shipper. I called Tiffany back and told her exactly what I knew. She then said that the tracking number was the wrong one. I requested the correct one, and she said that she didn’t have it with her, but she tracked it for me. It should be arriving at my place that night. I came on with no package nor notice from UPS. Very very pissed.

11/30/04 – I called her demanding some sort of reasonable answer. She finally said that they put the wrong zip code on the package, therefore it was undeliverable. She, again, promised to re-ship the package out that day by next day air at no charge to me. She also gave me a tracking number, and promised that the TSX arms would be shipped out on 12/1/04. I got home and tried tracking the package. UPS said the billing information was received electronically, but did not indicate a pickup or dropoff. Anyway, I thought that UPS hasn’t updated the system.

12/1/04 (today) – I came home tonight, and again no package nor a notice. I’m very very pissed now. The motor will be done in the next day or so, but the car isn’t ready because of all these delays. How difficult is it to ship one package out? I’m sure someone who’s getting paid minimum wage can fulfill this job without problem.

I don’t know what else to do with these guys, but I needed to express what I feel about them. I don’t know how they treated their other customers, but all I know that I have a very very unpleasant experience with them. For those whose haven’t dealt with them and maybe dealing with them in the future, I just want to let you all know about my experience so you can think twice before working with them.

Sorry for the long post.

 

**** happens...

All I can tell you is that those guys have a damn good reputation in the racing community - and you don't get that kind of rep without delivering.

Maybe you had a Murphy law moment, but to bash an org like Tom's over a shipping delay/error is rather harsh.

I plan on ordering an LSD from these guys soon. I've never bought from them before, but know dozens who have and have nothing but props for OPM.

Your experince, although unfortunate, will not change my decision.

Greg

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vwong &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I don’t know what else to do with these guys, but I needed to express what I feel about them. I don’t know how they treated their other customers, but all I know that I have a very very unpleasant experience with them. For those whose haven’t dealt with them and maybe dealing with them in the future, I just want to let you all know about my experience so you can think twice before working with them.

Sorry for the long post.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

Vincent, I am sorry that you had a bad experience with friends of mine. That's unfortunate. OPM is a business and sometimes, businesses cross their i's and dot their t's. It just happens and when it does, its an unfortunate "**** happens" as Greg said. Having had dozens upon dozens of positive experiences w/ Tom and OPM, I'd say you had bad luck but you (by how the calendar works) had bad timing too - I think that anything between prep for the ARRC and the Turkey Trot, you are very likely going to fall through the cracks - not just w/ OPM but with any company that makes their livelihood w/ IT racing. Maybe not the best time to be changing and making your schedule based on them but you live, you learn. That's not meant to be rude, just a fact.

You had a bad experience, I am sorry to read it. I am real sorry I am reading it actually - I wonder if you will come to think that bashing them will help you in the end. Well, I have read what you have said and however callous it may sound, it won't have any effect on my dealing with them. I kinda doubt I am alone but ehh, if so, hope you got something out of posting this. If it were me, it would be the last thing (then again, public company bashing ain't my bag). And considering I have watched these guys help rebuild a wrecked car trackside for someone that wasn't even a paying service customer (fixed it well enough that he won the next day), I'd say that is a rather big loss.

Sorry for my long post. Best of luck to you.

 

I've had nothing but good experiences with OPM as well, but what is up with bashing a guy for making a post about a bad experience to warn others?!? Do you think he just made the whole thing up? He is getting dicked around, and is trying to help his fellow racers by sharing the experience. Unless I misread something, he isn't trying to gain anything - just warn others.

Personally, when my roll cage took 4 months to build, and they tried to charge me over three times the quoted price, I didn't give a $%&# about who else had good experiences with that shop. I warned people at the time, and will continue to warn people, if anybody mentions that shop. Racing is a small community and a lot of us have developed relationships with shops that grow into more than just business relationships. They become friends. However, friends are human, and friends make mistakes, and being rude to somebody who is trying to help all of us is never the answer.

Best of luck getting the parts before too long, and thanks for the heads up.

Matt

 

We all gotta "call 'em as we see 'em" but it's also been my experience with racing businesses that most will try to make things right when they go sideways. Those that don't typically won't last and OPM's been around long enough that, if they had major systemic problems in the organization, they'd have imploded by now.

When I ran my own company, I tried like hell to be on top of everything but every once in a while, either something dicked me up or I dicked it up. It just happens to human beings. None of this takes away from your right to be pissed, of course but it's worth thinking about...

K

 

I have also delt with OPM and don't have any complaints. All I can say is that Tom will give you the shirt of his back when you need it. For me, that has been trackside. I hope things turn out okay for you.

 

I agree that OPM is usually awesome but I wouldn't bash anyone for divulging when they had a problem with a business. Especially when they've tried several times to fix a problem. I'd say its probably a fluke with them and that you should give them a second chance because I'm sure they'll make it up to you but that's up to you. Sorry you had that experience but I'm glad you were adult and fair about how you described it

 

Hey, I've got some stuff to add as well. A few years ago at an scca school the OPM guys who we did not know at the time, were also there. The 1st gen crx that my dad was driving had really bad brakes for some reason, but unfortunately we couldn't do anything about it since we had a classroom session to attend. As we get out and were heading back to the cars to go out again, we noticed a few people standing around and a guy putting back a wheel on my dad's car. We got scared. For all we knew at the time, we might have believed this to happen at a race, but for another competitor to already go and mess with our car at a driver's school? Come on! But fortunately our shock came to an end as we were explained that those guys were actually with OPM and they happened to have heard of the problem. They did a brake check and bleed the brakes while we were in the classroom session. At first we thought these guys must have been playing a trick on us or something, but as it turned out they just wanted to make sure we had the car to complete the school with. Needless to say we were introduced soon afterwards and got to know the OPM crew. At the races in the years to come, we continued to bump into this Tom Fowler character and he always had something to say to us. Unfortunately for him, the only payments he was receiving for his advice and time at the track were more questions.

I know very little about the car business, but I have come to realize that if you want to make money doing this thing, then do street cars. It is much harder to make a living out of anything racing related. What this means is that those who can do this are able to do it for a reason, and it's not because they suck. OPM does both, and the success they have in the racing side of their business speaks for itself and has built their reputation. I would not hesitate for one second to make it public and expose offences like intentional fraud or theft, but this is definitely not the case here. To me this is a lot more like deciding never to go again to a good sports store because one day their parking lot was full and I had to wait longer for an empty space to become available. I guess they need a bigger parking lot to accommodate all their customers. But hey, it’s certainly our choice to make; I just wanted to point out the other side of the argument.

However, for a far more logical and better written post expressing these same ideas much more succinctly, I would suggest re-reading Phat S or Knestis' posts. And if any of those is considered as "bashing" towards anybody lol, well then I hope that I broke that scale for good with this post.

Disclaimer:
1. I am not saying OPM is not at fault in this case by any means. I am just following the original's post lead and adding some of my own experiences.
2. Just as this entire thread does, I am also sharing my personal opinion on the subject matter.

 

sounds normal to me.. most companies i've dealt with that are involved in racing themselves normally put customers in the back seat.. my observations have been that if they need to prepare for a race and didn't work on their customers orders, they'll just tell the customers that it's almost ready and it'll ship in a certain period of time.. this gets the customer off their backs for a while hoping they'll have time to get to it..

the promised time comes and goes.. they say it's ready and will ship soon.. a little more time to get the customer off your back.. so the company ran out of excuses.. they have to say, shipping had an error.. 'wrong zipcode' 'wrong address' , etc... so now the customer is constantly calling and getting on the company's back..

company realizes, they'll have to complete the order so customer will finally leave them alone.. they rush the order doing a half *** job just so they can be done with it and customer ends up with a sloppy product that barely fits or needs some modification.. or worse, doesn't fit even close and the hassling needs to start all over..

..keep in mind i said this is an observation, not an attack on any specific company..

vwong, sorry to hear about your horrible experience.. i hope that this isn't the company you were telling me about when you measured my uca's..

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by syclone &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">sounds normal to me.. most companies i've dealt with that are involved in racing themselves normally put customers in the back seat.. my observations have been that if they need to prepare for a race and didn't work on their customers orders, they'll just tell the customers that it's almost ready and it'll ship in a certain period of time.. this gets the customer off their backs for a while hoping they'll have time to get to it..

the promised time comes and goes.. they say it's ready and will ship soon.. a little more time to get the customer off your back.. so the company ran out of excuses.. they have to say, shipping had an error.. 'wrong zipcode' 'wrong address' , etc... so now the customer is constantly calling and getting on the company's back..
</TD></TR></TABLE>

i won't go so far as to reveal names and call someone out here, but this is exactly my experience with a shop. I put down 1/2 of the purchase price for a set of coilovers a year ago. a YEAR AGO! i waited around 8 months for these things to get over on a ship, they never did. I gave up. Cancelled my order. Said shop has a certain policy about refunds that is less than advantageous for me, but hey i'm a reasonable guy and there are other things that i want.

I make a substitute list of some items that i want that should be around, (some are, some aren't, but it's been another 4 months of waiting) that are close to the amount of the credit i have with this shop. At this point, i just want something for my money. but some of the items that i ordered sound awfully like the original coilovers that i wanted in that their shipping dates keep getting pushed back. I understand that overseas supply chains can be hairy and all, but i think i've been more than patient with this. I also understand that some people have lives outside of their parts business, like races, families, whatever. I'm not saying i want my parts which are, in the larger scope of things, minor--at this very second, at an unreasonable schedule.

But in principle, if i give someone money (and lots of it) i should at some point have something in hand to show for it, whether it be my money back, or the parts i ordered. I'm trying to remain calm, and be patient, and hope that XX/XX/2004 really means XX/XX/2004, but i'm skeptical and i'm running out of patience. I really don't want to go to small claims to have to get this back, believe me. I just want this transaction to be finished, in one way or another.

this is the ugly underside to amateur racing/modding cars. and were it a regular business not run by guys that i respect by virtue of the hobby we share, the **** would have hit the fan a long time ago...

 

I am sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with such a great group of people. I hope OPM is able to make it right for you, and I hope you give them a second chance, they are some of the best people in racing, and in general.

Not to make excuses (although on rereading it is exactly what I am doing) they also moved their shop over the last 3 weeks. It was a MASSIVE undertaking, bigger than I think any of them imagined. Sarah and I went and helped for a day, and 10 people working flat out all day barely finished moving JUST THE ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS, much less the whole shop.

If I know Tom, he will be extremely sorry to hear about your experience, and will do whatever it takes to make it up to you. He is that kind of person.

 

For OPM Autosports. I am not going to add a long testimonial...but Tom has been nothing but helpfull to me in the past. He bends over backwards to help the customer...at least in my case. And I would consider myself small potatoes compared to the majority of his customers.

I am sure they are not perfect...who is...but I bet they will make it right in the end.

 

I too am sorry that you had trouble as I have a decade of good experience working with OPM and will continue to do so. I am jumping in on this because I too had a car with them during the late October, early November time frame and know how busy they were. When things are in a pressure cooker to get done, even the best intentions sometimes don't always work out.

I did have the advantage of knowing that the ARRC Championship is the biggest race of the year in the Atlanta area and it falls in that time and their short term priority during this time is preparing more than a dozen cars for the ARRC. I did not need my car until after the ARRC so I was fine for it to sit and wait. I picked my car up on Saturday the 13th (a 900 mile round trip for me so you can see that it was worth it for me to fix the car) and know that they were working seven days per week in the shop in addition to the uneviable task of moving their entire business to a new building.

The car they worked on BTW went from a finicky, untrustworthy car that we didn't use for years and tried to fix ourselves to my stepfather's 80 mile daily overland country road commuter car that he loves driving thanks to their efforts.

 

If they're busy b/c of ARRC, shop moving, ferris died at 31 flavors, thats fine - just dont promise a 10 day turnaround time.....

 

simple rule of automotive repair/replament/upgrades

take the amount of time you think, plan on or told that something will be done and triple it

ex nearly half the body panels on my car, some suspension pieces and prolly a cage all will fall victim to this rule.

 

I can't add anything that hasn't already been said, but as somebody who has found himself digging through OPM's spare parts bins, borrowing technicians, and getting far more free advice from Tom than I could ever repay (and I don't even know how I could or would), I can say that these aren't people who *intentionally* screw anybody.

Sure, Tom should maybe have told VW that he couldn't get it done right now because he's too busy. Sure, he maybe should have. But how often do race shops do that... Turn away a customer??? Well, not very often.
Its more likely that Tom honestly thought he could get it done, but simply couldn't. Happens all the time and is no great sin when it comes to custom fabrication.

As mentioned, if this was their full time method of operation, they wouldn't still be around. I'm sure the problem will be resolved with lots of apologies. Hell, Tom may not even know that this is still going on.
If I thought I could get him on the phone I'd call him and give him a heads up.

Scott, who, like many, runs an OPM decal on his car by choice, not because he gets compensated to do so.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vwong &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">How difficult is it to ship one package out?</TD></TR></TABLE>
Evidently it is real difficult.

I would say that speaking with Tom and asking him why the "They quoted the turnaround time would be 10 working days" timeline was not held.

 

Let me clarify some things here.

First of all, I was just trying to express my feeling/experience with OPM. Did I "bash" (like some of you said) on them? Did you read a single sentence in my original post that read someting like "OPM sucks"??? NO. I was pissed and I just wanted to let others (newer people who haven't dealt with them yet) know about my experience, so that they can make their own choice on whether to deal with OPM.

Second, I might have not explained it clear enough. I wasn't pissed at them for not working on my UCA's for the first couple weeks. I understand that if there is a race, like most of us, that is a priority. What I was really pissed about is that they promised that I would received the package 3 times, and I was disappointed.....3 times. Is that enough to get you pissed?

I'm glad that some of you have had good experience with them. If you have already developed a good relationship, that's fine. Keep that relationship. Certainly, this kind of relationship isn't happening between me and OPM.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vwong &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Did I "bash" (like some of you said) on them?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Fair enough. You did not.

What you did do is post this on a message board where a great number of OPM regulars, and even drivers *sponsored* by OPM, represent a large part of the membership. Seems to me you purposely invited conflict, and got what you [should have] expected.

As to the problem itself, I can't say anything that hasn't been said already. I'm surprised, and I'm sure they would want to make it right.

 

Apparently you have to be in OPMs pocket to be treated right..

1 year ago, I lost over 600$ with OPM and a championship (due to parts not deliveredd on quoted time).. One Company I'll never deal with again..

I think the people at OPM are very nice and helpful. But if they are going to run a business, they should, and not act like it..

Corey - who, well, nevermind......

 

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

Fair enough. You did not.

What you did do is post this on a message board where a great number of OPM regulars, and even drivers *sponsored* by OPM, represent a large part of the membership. Seems to me you purposely invited conflict, and got what you [should have] expected.

As to the problem itself, I can't say anything that hasn't been said already. I'm surprised, and I'm sure they would want to make it right.

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

Sounds like they've had more than a few chances to "make it right". If there's one thing I can't stand it's BS excuses. If they forgot about the UCA's or put them on the back burner and were reminded by vwong about it they should have been upfront and said so. I imagine that they figured they could stall him by offering to send them with the TSX UCA's, but that didn't work so it was a shipping problem.

What they should have done was been up front and explained that they're not done and offered a solution (i.e. ship them back if they weren't started, or payed for some stock replacements to be exchanged when they were done).

Hopefully it can be worked out, because no matter how many of you have had a good experience with them, it doesn't deliver a set of UCA's to vwong.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Honda318dx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">...1 year ago, I lost ...a championship....</TD></TR></TABLE>


"OH THE HUMANITY!"..."You should set them up the the bomb!"

Scott, who thinks it's stupid to **** yourself waiting for parts or services...not that I haven't learned that the hard way myself...

 

I agree with scott in that I hate relying on anyone to get anything done. But sometimes thats just the way it is, dont make a promise if you cant keep it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RR98ITR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Scott, who thinks it's stupid to **** yourself waiting for parts or services...</TD></TR></TABLE>

As opposed to what? Growing them in your backyard? Should he smelt the iron ore too? If you need parts, you order the parts. Being that nobody has developed a way to beam you what you want, there is required waiting.

I can't help but notice that just about all of the good OPM stories are about what Tom himself did to help somebody at the track, and the negative stories are about dealing with the business as a customer, not a friend. To me, that is an important distinction, and I'm glad VW made this post...


Matt

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by speedracer33 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
As opposed to what? Growing them in your backyard? Should he smelt the iron ore too? If you need parts, you order the parts. Being that nobody has developed a way to beam you what you want, there is required waiting.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

As opposed to thinking ahead.

If it's the day before a race and you're still waiting on a critical part - it's your fault, regardless of the performance of the vendor.

Scott, who figures it like this: most racers are flakey (and cheap)...they too frequently make suboptimal customers and suboptimal business managers...