MX-5 Factory Ringwood

[StanTheMan]

sab's our hero , hes ok
works all day and.......

[Bevan]

haha, sorry guys. Guess i should have thught ahead and asked people to pm.

Na, it's OK. The only reason it got a little sensitive is because there was a chance of negative feedback on a club sponsor. All in all you were right to ask about past experiences.

[Craig]

sab's our hero , hes ok
works all day and.......

Sounds a bit Monty Python Lumberjack to me! Sab?

[Bevan]

Sounds a bit Monty Python Lumberjack to me! Sab?

Lumberjack? Used to fetch the Shrubbery? NI!

[fastfreddygassit]

Have been going there for years - but not after this repair.. An excellent mechanic and very good body repairers but the most atrocious customer service in existence.They never call to inform you of progress on any repair. My vehicle is in for cam re-grinding and so far the MX5 factory is living up to the usual standard - how about two weeks and counting and no progress report? No phone calls at all. A week into the repair I rang them - again left up to the customer - and i was told " It will be ready when its ready" !!!!
Shame on a company that neglects long time customers: another shall have my hard earned bucks from now on -

lets see....
dig up a 7 year old thread just to bag the sh!t out of a business???
Your first sentence says you have been going there "for years" and then "an excellent mechanic and very good body repairers"
yet you want to bag them because their communication is lacking?

Personally I'd rather someone with poor comms that does an excellent job than good comms and a sh!t job.

And I see that you are a new user and this is your first post.
But you have been going to the MX5 factory for years?
Wow, welcome to the forum

[davekmoore]

Have been going there for years - but not after this repair.. An excellent mechanic and very good body repairers but the most atrocious customer service in existence.They never call to inform you of progress on any repair. My vehicle is in for cam re-grinding and so far the MX5 factory is living up to the usual standard - how about two weeks and counting and no progress report? No phone calls at all. A week into the repair I rang them - again left up to the customer - and i was told " It will be ready when its ready" !!!!
Shame on a company that neglects long time customers: another shall have my hard earned bucks from now on -

Might be the first necro and newbie combined?

It's unlikely they will have promised the job being done within a week. They might even have been surprised at your chasing it after only a week especially if they thought it was your second car. If it isn't your second car and you need it urgently how about asking for Dick personally and getting an estimate of the finish date? That way you can at least decide if the car stays there for the work.

[project.r.racing]

While I agree that businesses (not just the one in the thread title) need to communicate better. I'm intrigued with this scenerio. A cam regrind using the customers camshafts out of their car would take up to 3 weeks. Dunno if this was explained to the customer on drop off of car. Or customer didn't here it. Or customer just didn't know.

Dunno if a, "Just thought I'd call and let you know the cams are still at the grinder and we are awaiting their return." would help the situation any. It is such a simple job with minimal steps for the business, that not much updates can be given. It's just a lengthy job waiting for a third party business to return the camshafts.

I'm guessing this is the scenerio as the car was required for more than a day. If they were using second hand camshafts. You just send those to the grinders, and when they return, drop the car into the workshop in the morning, and pick it up in the afternoon.

[ColinJ]

I don't care how grumpy a mechanic is provided he does a better job than I can do (not hard!) - or a better job than another mechanic who smiles nicely but doesn't do as good a job.

As it happens Dick is a perfectly reasonable human being who is making a living by providing good value to MX5 owners like me.

Personally I'm tired of dealership "service advisors" in flash suits and "free" coffee - while often it's excellent coffee I worked out the last car dealership coffee cost me $100s a time in dealership markups on mechanic costs, and they didn't do all that good a job - actually it was probably only $50 a coffee cos I'd get another "free" coffee when I took more time off work to bring the car back for a rework most times it was serviced!

Me, I like to take my car to a competent service shop like the MX-5 Factory, and get good coffee and simpering smiles elsewhere. You're free to disagree.

Mind you, the earlier concern in this thread about not saying rude things about forum sponsors is a worry! If the forum doesn't allow criticism of sponsors that is bad news for sponsors (because readers won't trust a censored forum) and, in a strict sense, corrupt. I'm sure the concern was raised out of a sense of courtesy rather than anything else but we do have to be careful about perceptions.

[NitroDann]

[Mr Morlock]

I have found Dick to be a very obliging bloke. He gives advice and makes an effort to assist and I got me out of bother just before Xmas with the loan of oil filter tool with a filter which resisted all efforts to budge. Thats not the only plus I can add. If anyone has a problem with when a car is ready I am never one to sit and wonder- I always call or go and speak to someone. ColJ makes sense.

[Ben MX5]

I have had one very good experience with the mx5 factory.

It started after an off at turn 1 at PI. No apparent damage other than a bit of left hand down on the steering. I drove back from the island to my home in burbs. Still no problems...until I backed the car out the next morning and found a puddle oil.

I booked the car into the mx5 factory. It turned out to be a leaking crank seal and cam seal due to the previous owner having put in dodgy non genuine seals. Dick fixed all that for about 650. This seemed good value because all the auxiliaries on the front of the motor had to come off.

I picked the car up Thursday lunch time and had friendly chat to Dick about the next track day on Saturday before driving to another shop to get the wheel alignment sorted.

The next problem came up when the wheels couldn't be aligned due to a bent stub axle. I called Dick at about 1 pm to explain the problem. Without having to ask, Dick offered to look at it straight away to get me on the track for Saturday. I picked the car up (2nd hand stub axle from stock, wheels aligned and good to go) at midday the next day, and for this I only paid a few hundred. Very impressive IMO.

[rhyde]

ok so i booked my car in yesterday to mx5 factory
and Dick was awesome, very accomodating to my low budget

now the sound problem with my car was alternator bearings gone
he somehow diagnosed the problem by putting a large screwdriver onto it, and put his ear to the end of the screwdriver to hear it and diagnosed it

[taminga16]

Great news, you can use the "screwdriver' trick yourself. The next time that you are sitting around quietly and you refrigerator motor is not running get a plastic rule, wooden spoon, chopstick whatever and use it as Dick did, fridge, stick ear, note the sounds, or lack of them, then when you notice the fridge running do the same thing and be amazed. You can do the same test with anything that moves, but be mindful of your safety.
Greg.

[rhyde]

thanks greg much appreciated
thats a great tip

[speed]

In the old days everything was fixable with a screwdriver and hammer the screwdriver turns into a stethoscope.


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