49 replies to this topic

[1275 SPRITE]

Hi Rahul,

Sorry to hear about your trouble with SD Minis. As you know I went through a similar ordeal with my mini, which also was down to SD Minis not prepping and painting my shell, and sending it elswhere for a cheap blow over job with no prep work. Shifty and Denty did bend over backwards to rectify the problem, and now its got a nice shiny paint job from Denty! Another bad experience with SD Minis.

Dont lose enthusiasm (I know its hard), you have got a great base for a top notch car. It would be nice to hear something from Steve.

James

[GreaseMonkey]

Hi,

I appreciate the support, I'm currently in talks with a bodyshop who know what they're doing to see what can be done with the Mk2 and have placed it on Ebay for now just to see the interest, really deep down I want the car finished off. The poor thing is sitting outside with a tarpaulin over it and is seeing the worst of the weather

Some of you may have noticed that Steve has removed his signature on the forum and the website is down.

The mind boggles.

[redmini]

Well i'm pretty sorry to hear this, as steve did quite alot of work to my car. A fair bit of welding, a full respray and installed my new engine/exhaust complete with new fuel pump, megajolt and all the associated wiring. He did a good job on mine and overall i'm pleased with the work he's done.

The thing is as far as I know he does use another friend of his to do the welding work (don't know whether his friend does all or just helps with some of the welding) and also relies on his friends trailer to transport his jobs around. So it seems his friend has let him down and in turn its let steves reputation down.

The only minor issues I had with steve was that he did have my car quite abit longer than he first estimated - But to be fair alot of projects don't get finished on time due to unforeseen problems and issues. There were also a couple of small bits I asked steve to do that didn't get done and a couple of things I would have done differently myself but nothing major that I couldn't easily sort out. And again the things I asked him to do were asked over email, so may not have been read and would also be easily forgotten.

Overall I was happy with the job steve did and i'd probably use him again aswell. Once my cars back on the road i'll be taking it to him for him to tune it and if I need any future work he'd be pretty high on my list of people to get a quote off.

Just to show the other side of the story and at least give steve a chance heres some photos of how my car turned out:

Before:





After:





So now only time will tell how good his work really is, and i'll see how well my paint stands up to the test of time.

my mini is with Steve at the moment, it was parked next to yours a few months back in his "new unit" my story will follow when I get my car back, lets just say a 2 month 2 grand rebuild to brand new standards, has become a 20 month 4 grand shine over ******* job that won't leave his place till I get what I've paid for. . . probably going via Denty no doubt!

[B-shaw]

Ahhh noo Greasy

Sad times in the monkey cage.

Cant believe it to be honest, showing you a pic of somebody else's mini saying its yours is just a shocker!

Is he a 1 man band or a actual registered business?

[GreaseMonkey]

[B-shaw]

Ahh, even worse then.
Cant spank him with trading standards even lol.

[DENTY]

I like the pic ref lol

[PhilipGCaldwell]

I got my mini rolling roaded by SD minis, did a great job, however, steve never really laid a finger on my mini the bloke at the garage (Adrian I think his name was) did the entire RR session. Steve seemed like a decent bloke to be honest but after hearing this, I wont be using him again, I will deal with the rolling road garage direct rather than through him

seems like he just outsources all his work to other companies rather than do it himself and takes a royalty for it, I thought Steve was guna be tuning my mini but like I say, he did none of it
got it RR at:
A&b Garage
Unit 176b Castle close Hawarden ind. park, Manor lane,
Hawarden.
CH5 3PZ

Sorry to hear about your dreadful treatment Monkey, hard to believe someone would lie like this

[Puddings]

harsh, will be good to see it Saturday but at least your getting a car on the road

[AVV IT]

oh dear I feel a rant coming on.....

It utterly amazes me that any trader would behave in this way in this day and age, particularly with the current economic climate and small businesses going "to the wall" every other minute! Why on earth would anyone with a single ounce of sense, risk their reputation and therefore their livelihood by doing this kind of thing?

Sadly though it would seem that he is far from the only one behaving this way, as I myself seem to all too often fall foul of this sort of tradesman, be it builders, sparkys, painters & decorators, plumbers etc. as well as those in the automotive trade. The reason I resort to doing so much DIY, is not to save money and certainly not for fun or because I have the time, but more because I can't face the stress and hassle of being messed about by a trader doing it instead. It seems to me that so many tradesman are fantastic at what they do and produce faultless & fabulous work, but actually getting them to do it is an entirely different matter! In my opinion the problem is that they are craftsmen and their talent lies in their chosen craft, not in running a business or providing decent customer service.

...and before I get a barrage of abuse from all the decent traders out there, I do realise that there are some fantastic traders providing fantastic service as well as fantastic work & products (particularly here on TMF), but sadly from my own personal experience they seem to be the exception and not the rule these days!

rant over!!...... for now

[PhilipGCaldwell]

Avv It, couldnt agree more mate

[Mini Mad Drakeley]

after reading this im glad im doing a restoration course and il be learning to do all this myself but there is no excuse for what SD mini did and i know theres quite a few really good traders as were i live in northern ireland theres some people you can really trust to do fantastic work but to me it sounds that a few good traders need to expand their business and really shine so itl be easy to find trustworthy traders so there will be no more posts like this:D

[DENTY]

A&b Garage
Unit 176b Castle close Hawarden ind. park, Manor lane,
Hawarden.
CH5 3PZ

do all my tuning work and r a realy good at what they do and very helpfull

[Carlos W]

In my opinion the problem is that they are craftsmen and their talent lies in their chosen craft, not in running a business or providing decent customer service.

This is a really good point!

I think people SOMETIMES underestimate how much time goes into running a business, not giving them any time to actually do the work!

[GreaseMonkey]

I think people SOMETIMES underestimate how much time goes into running a business, not giving them any time to actually do the work!

You think 6 months wasn't enough to even start?