iced98lx

Weeeahhhl, now that my Fathers 2000 corvette coupe is FINALLY on a truck heading back to the frozen tundra known as South Dakota I felt as though I should speak a few words about the people that worked on it down in Houston. First and foremost MTI Houston:

Nice people, really. They had the motor built, installed and dynoed on time.. made awesome power! (I guess that's the good part of writing a large check to someone else.. the motor was practically done when the car arrived) The old one came out smoothly, and was handed off to my uncle (there was no core charge with the LS1-> LS7, so he got a free LS1, good deal). Also In September a set of Fiske Wheels ($3xxx) were ordered for the car. Here is where the unfortunate parts start. E-mail with the company, especially David, is slow, and often completely ignored. Phones are not answered very often, and for nearly an entire day they had no idea where the car was between them and the painter. The car went to get painted and took several months to get painted (but lets save that for another thread eh?) During that time we kept getting pictures of it from my uncle with the stock wheels on it. The exhaust (Borla of some sort, according to David) was supposed to be shipped back to SD via UPS but as of yesterday there is still no tracking number for that. The wheels, ordered in september, never showed up. The best they could do was find front ones. September -> January... I think 4 months is long enough to find a set of wheels.
Fed up with it, it was requested that a refund was issued for the wheels and the car be shipped home. The car was finally loaded yesterday but the refund for the wheels is still absent.

Overall, they stuck to some of the timelines, but became unresponsive and a PITA to deal with when they failed to deliver. I'm sure they are delivering a helluva car, but cm'on guys... a little customer service doesn't kill anyone.

iced98lx

It's hard to be a growing company, but hopefully they'll improve on some things and be an excellent company. By the way, their porting = gold.

jordanfd

Had work done there and was satisfied. The most aggravating thing is they [B]never answear the phone. They should have a phone number for people having their cars worked on to answear at least. They do answer e-mails with in two days. It is a very very busy place. Frank

berryvette

Had a dyno and tune done. Was very pleased with their service. was there last weekend checking on some new mods to be done. They were very helpful but busy. Sorry you had a bad experience.

MACKASH

Well, I was wondering if I was the only one that had and IS STILL having a bad experience with MTI. The have NEVER returned any of my calls!

Who ever owns this company should know what kind of customer service we are getting!

They had no problem billing my credit card # and sending a shoddy part, but seem to be having a VERY hard time sending a call tag from the carrier to pick up the item (going on 2 weeks now).

Their customer service if thats what you want to call it is a HUGE JOKE!!

LoneStarFRC

Had bad experience in the past and will never return.

GRUNIE

Customer service can make or break any establishment regardless of how "good and knowledgeable" the team is.

chrisj

I've heard both really good and really bad about MTI. It weighed on me before I sent my car there, but they took real good care of me and did a great job with my cam/headers.

When I recommend them to others, I give people a flavor of the stories I've heard and then relay my first hand experience so they can make their own informed decision.

chris

97C5ENVY

I've been running MTI's Stage IIR H/C package since 2001 and regularly bouncing off the 6800rpm rev limiter.....and my car is still running strong with ZERO issues...no leaks, not even a failed valve spring (** knock-on-wood **). MTI has a solid product no doubt.

However i also had a bad Customer Service experiance with them back in 2001 during that same H/C install.....looks like nothing has changed since.

MRIENG

I just thought I was the only one they ignored.
First the good. The motor they built is solid. Just did another DE this weekend, great power and no leaks. I'm still impressed.
Second. The Bad. NO CUSTOMER SERVICE! None. None. Why wont they answer their phone. I was on the west coast with my vette (extended cruze) and it started pinging real bad. Made a call (several + emails) NOT 1 RETURN CALL. I"M STILL WAITING. DAVID DO YOU HEAR ME?
Third, the ugly. After installing the head, cam, headers, dyno tune etc.. my vette was a mess. Dirt, grease, everywhere.I even had to help get back together!
Sum it all up. To many other tuners out there that do care about their customers and their cars.

I also really hope someone from MTI chimes in.

Steve
The Woodlands Tx

1hotvet DAD

I thought I should add my input to my sons. The car showed up on Thursday afternoon. Of course I was out of town traveling for work but did finally get the opportunity to drive the car today. It is awesome. I have never had 600 HP under my foot and I can tell you that for me it was scary. The color turned out beautifull (pics to follow) and the car runs like a top.

I wanted to address the problems we had with MTI. Just so everyone knows we did finally get the refund for the Fiske wheels that were ordered in September. Regretfully we did not receive the old Borla exhaust that was removed from the car. We were told several times that the exhaust was ready and I even provided MTI with my UPS number but apparently the exhaust just never showed up. I am in the sales business and I can tell you that if I ever treated my customers like I was treated by MTI I would be out of business and certainly could not afford the work that MTI did for me. I agree with some of the earlier comments, growing too quickly and not prepared for what comes with the growth.

HIGH_INTREST

Wow these MTI bad customer service threads are popping up all the time now. I've had four cars built by MTI over the last seven years. I've spent well over $50k with MTI and not spending another dime unless some things drastically change. I really like Jayson (owner) and rather than bashing his company on a public form, I would like to address what needs to change to get me and others to take our business to MTI.

(1) Lose the answering machine and simply answer the phone. It looks like your running from bill collectors.

(2)Return phone calls and email in a timely manner

(3)Stop promising deadlines you can't live up to.

(4)Don't call and tell me the car is done and washed when in fact it's not even close to being finished. I'm driving 400 miles round trip and don't want to have to wait several hours on the car to be finished. BTW I've never even had you wash the car, I always get it back dirty.

(5)Wash the car. Most of us send our cars to performance shops for several weeks at a time and really looking forward to see our car only to see it dirty when we arrive at MTI.

(6)Triple check the work before it leaves the shop. Although I've only had minor repairs to be made when I got home, they could have been prevented there.

Jayson you have a good business with good results but let me know when these changes are made, I would really like to come back.

savewave

Forum rules allow for the posting of a factual account of an unresolved dispute once all reasonable efforts have been made to resolve the issue offline:

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=1118161

We leave the threads open to give both sides of a dispuste time to post their version of the facts, then the thread is closed and goes into the archives, where it remains available for review by those doing research in the future.

If you do not have first-hand knowledge of the dispute being addressed, please stay out of the thread.

Jim Willis
Corvetteforum.com

iced98lx

Thanks Savewave, this wasn't started to be a 'I hate MTI too' thread, just trying to find resolve. As the person who's car that exhaust was supposed to go on- I wish they'd have shipped it. there is $1200 I won't get to spend this summer. MTI also shorted us on several of the original engine parts that were removed, including a radiator and other pieces. Wouldn't have been a big deal but the motor was slated to go in another car that needed the parts.. I would think that if you're selling $20,000 motors that you don't really need the profits from selling your customers other stuff. ! ! ! I drove the car and yes, they did a great job, but there were a few loose ends besides just the parts missing, they didn't get the oil pressure gauge reading properly (at least, I hope it's not right, it's reading 130 psi). Finish your work! I hope MTI steps in and resolves this issue so I can recommend them to my friends who want 600+ HP at their disposal.

HIGH_INTREST

Sorry for hi-jacking your thread. I spoke at length with Jayson and he pledges to make changes. It shows alot for him to pick up the phone and address these issues. If and when the changes are made you will be hard pressed to find a better performance shop....period.

Junkman2008

I shot a email to MTI about this thread. As a small business owner myself, I like to hear both sides of a story as threads like this can be a boost or a bomb to your bottom line. Hearing the response to threads like this also gives me an insight to the management principle practiced there. You'd be surprised as some business owners could care less and others are passionate about correcting any issues brought forward by their customers.

With that said, here's the response that I received:

"Thanks for taking the time to contact us. I appreciate the heads up, although we've already seen the thread.

One of the problems that we've run into recently is that we've almost become the victims of our success and grown too large, too fast.

We met this morning to discuss and address this issues and have put some measures into place moving forward to (hopefully) make sure that the majority of these issues get dealt with immediately."

Sincerely,

David Coates
General Manager
MTI

It sounds as if they are admitting to what an earlier poster stated about growing too fast. They also appear to be addressing the concern posted here. As far as I'm concerned, this is a step in the right direction. Whether or not the meeting that they had produces some positive results is yet to be seen. If I were contemplating doing business with them, I would just drop by the shop and check things out on a random basis. I would also speak to some customers who are picking up their rides and find out how their experience was. This would be a definitive way to find out if the concerns raised by this thread are being addressed.

The only thing that peaks my interest though is that David stated that he was aware of this thread. If so, why didn't he jump in and defend his business? The only reason that I can think of is that everything posted here is true and he knew there was no excuse, or he realizes that giving an excuse for this type of operating practice is worse than the bad operating practice itself. I would agree with the latter and if it was true, I'd give him a pass. A good leader doesn't look for excuses, they look for results.

Allzwell

These guys do great work.

It's just not always done right the first time or second time and it's a complete PITA to get someone to return a call.

It's a good thing that I am local and can show up to get to talk to someone.

vetterlatethannever

I was frustrated with them after getting quoted higher power than I ended up with, I gained about half what they claimed. BUT- their install was top notch and my cammed car ran like a champ for nearly 40k miles. And I actually got my car washed LOL!

poolfanatic

We appreciate the comments and feedback from our customer's above and are in the process of addressing any specific concerns on a case by case basis.

We've been in business for 15 years and field between 300-400 phone calls per day plus numerous e-mails with two people at the front counter. That's not an excuse for the issues that people have encountered and we believe that we have come up with several solutions this morning that will resolve the major issues at hand.

Sincerely,

David Coates
MTI
Houston, TX

iced98lx

Here's an Update. David has e-mailed vowing to make right and address the stock parts and the Exhaust. I've been sent a DHL tracking number for the exhaust, and will let everyone here know when it is picked up by DHL's system. David was very kind in both his reply above and his e-mail, taking responsibility for the shortcomings and stating that we weren't alone on negative feedback, and that they were taking a hard look internally to ensure that this doesn't happen to their future customers. I ask the admins to leave this open until we get full resolve, but it looks as though MTI is going to step up to the plate and make things right.