rbuswell

My experience with Griff is as a caring, cordial man who loves cars and wants people to enjoy them year round. Are you sure you were speaking to Griff himself? It may have been someone in his operation at the time who has either moved on or had an attitude adjustment.

rbuswell

Congratulations, Stan, on your 4,000th Rennlist post. BTW, all you Colorado 928 guys, if you're looking for a top-flite 928 guy to make your car run like a champ, you can't go wrong with Stan. He's the best!

rbuswell

... just communicated by email and the phone. He really knows his stuff and loves Porsches but otherwise I can't speak to your experiences. I got an email from him confirming your unpleasant visit with him back in the 90's. He expressed regret over the incident but maybe he'll chime in himself and add to the story. In any event, he sure seems to be a mellow guy now.

Mark Anderson

Maybe with the exception of Roger we all can be caught having a bad day and unfortunatley the customer may not always get treated like they deserve.

rbuswell

Don't I know that to be true! I'm sure I've gotten more than a few folks mad at me over the years. Let's hope that things can be patched up in this time of peace and joy.

dr bob

I would be very interesting to close the loop with the original poster, and see how it all worked out in the end.

More than few years ago, i marketed a small specialty process pump, used specifically to pump perfumes and other similar low-boiling additives in low but precision volumes. The installation wasn't intuitive because the port sizes were not as a maintenance mechaninc might expect. Thank the volatile nature of the fluids being pumped. The internals were similarly unintuitive. Result was that more than a few would come back after being pryed apart, 'fixed', and reassembled incorrectly. Ruined but still under warranty per the purchasers. I resorted to taping the instructions around the pump, with the outer face of the steet reading "PLEASE, TRY OUR WAY FIRST!!!". Warranty returns reduced to nothing and many more happy customers.

Fast-forward to the subject of the original post-- A customer has a car that has had his Griff AC kit installed, but finds that there are washers as spacers and it's spitting belts. Possible that the install is not quite correct? Installer blames supplier, customer calls supplier, supplier explains that it's installer's fault. Installer says no, and won't work on the car again. No warranty since customer passed the Griff kit to installer. Installer keeps customer's money anyway. So it must be supplier's fault, since now both the installer and the customer have called/e-mailed to tell him so.

So who's fault is it? (This is a mensa test question...) If I had been in Griff's place I might have come up a little short on patience when I got the third or fourth phone call and e-mail calling my product trash. Especially when I had sold one or a hundred kits previously without this problem. Is everyone having as good a day as I am? Seldom, but the point is that on any given day the person you are talking to may not have the same view of a 'problem' that you do. They may or may not be fully appreciative of your situation or the cup of coffee you started the day with. I guess I've had the pleasure of dealing with lots of different personalities and somehow figuring out how to get a point across most of the time without getting too many people upset in the process.

80% of every job is managing expectations. Write that a few hundred times and hope it sinks in. It's worked very well for me over the years.

Charley B

[QUOTE=dr bob;6117688] 80% of every job is managing expectations. /QUOTE]


Not to mention, it's about 100% of that whole happiness thing.

Circumstances tend to be get way overrated.

griffiths

Roger,

My followup post in this thread was an attempt to cover several issues:

First, there was a fellow forum member and customer who was having problems with his car tossing ac belts; the belt tosses started before he installed our product.
Second, I wanted to make it clear that the problem was not the product name but rather the vehicle.
Third, there was a similar problem (product failure not related to the brand) which surfaced on the forum. We did not handle the issue as we should have. Fellow members of the forum offered us good suggestions: we should have worked harder to help out the member regardless of the expense. On that situation I agree.

So we have gone beyond what I sense most suppliers would do, by making numerous contacts to see if the client is satisfied, and as well we have supplied brand new product at no charge even though it was not warranted.

Although your post to this thread is an off topic issue, I hear you and acknowledge what you have said. I recall getting a phone call from a shop some time ago. Something about a car owner walking in with a product with our name on it. For the moment I don’t recall if this car owner bought the product new from us or used elsewhere. Installation issues are seldom a problem with our designs.

I can’t fix what happened ten years ago.

We all have our good days and bad days.

I’m working on a good one today.

Please accept my apology.


Have a Merry Christmas and good health and fortune in the New Year.

Best Regards,
"old" Griff

Landseer

Great follow-up facts.

Would you extend at least some courtesy and understanding if another of us had a problem?

If the answer is yes, I would definitely buy products from you, just like Roger and Jim here, class acts, special people, willing to make it right, knowing the occasional customer will be an ***.

griffiths

YES, ...
provided however:
(i) you only call on a "good day" and we only talk about golf,

(ii)you allow me to edit my previous post to delete the facts to simply read as follows:
I can’t fix what happened ten years ago.
We all have our good days and bad days.
I’m working on a good one today.
Please accept my apology.

AND,
(iii) I'm given unlimited access rights to the archive files on the host's server for just one day so I can have my fun.

YES, YES, YES.

ROG100

Hi Grif,
I don't know how I got into this thread, however I do know the same issue was happening with another of your customers - Paul Champagne - at the time I remember well the problems he was having.
Try contacting Paul to see his side of the story. Because of those issues I have never recomended your pumps or compressors. Not because I knew they were bad, I did not. But because of the perceved bad customer service.
Nice to see you trying to resolve that perception.
Merry Christmas to you as well.
Best,
Roger

Champagne

My problem was well discussed on a previous thread and I don't see the need to cover it here.
My experience in dealing with Griffiths is that it is never their fault, it's always something else. Even when you give them factual proof. And my ordeal was not based on one single situation, but on 3 separate compressors, over a span of 2 years.

If things are changing for the better with them, all I can say is it's about time.

Paul

GregBBRD

I've been dealing with Charlie and his products, for a couple of years, now. He has never been anything but pleasant and helpful, with me. Nothing he has made or provided has given me any problems.

I would think that a vehicle with a problem throwing belts should be pretty easy to repair/diagnosis. As has been mentioned, belt alignment is very critical. I've also found that brand of belt is very important. No one has given any details regarding this. Also, I don't see any information here about what pressures the A/C system works at. It would also be helpful to know if the vehicle runs R-12 or R-134a and what volume of freon was used in the system.

One other detail that might be worth mentioning, which doesn't seem to be common knowledge. The 928 S4 models used a larger A/C pulley to drive the compressor than the 928 5 speed cars used. This was done to "speed" the compressor up, due to the tendency for the automatics to turn lower rpms. Vehicles with automatics that ars used for "spirited" driving will often require use of the smaller drive pulley to keep the compressor rpms reasonable.

People generally post on this forum to solve problems. We're going to need a bunch more details to help with this problem, including history (which Charlie seems to have), in order to try fixing this problem. If the object is only to bash someone, the details can be left out....like they currently are.

pcar928fan

Greg,

You seem to have your pulley size and speed backwards. Smaller pulley makes for faster shaft speed at a constant belt speed, bigger pulley slower shaft speed for a given belt speed... If you want more boost from a super charger you put a SMALLER pulley on it so it spins faster for any given engine RPM...

So, maybe the auto's got a SMALLER pulley than the 5 spd models???? I don't know...

GregBBRD

Sorry, might be a bit confusing. Note the words "to drive the compressor" and I think it makes sense. I'm talking about the pulley on the crankshaft.