VIP Autobody
 

Get your popcorn ready, cause you know when I get involved with something it’s usually a show, and given that this one is being started by myself… Well like I said ::Insert Micheal Jackson Meme Here::

First off this all goes back a really long way, I tried to avoid all this drama, but I knew something was going to drive me to tell this story publicly one day. I always thought someone else would get the ball rolling and I would just be another person to share my terrible experience, but that hasn't happened so far, and a couple events over the course of today made me decide that this should be shared with others.

My car was broken into on May 23, 2015. At that point in time I contacted VIP Autobody, the owner of which is on RS. I had recently seen people’s praise about the shop both through people I know and posts on RS. So I decided I would give the shop a shot. I had the owner on Facebook, so I contacted him and between dealing with himself, ICBC, and my schedule I setup a date to bring the car by on the following Saturday (May 30, 2015).

I took the car in around noon on Saturday, along with the car I also brought a spare grille which I wanted professionally painted gloss black. The owner was not at the shop at the time of my arrival and the doors were locked. I sent him a message and he mentioned he was not far away. A little while later a vehicle on an R-Plate pulls in and he hops out. I talked to him awhile, showed him the grille I wanted painted, as well as the damage to the car, and a few other things. The repair was pretty simple the rear door needed to be wrapped, one of the rear door trim pieces needed to be replaced, and the window needed to be replaced. I asked that the owner look at a few scratches on the leather as well as scratches in the door jamb but I was told that because of the age of the car it would be hard to claim. No big deal. I just wanted a new window and the damage to the wrap covered. I passed the information of Wrap-Workz onto the owner, and he said he would work with them on getting the panel wrapped and the repair completed. At this point I mentioned one of the compressors had stopped working that morning, as the car had not been driven in a week, and I had not had time to assess the problem. I told him to just leave it, and not play with the air ride all too much, because it would be slow to refill the tanks. On top of that it was noticed by the owner that one of my fender moldings popped out whenever I aired the car out, again this was a minor item that I had simply been too lazy to fix.

I then handed the car keys over to the owner with the only request I had: That the car be parked inside the shop at night. I did not want the car parked in the rain or in an unsecure location.

I didn’t get 10 minutes away from the shop when I received a phone call; it was relating to the pump I had specifically told the owner not to play with. He explained that the pump had simply become disconnected and that reconnecting it made it work again. He mentioned there was no charge for it and he was just doing it to be helpful. I wasn’t happy that he had gone and done exactly what I told him to leave alone, but it was a simple fix so whatever. I was also told around this time by text message that painting the Grille would be $175 and fixing the issue with the fender molding would be another $50, I agreed to both these prices and told him to proceed.

All of the screenshots are from conversations directly with the owner of the shop.

Onto the first of the text message screen shots (This is still on May 30, 2015, the day I dropped the car off):

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...psiqppe4yx.png

He asks me if my dash cam drains the battery of my car, I could see where this was headed he wanted to unplug the dashcam so that I don’t see what he does with the car. You can read my response as above, I gave this response so that he wouldn’t mess with the dashcam. The statement was actually a bit of a lie, my dashcam has a power magic pro which keeps it running for 24 hours after the car is shut off, but that doesn't cause any battery issues with the car. Regardless upon reviewing the footage on my dashcam when I got the car back, the dashcam was unplugged within the first hour of my car arriving at the shop and was not plugged back in until the afternoon on the day I picked it up.

Now the next text message is where I probably made a mistake in this whole interaction, he tells me he is going to keep my car safe in a “Storage in Richmond” (FYI I think this storage is just his house, but I have no proof). I stupidly said okay thinking this will just be for the weekend and it wouldn’t be an issue. Again I should have just said no, but whatever.

Sure enough the car was spotted that day:

The second post above was actually deleted. Luckily I quoted it. I thought it was a joke, since I thought the individual knew it wasn’t me driving the car. I later found out it wasn’t a joke. The car had been driving erratically.

Back to the texts (this is from the same afternoon):

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...psfwmj3kg4.png

At this point I really got the feeling my car was just being taken out for one big joy ride. Why the hell do you need to plug your iPod in, just listen to the radio or sit in silence. This person had my car though, so I couldn’t really do anything. I tried to explain how it works, just to keep him from messing with shit too much.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...psvqkv0i78.png

I explained to him how the car was not meant to be driven very much, as I had been in the middle of a few serious mods and the car was just rigged together in order to get this repair done.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...psdvg4peir.png

Again all of the above happened just on the day I dropped off the car. I have no idea why I didn’t just say fuck it, I don’t like where this is headed and go pick up my car. I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Onto that Monday (June 1, 2015):

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...psp4tlydnh.png

My sub apparently “Randomly went out”. When I turned the car over to VIP I had the gain on head unit turned all the way down. I did this to avoid this problem specifically. When I picked up the car I checked and the gain had been pinned to the top. It’s obvious my stereo had been cranked. Luckily it was just the Fuse that blew, if I hadn’t had that safety built in, I likely would’ve had irreparable damage done to my $800 dollar subwoofer.

The following day (June 2, 2015):

Now the following interaction was on FB:

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...psdo3e2suh.png

I have blurred out where he threw in a couple user ID’s, but asking me to take my car I told you explicitly not to drive around very much to a meet!? What the fuck?

At this point communication died out a bit, I think the owner started to realize I was getting nervous, and kept it more or less related to the task at hand.

The car was taken to Wrap-Workz the following Monday (June 8, 2015). I will leave some things out here, but needless to say their experience with the owner was less than stellar. It took a lot of my involvement in order to get Wrap-Workz paid for the work they performed; they were eventually paid on June 30, 2015.

Fast forward to June 12, 2015, I arrive at the shop in the evening to pick up the car. The car itself does look to be clean. I have a look at the grille which was to be painted and the work is less than stellar, the paint has two large run marks in it, and the owner explains this is due to the fact that it can’t be polished off the car. I explained to him that I won’t be mounting it on the car for the foreseeable future, and he says he will find a way to fix it off the car. I pay the deductible portion and we agree the rest will be paid when I come back for the grille.

As soon as I hop in the car I notice the km’s on the car are A LOT higher than I would expect them to be. I make it a habit to record the km’s of my car when I drop it off at different places, for reasons exactly like this. During the two weeks VIP Autobody had my car the vehicle was driven just over 400km’s. That is way beyond just taking the car 20km’s round trip to Wrap-Workz shop.

At this point I probably should have said something, but again, I did not. I was happy to have my car back and I was not going to confront the owner until I had the grille completed and back in my possession. I drove the car down the street, and pulled over. I did another quick inspection just underneath and around the car, it was fine, but the car had notable dirt on the underbody and in the wheel wells, almost as if it had been taken down dirt roads. I cannot prove this, but believe me I am religious about keeping the underbody of the car clean and the wheel wells in good condition.

As I mentioned earlier I went home to review the dashcam footage and I realized that the plug had been pulled. I also double checked the fuse that had blown, upon inspection I noticed that A LOT of damage had been done in that area, the fuse had blown so badly that it had melted the Stinger fuse holder. Both the holder and the fuse had to be replaced.

I picked up the grille sometime during the week of June 22, 2015. The work looked fine, and I paid the rest of the money owed for the grille and the molding repair. I did at this point mention the cost of replacing the fuse and the holder, the owner offered to pay, but the money was not the issue to me.

In the end I left without mentioning much of the other issues, I did not want to deal with the drama or any of the other issues related to getting into an argument about the ordeal.

During the period following my experience I told my car club about it, as well as a lot of other car people I knew. A few times I was contacted by the owner, and I simply brushed the issue aside, again my goal was not to get into a dispute with the shop or the owner. My goal was simply to tell others to avoid this shop as I felt the owner was running a very unprofessional business.

More recently I have been noticing many people recommending the shop on RS, various threads asking for Autobody Shops have been answered with try VIP Autobody. Again I always assumed someone who has had another bad experience would come forward and this shop would be ousted. However that didn’t happen. I’ve been contacted by a few people between then and now about my experience there and I have been involved in a few discussions about VIP Autobody. I won’t speak for others, but I hope they do come forward in this thread and explain their situations a little further.

In addition to all of this, the molding that was reinstalled at the bottom of my door by the shop was not attached entirely well. It is almost falling off. I will grab a picture of this on the weekend and upload for all to see (before fixing it myself), and also the molding at the upper edge of my window frame has ghosting left by whatever tape he used while driving my car around with the window broken, I will also take a picture.

I’m not looking for any sort of apology; I’m not looking for compensation. In fact I’m not even interested in talking to the shop or the owner again. I am really only interested in providing the community a glimpse into my experience. You guys can decide for yourselves if you think it’s worth it risking it visiting this shop.

Are there things I could have done differently? Yes, absolutely. I was too easy going with the shop, the initial day when he told me he was taking my car elsewhere I should have said full stop. My way of conducting business is pretty informal, and for the most part it works very well for me. I conduct business professionally in a very similar manner; however, once in awhile it backfires, this appears to be one of those instances, and I failed to realize early enough on to correct it. The fact is however, that some of the shops actions are inexcusable, putting that many km's on my car borders on criminal. Fiddling with my EQ settings and blowing my sub, again inexcusable. Unplugging my dash camera to hide what you are doing is just malicious.

The bottom line is this: My car which I asked not to be driven very much was driven over 400km's in two weeks while in the shops possession. My audio system was obviously cranked and my subwoofer was blown due to incompetence by the shop’s owner. The work that was done was pretty basic and yet the molding on the bottom of my door was not properly attached and it took two attempts for my grille to be painted to my satisfaction. My dashcam was unplugged purposefully by the shop.

TL;DR – VIP Autobody owner almost blew my sound system, drove my car 400km’s, their work wasn’t even that good, and others have had problems with them that I know of. I personally recommend you don’t go there.

:Popcorn

Wow. That is appalling, 400km is a lot.
Regarding the quote on my post in the OP, it was actually a joke. I saw the Spotted thread that someone spotted your car and you had replied it was ts14 driving the vehicle. I shared the reply to a group chat with ts14 among other friends and I suggested it would be funny if I wrote what I wrote. I think you knew that too since you replied and put a trollface emoji, sorry if that was not clear.
Back on topic though, it is very fortunate that you didn't have to replace the sound system. I do look forward to seeing what the owner has to say

TL: DR

Holy shit vip owner was not professional at all. In fact, he sounds and acts like a child.

:considered:

fck, i couldnt imagine someone else driving my car and i only own an old honda.

thats pretty messed up and super sketchy that the dashcam was unplugged.

that alone would be enough for me to avoid the shop like the plague.

Can't wait to hear what owner has to say

in

All I can say is I'm sorry if this went down this way. I agree, This was a very immature and irresponsible decision on my part and I apologize for any bad feelings u have after coming to me. I take responsibility for everything. I didn't mean to drive ur car but it was foolish of me to do so.

I'm still very new to this business and I'm trying to improve from each mistake. I know my mistakes will cost me but all I can say is that I'm sorry

Wow. And an RS member too. If this doesn't seem like BASIC FUCKING LOGIC for a shop owner, i can't even

Being new to "this" business doesn't justify lack of common sense. Sorry.

you think it's ok to take customers cars for 400km joy rides without their permission?
You didn't make a mistake, you're just a fucking idiot

400km? probably took it to stave

I agree. It was a damn stupid decision on my behalf. I completely understand that.

I don't expect meme or many of rs to forgive me. I realize that I was lacking very much in the common sense depratment

Lesson learned.

Son, I am disappoint.

I dont know, not driving customer cars without there explicate approval and even then still seems very wrong...

Unless it required to verify repairs, gas or transport...

Unplugging a dash cam isn't all that uncommon from my experience although this situation is a little different. I had my turboback installed at an RS vendor shop and my dash cam was unplugged and I don't blame them at all, their testing of the exhaust could easily be misinterpreted as "shop rips it in customer's car".

I recently left my car at brown bros. to inspect a drivetrain noise and one of the techs there was having a heart to heart about a break up with another coworker which was caught on my dash cam. I get that businesses should be about transparency but I think they should be afforded some level of privacy as well.

I didn't feel like mentioning this since I've heard they did good work...but when I was shopping around for quotes a while ago, I saw an employee peel out (heard the tires squeal) from the back of the shop to the front in a Chrysler 300 (older short guy with long hair).:heckno: That was enough for me to get back in my car and shop elsewhere.

This was the first time my car has visited a shop and the dashcam was unplugged. If I trust a shop with my car, I'd like to know that they trust me in reverse just as much to know that I won't blindly accuse them of ripping my car if that wasn't the case.

I don't just go pull dashcam footage everytime after getting my car back from a shop, in fact this is the first time I have done it, and that was because I had reason to suspect something suspicious was going on with the vehicle.

It's a matter of opinion I guess, I am on the side that if there is something you don't want me to see you doing with my car, then I don't want you working on my car. That is to say that if it's something you wouldn't do while working in front of me, you are probably doing something that you shouldn't be doing.

Maybe I feel this way since I am a reasonable person, it may not seem like it from this thread, but on the overall I am willing to accept a lot. I understand that some people aren't like this and I can respect that some shops have to worry about those people.

Not gonna lie. This confused me. I've only ever worked on one 300c and it had a sound system and a loud exhaust. That description of the driver doesn't really fit the any of my employees .... I do know that the business behind me, there's a employee that owns a 300 there.

lucky this wasn't some gangsters car :heckno:

I had a reputable shop unplug my dashcam & left grease stains on my steering wheel while they did my alignment.

Such anger

Much disappoint

Omg

This shows we really have to take rs reviews with a grain of salt. I started a auto body shop thread recently for recommendation and lots of ppl vouch for vip, but I didn't know they were a rs member maybe that's why, luckily I took it to ak because close to my house.
Once something like this is out there, it will be hard to gain back the trust of the customers or potential future customers. Why would I want to risk it when there are so many bodyshop out there, who will respect other people's property.

It was around mid August this summer. He was wearing blue overalls. He parked in front of your shop and walked right into your shop...