So I'm prolly get the crap flamed outta me by fan-boi's and the like, and this thread is probably going to end up getting deleted or moved... but here goes.

A bit of background on myself. I don't post on i-club much but I'm a regular in the tech forums on nasioc (over 1,000 posts alone in aftermarket forced induction). I have a list of certifications as long as my arm when it comes to car stuff including my ASE master tech. I'm a mechanic at Mercedes Benz of Beverly Hills... in a nutshell I know a thing or two about cars.

***skip this next section if you don't care about the history of the car***

A bit of background on my car. It's been an ongoing science project for a few years now. Old school suby people might remember stories about it from a few years back with Xephyr and FastRS, it was one of the first hybrid EJ22t projects in the country with the previous owner, and I did one of the first 6 speed swaps in the country awhile back. It's got a few other nifty custom bits... but none of that is really important.

15 months ago I was visting family in Grand Junction Colorado (a really stupid small town) and the engine finally let go after about 60k miles of nothing but abuse. Rather than trying to do a set of headgaskets and bearings in my moms garage with no tools. I decided it was time to move past the EJ22t and do a proper swap. At this point in my life the last thing I wanted to do was deal with another big project with this car. Between the roll cage, 6 speed swap and a few other large projects, the car had spent 4 out of the 12 previous months down with me working on it more than driving it. I found a small shop in town that did Honda swaps. They had never dealt with subies much, but the kid seemed to know what he was talking about.

It should have been a painless deal. I found a place that could ship me a motor on short notice, this place just needed to Pull the long block, run 6 more wires to the hydra for the STi coil packs and AVCS solenoids. I was going to be there to look over their shoulder. Easy stuff. Customs and the engine vendor bent me over and did all sorts of un-holy things to my rectum and the engine ended up getting held in customs FOREVER over paperwork. I had to get to LA for my job and couldn't wait around. I left things in the hands of this shop with the assumption I'd be waiting awhile.

Fast forward. The shop botched the job, couldn't get the car to start and I had it transported cross country to the house of the owner of Hydra EMS (the hydra was a VERY early box, and my car was a guinnea pig for a few things, at this point it seemed like an issue with the ECU). Andrew from Hydra gets the car running, only the engine is puking oil and wouldn't idle, and he (understandably) doesn't want to deal with an oil leak.

***start reading here for where gruppe-S gets involved***
The car gets towed cross town to gruppe-S because Daniel and Miki (Brucelee and Mikkito) are both good personal friends of mine and had nothing but fantastic things to say about gruppe-S. I had never dealt with them... but what the hell. I didn't want a normal shop dealing this this because half the stuff under the hood was one off fabricated stuff and they'd just get lost. I talk to a few big names in the subie world on a semi-regular basis. These are guys that like to stay out of the spotlight and shall remain nameless. They all said to be wary, but I didn't have a choice.

The car sat at gruppe-S for about 4 months. I was taking the opportunity for the downtime to have the old ECU upgraded to the new Hyra 2.5. They were also VERY busy which was no big deal. I was in no hurry and told them to put it on the back burner and work on it when they had time. I get a call from Mike saying that the car was running and no longer leaking oil and idling fine. They had installed new Injectors because as long as I was going through all this I might as well get injectors that could handle the turbo I was running.

I get a one way ticket to fly up and drive the car home and my nightmare started. I show up at Gruppe-S first thing Saturday morning to get the car. It BARELY starts up, runs, or idles. I asked if they'd set the injector scaling in the Hydra like I had asked them to. Mike said "oh... we don't do hydra" (which I know was BS, but whatever). At this point I'm kinda annoyed, but no big deal. I get the impression I'm on my own. I borrow his laptop for a few minutes to scale the injectors myself. Car still doesn't run right (not their fault, I was given bad info on the stock STi injector size). My friend drives me back to Fremont to get my laptop from her apartment. I drive back and spend about 2 hours getting the car running right sitting on the side of the street, because at this point Mike has told me "we're really busy and can't be dealing with this right now". I understand this and know that these are things I can deal with on my own. I'm un-happy but there's not much I can do other than deal with this on my own. I finally get the car running well. Go to take off and... WOW! no power steering. Nobody had put any fluid in the reserviore, or bothered to check if there was fluid. Definately a nice thorough check of car that's about to get driven 600 miles. I have my friend run me to Vato-Zone to get PS fluid, we top it off and head out. I get on I-880 and get a really cool James Bond smoke screen. Car had puked over a quart of oil in less than a mile. At this point I'm furious. I call Gruppe-S back, whoever I'd talked to said "oh, we're about to close, you can come back Monday". I scream loudly enough and they say come back and that I can use one of their lifts to see where the oil is coming from. I get back to the shop, find the source of the oil, and there's a dime sized hole on top of the engine block where a breather port should have been hooked up, but wasn't. Once again, a really thorough check of a car that had to be driven 600 miles the next day.

At this point there was nothing I could do other than have the car towed back to LA because Mike says "oh, we're really busy right now and won't be able to look at this for a few more weeks". I have to get raped by the airlines to buy a one way ticket on like 12 hours notice just so I can get home.

I get the car back to LA, spend an entire weekend tearing the engine bay apart to correct a bunch of plumbing. Get the car back together and it's still not idling right. I find the only reason the car was idling at all was because Hydra EMS had turned the throttle plate stop screw in a few turns because the idle air control wasn't working. One of the things that needed to be done by the first shop was to have holes drilled in the Intake manifold for the idle air bypass ports. I was using a cable throttle body on a drive by wire manifold. It didn't get done. And I asked Mike to do this as long as the manifold had to come off anyway. It still didn't get done after I'd spoken to him 3 bloody times about why it needed to be done. I spent all night Monday pulling the manifold off again, drilling they bypass ports, getting the car running right, and after 15 months of down time I have my baby.

Cliff Notes: If one of the apprentices I'm training at Mercedes right now delivered a car in this state, with the understanding it needed to be rock solid enough to drive 600 miles with no issue, I would have them fired and sit down and advise them that maybe they needed to seek a different carreer path. The customer Service was an absolute joke too. Once things went south when I showed up to deliver the car, nothing I could say or do would get them to help me out.

I'd be happy to hear from gruppe-S as to why this turned into such a total fiasco.

If you're a fanboy that has nothing to contribute other than D00d! I got a hella tite BOV and up pipe installed by them!!!111!!!. Save it.

Hopefully this will serve as a wakeup call that they need to change a few of their processes to make sure things like this don't happen to others.

 

I'd like to add a few other things Matt forgot to mention. Mike brought up the fact that he had tuned a car with a Hydra to get over 500 HP, yet "they don't do Hydra." Also, the car had no coolant in it.

Pretty much every single time I've been to Gruppe-s, I've waited in the lobby for at least 15 minutes before someone has come out to help me. One time I went in there with a friend who was ready to spend several thousand dollars with them, and NO ONE offered to help us. We stood there for 20 minutes before we got frustrated and left. I appreciate everyone there who has been friendly and helpful toward me, but there are a few Gruppe-S employees who have never cracked a smile, and at least once, I've been downright dicked over. I think Gruppe-S' main problem is their lack of communication with customers. The way Matt was treated was downright unprofessional, and it was enough to put a bad taste in my mouth permanently.

 

We don't delete things here, just FYI.

What is your username on NASIOC?

 

Phone (M-F 10-6 PST): (510) 783-5300

 

...to see that you have had a bad experience.

The level of customer service I've seen, and the lengths they went to in order to rectify a really bad problem were nothing but first rate when a customer of mine had a really bad issue.

I brought a customer from Carson City, NV to LIC Motorsports to have a bunch of stuff installed. They finished the install on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving day, and he was sent to Gruppe-S for tuning.

Mike started the re-flash process, and for some unknown reason, the Forester didn't like to be re-flashed, so it turned the ECU into a paperweight. Mike stayed well into the evening working on this, and delivered my customer to the car rental agency at the Oakland Airport so he could get home for Thanksgiving. Mike and I worked through that weekend to find an ECU, which he overnighted at his expense, AND sent a person to pick it up (60 miles out of the way) in order to make things right.

He then spent ~7 hours of time working late into the night with the vehicle to acheive the absolute best results possible. The customer wound up being charged for the ECUTek license, and driving home (several hundred miles) with a really well-tuned Forester.

Maybe things have changed. I'd be sorry to see that happen, though.

 

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well. I had many people deal with Gruppe-S. This was the first big bad story I've heard of them. Did they do anything to compensate?

 

yea.. that waiting in the lobby thing happend to me 3 times out of the 3 times i've been there. once, 2 dudes were waiting (for 20min) with me and one left, then someone comes out and asked whoes next, we both said "that guy thats walking to his car" and grupp-s guy runs out to talk to dude, and me and the other guy kept on waiting for another 10 min

 

^^^

I agree with the lobby thing as well! The few times I've been there has always been the same. So what I do is I go straight to their office than to wait out in the lobby. So far, it worked the past few times I was there.

But that kinda defeats the purpose of having a lobby.

 

OT.... ^^^dude, did u get ur hids in yet? =) i got my springs in, i'll send u some pics when i get back home and to my digi cam

 

LA as in Los Angeles? it's roughly 380 miles. anyways, i feel you man and that sucks. shops do make mistakes which is understandable but being mis treated and lied to is another thing. Customer Service is what keeps a company going.

anyways, if you are from L.A., i really recommend Steve @ Aerosim Research, he knows what he's doing, he won't lie, he's upfront and and if you have a problem with his work..he'll do what he can to get u goin..trust me. most of my work goes thru him and i never had a problem but i can't speak for eveyone else.
i got my 6mt tranny swapped and brakes done at gruppe-s and they treated me well. mike did go out his way to get me going when certain issues came up with the tranny install.

again sorry to hear about what happened.

 

Everytime I've been there I've had to wait in the lobby and I end up just walking into the office. Sad to say, but they are horrible with customer service. It seems like they just don't care. Everytime I called them about a part I ordered they didn't know anything and said they would call back. I never got a call back from them and had to bug them for 3 months and after that I just cancelled the order. They really need to bring their customer service up to par with their great prices. I'd rather pay someone a bit more for great service.

 

yea its pretty useless walking into the lobby. Noone is ever there, hell you could probably grab some stuff and leave and noone would notice.

 

From what I understand there are cameras taping the lobby and office area, so good luck coming back and not getting your **** taken to the ground, and maybe a little knee cap fixxin too, lol, jk!!!!! Iwas always told to go into the office and ask for assistance, lobby is for people waiting for cars to be worked on, or returned to or what not. Sorry to hear about your problems with Gruppe-S, haven't bought much or had work done my them yet, but everytime i've gone in there to get info they have been very helpful as far as guiding me towards my particular goals overall on my car. Hope things get resolved soon.

-Gio

 

If you don't know people personally there, you're gonna be stuck waiting until an unlucky worker walks into the lobby accidentally and HAS to talk to you. Hell, Moike made me wait over 2 hours since he "forgot" to plan my tuning. The whole fanboy thing is what makes it hard to find a good shop with truly good service.

remember that one guy who posted about a bad experience with MPJ and posted about it? Remember how much he got flamed? I hope that doesn't happen to you and something good will come out of this.

 

I had an appointment to install an exhaust at gruppe-s, but when I arrived at my appointment time, the said they were too busy and asked if I could come back tomorrow. I came back the next day and they were still too busy, but managed to do it anyway. That was a year ago and the last time I went to gruppe-s...mainly because there's a lot more Subaru shops out there that will take care of you. Customer service was friendly and knowledgeable.