Posts by zooomer

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    Quote from OrangeSlingFL

    This is the only problem I see on this issue of returning the item to the company for “check up”. How can a person really know that company won’t cover their mistakes and blame the issue entirely on the owner? How can the consumer be sure that the company will have honor and stand truly by their findings? Unless you had a second or even third opinion on what really caused the issues I dont think the main company that manufactured and built the motor can be trusted by itself. Goes for any company in any similar scenario.

    You don't. In fact most companies will just blame the user to avoid warranty claims. I know, it happened to me 4 times and it's why I started ZZP. Tired of people not taking accountability when I said "tell me what to do" I followed instructions and got screwed. It really comes down to trust. Customer can say 'how do I know you won't screw me' and company can say the same of customer. So reputation is what it's about. There are situations where a customer is just going to be mad. DDM's BBB page has those customers, so does ZZP. It happens. Over time patterns develop. 95% of tuning and parts shop fail. There's a lot of reasons but there's a reason ZZP is #1 in our respective markets. It's not from screwing customers. There's a reason we have high customer retention. It's not from having a majority of bad experiences. Can something bad happen? Sure.

    To the OP shipping a motor back. The information I got led me to believe the situation was getting out of hand. I was hearing about bolts falling out of the engine, the tune being bad, the timing chain being wrong, the piston rings being wrong. What happens in these markets is that when one thing goes bad, sometimes everything is wrong (in the customer's mind). Then you get another shop chiming in. I've been here. I know how to handle it and how not to handle it. You can't half step because the customer and his new trusted sources are going to pick apart everything and create false problems. Trust me. I have 20+ years, I know how this goes. This is why we told the customer we wanted his entire vehicle. It was the only way to give him what he truly wanted which was a successful high HP build w/o problems and a full warranty.

    We had a Cobalt we sold a forged motor to in CA. His master tech installer with 1000 years experience put it in. The motor went bad pretty quick. Bad ring, burning oil. Customer was furious. Swearing about our POS engine. 100% positive our motor was shit. We talked him into shipping that entire car to MI. We got it and realized he had purchased a catch can and installed it wrong. They were pressurizing the crank case with 25psi which wiped out the motor. Happy to find the problem, shitty to tell the customer it's his fault. We work to ease the bill but it's an example that happens often. There's no way we could have known that. Customer was 100% sure it was our fault. Again, trust comes into play. Had that customer sent us back the engine (more common route) we'd have replaced or fixed it, sent out another and he'd have had the same problems and be on the forums spamming about how horrible ZZP is. We are in this for the long haul and because we love the sport. Our team knows how to handle issues. They don't need special permissions or meetings to make situations right. We handle every situations and customer the same. Whether they swear and spam the forums or kiss our ass. Our policies don't change. When it's our fault, we try and make it right. When a customer is making a mistake like taking our build to another shop, we tell them as I did here. This will not go well for you, send us the sling. In this case the OP spent more at DDM than the cost of shipping the slingshot to us and still doesn't have a successful build. He's posting how his money is all down the drain. Well that's not because I gave him bad advice, it's because he didn't take the advice I gave. When you say 'no I'm not listening I'm going my own way' you are also saying 'i take responsibility for what happens from here'.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    If he sent the slingshot entirely to us, there would be no refund of shipping. We would be eating all of the labor, parts and tuning, including a new full coverage warranty. .

    I don't recall specifics of all the detail but if someone buy a motor from us, we do not pay any shipping when said motor goes bad or has problems after use. That's why I said egregious. If you buy a motor, install it, it doesn't work we're going to do a lot more than if you buy one and after using it, you start having problems. It's just different situations.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    I've been doing this 20 years. We used to have different warrantees.


    What we ran into was never ending unforeseen situations.

    So a customer gets your engine, tells you it's bad. Seems very obvious you shipped said customer a bad part. You pay to get the motor back or pay to get the vehicle back and tell customer you're sorry and you'll cover everything. Part/vehicle comes back and you see something:

    -not our oil filter and it's bad not letting oil through. Now ZZP is out shipping and customer is either A. Sorry, I guess just ship me the motor back or not wanting to pay return shipping or reimburse you for shipping. B. Furious you'd blame a broken rod on his oil filter.

    Another time there was after market lines or customer tapped motor for oil feed.

    Literally 100's of examples you'd never imagine. But you can NEVER know. Not until you have the parts/vehicle back.

    When I bring these examples up EVERY customer says they didn't do anything. But time after time we got put in a bad situation. So we learned. Always get the parts back. If you get motor back and realize one of our engine builders screwed it up, you can refund the customer or reimburse them for having to pull your defective engine. When you see different plugs in it that are too long and hit the pistons, you can tell the customer 'I'm sorry, here's what we found, it's not covered'
    What we do now works pretty well when customers listen. We have warranty claims every day. We're happy to cover things, when it's our fault. This cannot be determined without said parts back in our possession.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    https://www.ford.com/cmslibs/c…485013_l_ltdwrnty_r05.pdf

    In the case of an OEM, they do not cover work on modified engines. They do not cover unauthorized work on their vehicles. ZZP did not authorize DDM or the customer to 'fix' our engine. If you called Ford because your vehicle wasn't running right, they would tell you to bring it in. If you said 'no, I'm going to have my buddy tear down the engine and fix it' that would be the end of said warranty.

    The components we sold are still under warranty. If a piston was out of round, rod failed, etc. it still covered. The entire motor itself is not covered under our standard engine warranty because it's not our engine anymore. We didn't sell all the components in it, we didn't put it together. The customer was told what to do and ignored instruction. The customer was told that if he brought it to DD and had it worked on, he would still have problems and be unhappy. It's strange to even have a discussion after that has been exchanged.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    Quote from N2Orbit

    I’m running spring pressure the boost controller isn’t on. Second he doesn’t know my boost controller did it. I mean if it’s not on how could it🙄. He’s just pulling out guesses not facts.

    It doesn't matter if the boost controller blew up the motor or not. We don't cover blown factory engines when we sell power adders. No one in the world does. These conversations only happen in inexperienced markets. My point in bringing up the boost controller is that we've done thousands of builds. I can tell you that when customers are certain they know what they are doing and change boost controllers, motors blow up. A LOT. When people leave things alone, install it as instructed, keep good gas in it, they have good results.

    100% of the time people change something, they argue (just like in this thread) that they did everything right.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    Quote from Vsp1140

    Again, thank you for your response. What you said makes plenty of sense, but I am slightly puzzled about one last thing. You attributed the OPS failure to a different boost controller, which may certainly have been the problem, but you didn't address the issues that the long block had upon receipt from the OP. The OP is claiming that bolts were missing and or never torqued and the internals were a mess. What would cause this and what can be done in the future to ensure this doesn't happen again?

    Specifically to the motor.
    -The motor is covered under warranty for 2 years when we sell it. If there are/were problems, the motor has to come back at the customer's expense. We do not entertain customer diagnosis of what's wrong. In this case, customer is claiming many issues. Motor has to come back to determine what did or didn't happen. End of story, period, no exceptions ever.

    -Customer said he wanted DDM to fix issues he said he had with the motor. We asked him to send us the vehicle and he refused. DDM 'fixed' the engine. They claimed something to do with the timing set being aftermarket. All our engines are like this, we disputed this was the issue. Customer was certain (then and now) he knew what the problem was. He paid DDM close to 2k to fix it. After he claimed there are other problems with the motor. The problem now is that it's a motor DD did 2k of work on and customer is saying there are loose bolts. He said there were loose bolts prior to DDM? if so, why weren't they addressed in the fix? If there were other problems, why weren't they addressed? Customer asked us to pay the DDM bill and claims that after repair the motor is still bad. You can't have it both ways. If you pay a shop to open your motor, it's your liability and our warranty is largely done. I told the customer this would happen, he proceeded to do things his own way but now wants us to be liable for his choices. That's why this is good to be public. Customers need to learn that if you open your motor or have someone else do work on it, it's no longer under warranty from ZZP. This is no different than any motor in any car sold by anyone.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    This is important for people to

    Quote from Vsp1140

    Zooomer,


    Thank you for providing this post. My best friend and I run a Slingshot podcast and I think this may be a topic of interest to our listeners. Id like to ask for clarification on one of the things you just said, you said "It's important for people to know that they are taking responsibility for the build when they hire someone else to do the install and use parts we don't sell." and I agree they should, but my question is this, can you reasonably expect people who live thousands of miles from your shop to travel to you to have the install done? Furthermore, isn't it also reasonable to believe that nearly all of our customers will have a reputable mechanic install this kit? I truly believe you offer great customer service, but in all honesty there has been some concerns in the SS community with this product, whether its caused by something they did or a defect in your product, one can never be really sure. I for one, thank you for standing up and responding to this post in a professional manner.

    Excellent question and super important for those thinking of having work done to understand. This is why I like these failures public and people posting experiences good and bad.

    ZZP Brand parts come with a 2 year warranty. That warranty covers parts. If you buy a turbo kit and install it or pay someone else to install it, we cover the turbo kit itself. We don't cover your install or your engine. If you change our kit (in this case installing your own boost controller), the kit is still covered. If the turbo bearing went out, as example, it's still under warranty.

    If you bring us parts to install that aren't ours or some are, some aren't; we guarantee our work, not the results. If we screwed something up, we stand behind our work but we don't buy you new parts. So if we're installing someone else's turbo kit, we don't know what power it will make and if the turbo goes out or the motor blows up, that is going to be out of our control and your liability.

    If you buy parts from us and do the install yourself (same as having your nascar 100yr certified ASE mechanic install) we stand behind the parts, not the results or the install. If you buy pistons and something goes wrong, our warranty ends at making sure the pistons weren't defective and replacing them if they are. We're not going to buy you a new block if the piston fails. We're not going to come pickup the pistons or pay shipping to return them. If you buy a motor from us and there is a problem, you have a few remedies but they all start with contacting us. Now let's say the problems appear beyond a simple fix. 1. You pull the motor and ship it back. We'll determine cause of failure. If you received a motor missing a head gasket (as example) we're going to step in and cover a lot of expenses. If the motor smokes and we find the installer hooked up PCV wrong, you're coving all the expenses. If there is an unknown issues (most commonly the case & determined by us, not the customer) then you can return the motor or send us the vehicle. Sending the vehicle is sometimes the best option because we'll handle labor (assuming it's our motor and not the install that's bad). You'll also end up with a new warranty coving parts and labor even tho you didn't pay any labor. If you remove and ship us the motor we'll determine failure when here. The type of failure will determine whether shipping is covered. Wear out failure, we do not cover any shipping. Receipt of a bad motor on start, we cover. We do not and will not make this determination before having the motor back in our possession. We won't argue or comment because a customer is 'certain' they know what happened. It always has to be in our possession before we pay for anything or promise to cover.

    For the highest level of security there is only one way to guarantee a result. Have us sell you the parts and do the labor. This isn't ideal for many far away but it's the only way we can guarantee results and take care of you completely when there's a problem. If you bring us your slingshot, have us install a turbo kit, pull out of the parking lot, floor it and it explodes, we're there. If you buy pistons, we install them, the motor smokes, we handle it.


    In the end, it can be summed up like this. We cover what we charged for. If we didn't charge you for something, we're not going to assume liability for it. We don't entertain comments like 'i did everything right' because it largely doesn't matter. If YOU did it, YOU are assuming liability. If WE did it WE are assuming liability. Regardless of it being done right or wrong. What you'll find out in the wild is that most companies do not have the level of service and warranty we have. This is why we have higher customer retention rates than nearly any similar company (per Shopify & PayPal). Some customers have unrealistic expectations and that's unfortunate but that is why threads like this are important.

  • ZZP is the worst! Everyone needs to read this before spending any money with them.

    Owner of ZZP here. I'll make this quick as I'm sure I"ll have to come back and address more.


    -The OP replaced the boost controller with a unit he bought that we don't sell and had someone else install it. When that happens, stock engines blow in our experience. This cannot be blamed on the turbo kit. Had the kit been installed as shipped, the sling would be alive and well as are so many other customers.


    -I never told the OP to pound sand. I wouldn't do that. We begged the OP to send the sling to us because he was sending us conflicting information about several problems. I wanted the vehicle here and told him we'd take care of everything even tho we didn't do the install. We'd replace all the parts, do the labor, tune on the dyno, all at no charge. When he said he wanted to have another shop work on it and us pay I told him that if he did that, he most likely would be out the money, still have problems, still blame us. I told him this NEVER goes well. He did it anyway and exactly what I said would happen did.

    He asked us for a check and said he'd sign an NDA. I told him we don't do that, we're a full disclosure shop. I told him I wanted him to share his experience with anyone and any forum he chose. I say this because it's important for potential customers to know what to do and what not to do. It's important for people to know that they are taking responsibility for the build when they hire someone else to do the install and use parts we don't sell.