[Guest]

Ian,
You have mail again.

As my old topic has gone quite off topic, I am placing a new one.
My Godspeed brake discs (that I bought used from advevo) warped within a few 100 mls when put on my 6
I am discussing this with Ian, will let you guys know the outcome.

René

 

[Guest]

Rene , I am not going to put up with your emails threats of slagging me off on the BB , To put the record straight , Rene has bought second hand discs from Andre , Which have had a hard life in his hands for many months , Rene bought them scond hand to obvoiusly save money , But has told me he has warped them in a couple of hundred miles ,
We give a 12 month or minimum thickness guarantee on our discs , which means that if you do a lot of track days using hard pads the discs will wear own quicker , And if you wear them down to the minimum thickness the guarantee wont last 12 months , another important restriction on our guarantee is that it is not tranferable , so if you buy discs second hand you will not be covered ,

We do have about 5 to 10 claims per year on warped discs which are dealt with , This is a very good record based on the number of discs we sell per year.

I'm sorry Rene but as have said on all the emails I have sent you , You are not covered , If you bought the discs from me you would.

Many thanks Ian

 

[Guest]

if you buy a washing machine (lol) and you sell the damn thing youre always guaranteed for 1 year if you sell the washing machine and he sells again and than an the other sells again within a year you always have 1 year quarantee starting from first owner

it s a strange policy you have there ian.

regards

andre

 

[Guest]

rene

very sorry to hijack your thread, please accept my apologies

however it appears that this avenue is closed to you

perhaps you should consider emailing les, after all it cost nothing to ask

the rotors do not have coloured bells because anodising interfers with heat transfer to the wheel causing possible overheating of rotor and caliper

andrew

 

[Guest]

Andre

Sorry, M8, I cannot agree. I think that on something like disks it is reasonable to have a non transferable warranty. I doubt that many people would offer to continue the warranty on secondhand car components

When considering a warranty claim, you need to know various things such as whether the component was fitted to the car right in the first place. Were there other contributing factors that might have caused it? Checking that out on one car is bad enough, but on 2 is an unreasonable thing to ask of a supplier.

 

[Guest]

Another point I would like to add is that Rene had the discs skimmed before we emailed him back as he emailed us while we were closed for holiday , He had them skimmed to the minimum thickness which is 1:5mm off them , I have never seen a pair of discs have this much taken off them , If we could have spoken with him we would have surface ground them for him for free , But with what he has had done to them now we cannot do anything with them . Ian

 

[Guest]

Godspeed

You may be right about what you say with the second hand, track use and skimming.

But dont you think it would be much better for your reputation / image to just give Rene a new set of discs, see him a happy braker and sell even more discs? You are saving a little money right now, but will be losing some (in the sense of not making more) in the future. It is sad to see that a lot of companies still havent seen this in 2002.

 

[Guest]

I am going to be away on business today so will answer later or tomorrow ,
Ian

This was the last message I received from Ian.
After this he DID however find the time and felt it necessary to publicly attack me with his message on the Register.
I did not start to slam him in public on this!

This after I have given him every opportunity to resolve the matter of my warping Godspeed brakediscs privatly, which in my opinion is a legitimate claim as Ian has always talked about him unconditionally guaranteeing the discs, without publishing the limiting warranty conditions.
Transferrable guarantee is quite a common thing these days.
Though Ian has always stated his unconditional guarantee against warping, I would even have been open to a proposition of a partial guarantee, having to pay a part of the replacement parts.

As Ian has now put his opinion on this (and me) on the register, I do not see any reason to hold back on this any more, I have been more than civil in my opinion.
Here is my email correspondence with Ian on this, everyone is free to draw his own conclusions....


----- Original Message -----
From: René Smeenk and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
To: and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 2:53 PM
Subject: EVO6 Godspeed disc problem

Ian,
After reading the remarks made by André de Vries about your discs
and your bold statement: We will guarantee our discs against warping for either 12 months or until they are at there minimum thickness , whichever happens first, if they warp in this time we will replace them
So, convinced of the quality, I decided to get these discs.
However at exactly that moment André put his discs up for sale as he is getting the Evo 7, so I decided to go for his set of discs and the Ferodo Ds2000 pads.
Within a few 100mls the brakes started to develope increasing
brake wobble.
I spoke with André and he told me that the cause could be that the wheels were not centering correctly due to the thicker discbell on your kit, but after checking it, this was not the problem.
So I called you and put a message on your machine about 2 weeks ago, but haven't heared from you since.
Just to make things easy I decided to have the discs checked at a very reputable brake specialist here in Holland (Remservice Utrecht, who are the Ferodo importer) and they told me the discs were warped, so they machined them at a cost of about 55 pounds.
The discs are now at about 30.6mil thickness (started from over 32mil), so they took quite a lot off to get them strait again.
On one quarter part of one disc the grooves are now almost gone.
With your statements about not warping, this is not supposed to happen to these discs, right?
Please let me know what you can do for me to back up your reliability and guarantee statements.

Regards,
René Smeenk

----- Original Message -----
From: godspeed and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
To: René Smeenk and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
Sent: zaterdag 19 januari 2002 10:37
Subject: Re: EVO6 Godspeed disc problem

Rene , Firstly let me point out that we do guarantee our discs for 1
year but the guarantee is not transferable , as you did not buy the discs from us you have no guarantee , it would have been with Andre , Secondly , even if you were covered as you have had them machined without us investigating first then it would have invalidated the guarantee ,
I cannot believe that this company has taken 1:4mm off , we have been making and supplying discs for over 10 years and have never taken this much off discs ever , a disc will never be this warped , even the worst we have seen has only had 20thou , 0:5mm off , The discs should have been surface ground to take out any imperfections , The discs are now just about down to the minimum thickness of 30:4mm ,

I have been reading the items Andre has put on the BB and seen that he has done a lot of track days with no problems , If a discs is going to warp it will do so soon after fitting them , How can you say that they hav warped after you have had them for 100 miles ??

Many thanks , Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: René Smeenk and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
To: godspeed and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: EVO6 Godspeed disc problem

Ian,

I am a bit surprised by your reply.
I' m replying to you privately, as I don't want to put this on the register..
It would have been very easy to have André claim the discs without revealing to you that I have them now, does this mean that I will now be punished for beeing honest?! So if a car with your discs is sold on, this this means your warranty cover automatically ends?
You publicly stated to unconditionally replace warped discs within a year....period! This and this alone convinced me to get your discs.
Now I understand that you want to investigate before deciding if a claim will be honored?
I can assure you that I don't spend money and work to have discs machined just for the fun of it.
As the discs are on my daily driver and I got no response from you, I had to get a fix (at a cost of about 55 ponds) as the car was terrible to drive, BIG inbalance problems and strong brake judder.
The company that machined the discs is just about the most reputable in the country, they do a lot of competition work.

I am not asking you for the 55 ponds I paid for the emergency fix.
I am asking you to back up your publicly stated unconditional warranty statements!
To make things clear, the discs started to warp and increasing inbalance problems after a few hundred miles, not just 100 miles.
I urge you to reconcider and honor my claim.
As I understood from your statements, you never get warranty claims, so it would be very decent of you if you fix things in this unique case.

Regards,
René Smeenk

----- Original Message -----
From: godspeed and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
To: René Smeenk and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
Sent: maandag 21 januari 2002 12:09
Subject: Re: EVO6 Godspeed disc problem


Rene , Our disc guarantee is NOT transferable , it covers the person who bought the discs , Secondly , our guarantees are not unconditional , I have stated on various BB's that we guarantee our discs for one year , or until they are at there minimum thickness , When we have a pair of discs that are warped we must have them back here to inspect them and we either surface grind them or replace them , we do not replace them without seeing the original discs first . If you had bought the discs directly from us you would be covered ,
As you have have the discs skimmed , and now they are at there minimum thickness as they have taken so much off , we can't even inspect them ourselves to determine what is wrong with them and by how much they are out.
Many thanks , Ian

----- Original Message -----
From: René Smeenk and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
To: godspeed and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 8:45 AM
Subject: Re: EVO6 Godspeed disc problem


Ian,

The car was terrible to drive with the warped discs.
I had to use it for several long drives and you didn't reply for a week after my initial telephone call, so I had to do something to at least temporarily solve the problem.
Again, I am not asking you to pay the 55ponds for the machining, this was my decision, but I am asking for after sales service.
Your warranty conditions based upon which you now refuse my claim, are nowhere to be seen for a buyer.
You just publicly state that in the higly unlikely case that your discs warp within 12 months, they will be replaced, period.
If you had made your warranty conditions public, I would probably have decided not to buy from André as I would than have known that buying from him would mean loosing your warranty stated as beëing unconditional. The price difference would not have been worth this.
I am sorry to say that I am getting the impression that you are putting a lot of energy into sales, but only a low effort in after sales.

It seems to me that you are reserving the right to refuse warranty claims based upon warranty conditions that are not clearly visible for those who are interested in buying your brake materials.

As this can be of great importance in deciding wether to buy these items, I now also reserve the right to make these warranty limiting conditions publicly known through the Lancer Register and other lists, so people will know that the unlimited warranty does have several limitations.

I cannot imagine that it is your intention to have unhappy people using your items.
So I again urge you to reconcider and replace the discs, even if only out of leniency conciderations, as it was impossible for me to know the warranty conditions.

Regards,
René Smeenk

----- Original Message -----
From: godspeed and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
To: René Smeenk and amp;lt;[email protected] and amp;gt;
Sent: donderdag 24 januari 2002 9:54
Subject: Re: EVO6 Godspeed disc problem


I am going to be away on business today so will answer later or tomorrow ,
Ian


As stated in the beginning of this message, Ian hasn't felt the need to answer me privatly after this.
However, he did find the time to put a message on the Register stating that my threats would't work and he was fed up with this.

!!! I fail to see what threats I might have made other than stating that I would warn others about the limiting warranty conditions, so his guarantee is not as unconditional as it seems at first. !!!!

It is my experience that people only feel threatened and start to attack others when they feel by themselves that their argumentation is flawed/not correct.
I expected better from someone who is always so sure to state the quality of what he sells and his service.

René Smeenk

 

[Guest]

Rene

I have read the above and without going into the rights or wrongs I wish to point out that in the above you state I' m replying to you privately, as I don't want to put this on the register..

Some would take that as an indirect threat to put stuff on the BB. It might be a language thing and that you did not mean it as a threat but coupled with the posting you made at the same time I am unpleasantly surprised by your answer to my questions I can understand why Ian should get defensive.

I wish to make it absolutely clear that I am not commenting on the rights or wrongs of this, just on why dispite you saying you fail to see what threats you had made, Ian might feel that you had been threatening. I hope that the 2 of you can clear this up OFF FORUM.

 

[Guest]

Simon

Yes I agree René threatened the Godspeed guy. I would have as well and think it is totally justified. Anyway, why wouldnt René be allowed to threaten Ian with putting his experience with a parts supplier for Evos here? That's what this forum is about. I do not agree that info on this kind of problems should be kept from Evo owners, well on the contrary.

And what is this about getting defensive because you are threatened? Are these wimps or grown up men?

If he had done that to me I would have sent him 2 or 3 guys from Corsica to do the threatening for me...

 

[Guest]

Simon,

I fully understand your reasoning, this is exactly why I DID try to resolve this matter with private e-mails expecting that Ian would live up to his statements.
I am disappointed to say that it becomes clear Ian will not do so.
Again THIS IS MY OPINION, that I am making public. Everyone is free to draw his own conclusions.

Claudius,

I want to emphasize that in my opinion this whole problem is caused by Godspeed's statements of unconditionally replacing warped discs! and not answering my telephone message on his answering machine when the problem ocurred. It took 2 weeks and a message on the Register asking him to reply on my email that I sent him about 10 days after my telephone call to get the first response from him.
And after this he says that I shouldn't have taken the action of machining the discs as a temporary fix, what else COULD I have done then to be able to drive the car??

I don't know Ian, so I don't comment on him personally.

All my remarks are aimed on how he deals with problems if they occur.
This is the problem that I am having with Godspeed!!

Other manufacturers don't make these kind of guarantee statements, so you know what to expect and if you warp the discs, it will probably be your own problem.

And even so, when warping a set of Black Diamond discs from Power Engineering on one of my previous Subaru's, they WERE replaced by them under warranty (even without asking the warped items back) even though this company never makes bragging statements on their warranty service!
I did send them an e-mail back thanking them for their exemplary service!!
I now wish I had bought their discs for the Evo.

When publicly stating that you will replace ANY warped discs (and I seem to remember it was also stated somewhere no quesions asked or however used , although I am not fully sure of this) I think it is your obligation to do so, and not start to hide behind warranty conditions that buyers don't know about if a problem occurs. Especially if you give no response for 2 weeks after getting the first message that there is a problem.

As far as fitment is concerned: the bells on the Godspeed discs are 1.5-2 mill thicker than stock.
For this reason the OZ wheels can have a problem centering correctly onto the hub centre ring, as this will not fit into the wheel far enough anymore.

René

 

[Guest]

If what you say is 100% true, rsnk, get in contact with a UK solicitor. He'll have a field day with that info. a) wrong specification (bell wrong); that alone is enough to get your money back; b) false statements about the warranty and more importantly not making it public (VERY illegal). Is there any paperwork showing that you bought the discs? If not the seller could claim that he never sold the discs to you... Again, if what you say is true, a solicitor will get your own back for you, plus compensation (loss of earnings because you couldn't use the car properly, etc.). Get someone to do this on a no-win, no-fee basis and you won't even have a financial risk yourself.

 

[Guest]

There seem to be few issues here that should be of note to everyone:
When you purchase an item you are setting up a contract between the person/manufacturer selling the goods and the individual buying them.
The goods should be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described, these are your Statuary Rights, if the goods don't meet them then you have the right to a refund/replacement. Under the contract the seller is liable for 6 years for any 'unreasonable' defect. This is described in the UK Sales of Goods Act 1979 (amended).
'Guarantees' are a voluntary extra provided by the seller/manufacturer on top of the Sales of Goods Act. They have no legal weight in a court of law as they are provided free with the goods (therefore are not a contract). However if you purchase a 'Warranty' then this is classed as a contract (you are exchanging money for a service) and is legally binding (e.g. Car warranties and Electrical goods extended warranties).
If the purchaser sells on the goods then the original seller/manufacturer is no longer liable in the eyes of the law. However many companies do honour 'guarantees' for third party purchasers for customer relation reasons.

To sum up:
If you are thinking of buying anything where a guarantee may have to be used due to possible problems that may be outside your Statuary Rights then get clarification in writing on what it covers, however the only legally binding conditions are your Statuary Rights. If you are purchasing second hand items the original seller/manufacturer has no legal obligation towards you, however they may be willing to help for customer relations reasons.

Personally I think Godspeed have acted responsibly in their customer relations with a third party who has no purchasing contract between them. They offered to investigate and grind the discs for free which is commendable considering they are under no obligation to do so. Unfortunately due to circumstances this could not happen. I do think that they should state in future that the guarantee is non-transferable to avoid any possible confusion.

 

[Guest]

Personally I think Godspeed make discs that do not fit 100% and there fore have an 'unreasonable' defect. Neither the first nor the 2nd owner were happy with them because of that defect.

As Tora Bora recommends from his hill I would suggest contacting a UK based solicitor with a no win no fee base who will only take some of the money you get back after winning the case.

People like the guy from Godspeed should buy a marketing and customer relations manual and print it onto the little bit of brains they have.

 

[Guest]

In that case the first owner should have stated their case to Godspeed rather than sell on aledged defective items. The second owner can now make a claim against the person he bought the discs from unless of course they knew they were aledgedly defective in the first place.
I am afraid a few people have made comments without knowing UK law, get your facts right before posting please.

 

[Guest]

Rene , I have never stated that we do an ' unconditional guarantee ', or' no questions asked ' , We do offer a guarantee if the discs warp and this is knowing that customers will take there cars onto the track , no-one else would do that , but this guarantee is conditional , and as you have bought the discs second hand you are not covered , I am sorry if you are not happy with this , as I have said before if you had bought the discs directly from us new you would be covered ,
Claudius , You do not know me so why make the childish insults at me ?

 

[Guest]

I now consider this matter closed as it just seems to be going round in circles.
I suggest anyone who has a complaint with a company should find out their legal rights before pursuing it. Many companies will be willing to help outside of their legal obligations, such as Godspeed have done and is commendable but if people start threatening them then you are on a hiding to nothing.

Just to sum up some key points worth noting:
If you find something doesn't fit or is incorrect then contact the manufacturer immediately and STOP USING IT! If you leave it too long then you are only entitled to reasonable compensation and not a full refund. By continuing to use defective goods you can be seen as accepting them as satisfactory in the eyes of the law.
You have no come back with the original manufacturer if you buy second hand items, however manufacturers maybe willing to help to some degree for customer relation reasons. You can only pursue compensation from the party you bought the items from.
Free 'Guarantees' mean nothing in the eyes of the law as they are not a contract, just a 'promise', only your Statutory Rights apply in this case. A contract requires an item to be exchanged for another item (e.g. goods for money). 'Warranties' are legally binding because they are a contract as you actually have to purchase them.
When purchasing items over £100 sterling then use a Credit Card as you have equal claim against the finance company as against the party you are buying the goods from (Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974).

YOUR STATUTORY RIGHTS
The Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended) says that goods should be:
Of a Satisfactory Quality, i.e. of a standard that a reasonable person would consider to be satisfactory - generally free from fault or defect, as well as being fit for their usual purpose, of a reasonable appearance and finish, safe and durable
Fit for the purpose - as well as being fit for the purpose for which they are generally sold, goods should also be fit for any specific or particular purpose made known at the time of the agreement
As described - goods should correspond with any description applied to them. This could be verbally, words or pictures on a sign, packaging or an advert.

Colin Booker, MLR Moderator, 28/01/02