Coming up on my first anniversary with Sims Custom Shop

Thanks John.


Coming up on my second anniversary with Sims Custom Shop now. This post is probably costing me money.

Back in May, Sims sent me an email saying if I didn't shut up about him I wouldn't get my money back. We negotiated a bit and I offered to ask a mod to take the thread down and to stop chiming in on every refinishing thread once I received the cash.

Half of the $500 showed up in my PayPal account, with a memo on the sent payment that $250 would be following. The email he sent me said he would be doing a chargeback on the money via PayPal if I didn't keep the thread down, but I'm taking a page from his book here, and I waited more than the 45 days in which PayPal and most banks will be able to dispute charges.

He only kept half his end, so I don't feel obligated to keep up on mine. Originally the second $250 was supposed to show up within a week, then within a month. Then he disappeared for a few weeks, and sent me one or two texts saying it was coming soon. Lately he's dropped off the face of the earth again, and hasn't responded to any messages at all.

I sent Patrick Sims my P bass body in January 2010 after paying him in advance in December 2009. Shortly thereafter, a fire destroyed his shop and all of the guitars he was refinishing. He was under-insured, so instead of telling people what had happened he just vanished. He had offered me a replacement P body that he would make himself, but I had seen some of his work on other websites where people received bodies with split seams and 80-grit scratches on them and declined. The links are in the original UnofficialWarmoth thread in the OP. This also explains why some people got their guitars done and some didn't, it just depends on if you sent it to him pre- or post-fire.

He claims in the silence that he was working to pay off people who lost gear in the fire, and that I was on the list, but I didn't hear from him for eighteen months after he received the bass body from me so I'm wondering exactly how big this list was.

I needed the money, so yes I did accept the offer to forget he existed and have this thread taken down. I'm a bit more stable now financially and I don't feel like I'm ever going to be getting my other $250 back, so now is the time to fill in the gaps.



Anyways. Maybe he'll chime in here, maybe he won't, but I'm done staying quiet about this.

 

No, but I do appreciate the sentiment. I don't want anyone making any threats against Sims. This thread is up here for information, not trying to get anyone to take action on it aside from not falling into the same pit I did.

 

That's the idea. With 5000+ views on this thread, I'm hoping the message is starting to get around.

 

By requesting that I take this down, he obviously is well aware of this thread and is at least somewhat following it. It might be the most expensive thread in the history of Talkbass at this point, but I'm hoping nobody else gets screwed by this guy. Even if the fire was a one-time issue, look at the customer service skills. He's cheaper than Marty Bell but you pay in advance and its a crapshoot on getting anything back from him.

 

That was discussed on the first page, but I can't edit those posts to add anything now.

 

Not sure, but damage control would have been to solve the issue, issue the full refund in a timely manner and prevent 6500 views on a thread like this.

Hell, there probably would have been an Awesome Customer Service thread if I'd got the call saying, "My shop burned down, your $500 from the insurance money is in the mail." That fire was nothing he could control (hopefully) and once he got everything rebuilt I probably would have sent him another body for take two.

 

Nope, though that much is expected. He hasn't tried to contact me and I found better things to do than texting him weekly.

The sick thing is that this guy is still getting business when so many people have already been screwed.

With half my money back in my pocket, I consider $250 for a lesson on dealing locally to be money well spent. Better that than falling for some car-shipping Craigslist scam or something.


Just for fun, this is the email he sent me 03/29/2010, after the fire, when I was asking how that 8-10 week time frame was looking for me.