I asked Pat of Simcustomshop about that blog post, and this was his response:
"How far did you have to dig to scrape that out? I caution against believing things that you read on forums from nearly 10 years ago from random sources many of which have posted the same horror story on multiple forums under multiple names. It's a long story but I have far too much to do to even attempt to get into it.
Sims Custom Shop google reviews, these go back 3+ years, 91 submitted just in the last few years, 4.6 our of 5 rating.
If you would prefer to go somewhere else and that will be fine, we have a mountain of work to do (and for good reason).
Btw, we have just over 2500 COMPLETED & PAINTED guitars we've done documented on our website/Instagram (which is updated almost daily with newly completed projects. You don't achieve that by keeping peoples guitars and not finishing them.
The 4.6 out of 5 start rating on google, the 2500+ documented completed guitars on our Instagram/Facebook & website, 200+ videos of completed projects on our website I believe speaks for itself and speakers volumes. You will find no one else who can even come close to competing with that (no one who will have more documented completed jobs (2500+), no one with more documented YouTube videos of completed jobs, no one with MORE positive reviews on google (91) and no painters who are probably capable of disassembling your bass AND painting it without making the neon splotchy.
If you can find someone who surpasses all of those things then my hats off to them and you can go with them if it gives you piece of mind.
Final point......we probably refinish more guitars than anyone in the US and quite possibly the world. We've been really bad for business for some of our competitors over the last 19 years, many of which are now out of business actually and some of which have went to great lengths to attempt to put us out of business (by posting horror story reviews on multiple forums as their favorite (or their own website), easiest & fastest tool of choice....bc once it's posted it's there forever....to create confusion & uncertainty.)
Instagram page:
Sims Guitar Refinishing (@simscustomshopguitars) • Instagram photos and videos
YouTube:
SimsCustomGuitars
Do you own a business? If so tell me the name of it.....and if the course of several months I can litter the internet, BBB, Yelp, google, YouTube and other outlets with enough negative press that people would be scared to death to do business with you......"
My reply to him:
"I wasn't actively trying to dig up stuff. I simply asked on talkbass forums for refinishing shop recommendations, and someone shared that link and advised me to be careful, since your shop was one of the ones I was considering.
I know you must be frustrated and feel indignant. No business has a perfect record, so there's always something negative if you look hard enough. How companies handle negative reviews differ. Have you tried addressing that guy's blog post and all those people in the comments who said they also never got their instruments back? It would seem like the wise thing to do--to actually explain what happened in that comments section."
Anyway, I've decided to hold off on refinishing the bass for now, until I can find a local shop with a physical location I can actually drive to, because I'm now a bit nervous to ship it off to a shop I can't get to if the same thing ends up happening to me.
