The Consumer Complaints Blog

There is nothing Fine about Fine Details

I wish to submit a consumer complaint about this company that provides car cleaning services in the Halton area.

On Jan 5th 2012, I decided to take my car to have a professional cleaning inside and out, and choose Fine Details Burlington location at 1201 Fairview Street Unit 5 to have their Total interior Shampoo and Detailing package.

This was a total cost of $185.00.

It took their staff most of the day to perform the entire cleaning of my car inside and out.

At the time of pick-up, it looked like they had done a good job.

However, when I had more time to look over my car when I got it home, I noted that several hidden area’s in my car had not been cleaned at all.

The car had received a heavy liquid spraying of the interior, so as to deep clean seats, floor carpet, etc. and the car was very wet many days after the cleaning.

I had a 6 speaker audio system in my car, which had worked and sounded excellent prior to their cleaning. However, when I turned on my audio system a couple of days after the Jan 5th cleaning, I could hardly hear anything through my front and rear speakers, and what I could hear was flat, all treble and no bass.

I returned to the Fine Details office once I had noticed this problem, and talked with the owner of this franchise. He listened to my system and tried to adjust my audio system to make it sound better. He was unable to, and did say to me that it sounded terrible. I asked him what he was going to do about this believing that his car cleaning spraying had somehow damaged my audio system and it’s speakers.

He did offer me a free redo of my cleaning, since I had told him of the areas of my car that were not cleaned by his staff on Jan 5th, and he did says that they would call someone about my cars audio system to see what the problem might be.

I left to awaiting his reply and further action, however weeks went by with no calls of emails to me. I was finally forced to call the franchise head office in Oakville and complain to the VP.

She did contact the owner of the Burlington location and got him to move things along, which after an additional week or more of waiting did have them ask me to bring my car to their office to have my audio system reviewed by an outside Audio system expert that worked on my cars type of system.

The result was that they informed me that my systems amp had died, and this could happen anytime, and so they returned my car to me stating that it was not their companies fault and not due to their heavy spraying of my cars interior.

I still could not believe that this was the actual reason that my system no longer worked as it did just prior to taking it in to be cleaned by their staff.

I decided to take my car to another local specialist, the tech’s at Future Shop, who work these types of systems every day.

The tech at Future Shop reviewed my system and checked the speakers, and noted that both my front and rear speakers had been heavily sprayed with some type of liquid. The tech believed that this heavy spraying to the speakers caused them to short out my entrie system. This would be the reason that the system would no longer work as it did before.

I decided at that point that I should just have Future Shop put in a replacement system and new speakers.

I contacted Fine Details once again after this, informing them of what the tech at Future Shop had reported to me, and included a copy of what I had to pay to replace my system, which was over $400.

They never replied back to me, even weeks after.

I would highly recommend to any other person thinking of possibly utilizing any of this companies services, to completely avoid them, and protect your car from the type of damage that they caused to my car, knowing fully that the company will avoid taking any responsibly for the damage that they could cause to your car.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

In December 2009, we decided to take advantage of the tax bonus depreciation and buy a new piece of equipment. Carl ** from Standard (now Jesco) located in Middletown, DE came out to our job site to see the type of work we were doing and what John Deere machine would work for us best. After watching our men at work (we have pictures of Carl on our job site), he recommended the John Deere 332 Skid Steer Loader with rubber tires. We purchased this machine for $36,000 (also $18,000 for the milling head and $6,000 for the broom). The machine sat in our garage until our paving season started back up in March of 2010, the machine was overheating from the start.

We contacted Standard now Jesco and Carl ** (our salesperson was no longer with the company), so we dealt with Bob ** who came out, recognized the overheating problem and explained that this was not the machine for us. Bob ** encouraged us to give Jesco $16,000 more to upgrade to the John Deere 333D Trak Loader. On 10/6/10, we did purchase the machine recommended by Bob ** and this machine overheated from the beginning as well! Since October 2010, we have made numerous attempts to resolve this situation, with no success. We finally got Jesco to agree to a meeting in our office on Thursday, July 21st with a Duayne **, Randy & Noah (a new salesman for Jesco that had nothing to do with either piece of equipment).

We were very disappointed that Bob ** was not part of the meeting. We never heard from either of the 3 men in that meeting, so I called their supervisor, Jonathan ** at **. All Jon wanted was to have permission to go on our job site to see the Caterpillar machine we were renting, because their machine does not work. I guess he wanted proof that we forced to rent a machine, while we make our payments on time every month to John Deere for a machine that does not work! You can imagine the financial impact this has had on our company. Loss of revenue when we attempted to use the John Deere and repeatedly broke down on jobs, having to rent a machine until this John Deere/Jesco issue is resolved, etc.

We asked the three men in the meeting to please take their machine back and release us from our financial obligation so we could buy a machine that worked from another company and no one has responded. They just ignored and when we finally do got someone to answer, they asked why we’ve waited so long. I have a paper trail of emails from the first machine purchased and repair bills for Jesco that proved that we have been in constant contact with Jesco and John Deere. We really need to know how we should handle this situation. The machine we purchased in 2010 has a two-year warranty. Please help!

I have also dealt with Duayne **, GM of Product Support for Jesco at **. I wrote him an email on Monday asking him to answer me in regards to our meeting on 7/21 and never heard from him. In my email, I explained that if I did not hear from him by end of business on Monday, I had no choice, but to contact Consumer Affairs. We never heard from him. I called his Manager, Jon ** at **, he was belligerent and asked to go on our job site to see the Caterpillar we had rented. We were told by our men that he followed them around for 2 hours videoing our crew in the Caterpillar. We never heard back from Jon. I finally got a live body at John Deere in Wisconsin and she (Marcia) said that someone would be in touch with me yesterday (Tuesday). We heard nothing. Marcia’s number is **.

We have done everything asked of us by Jesco as far as giving them $16,000 more dollars to upgrade our machine, brought it in every time it was asked of us at our expense and we continue to make our payments on time. This is not fair and we just want them to take their machine back, give us our money back so we can end our relationship with Jesco/John Deere and move on. We still have a few more months of good paving weather and we would like to get out this renting situation.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

Thank you for the opportunity to express my extreme frustration on a public forum.

Yesterday I purchased $10.01 from a local Esso station by swiping my credit card at the pump. This morning when I checked my credit card balance on line it showed a discrepancy between the balance and credit available. When I called my credit card company they informed me that Esso had pre-authorized $100 for my $10.01 transaction. They further informed me that they could not release the $89.99 remaining authorization without speaking to Esso directly. I called Esso Customer Service and was advised that they do not hold the funds, but rather my bank does. I called the credit card company back and spoke to a Supervisor (Tony) who said they it would violate Capital One’s Merchant Agreement if they released the remaining authorization without hearing from Esso directly. I then called Esso back and spoke with another Customer Service representative (Suzanne) who informed me that Esso has no way to track what my actual charge was an no way to authenticate release of the remaining authorized funds.

I have worked in the hotel industry for 30 years and, like Esso, we pre-authorize credit cards on check in. However, unlike Esso, there is a method to call and cancel the pre-authorization after check-out in order to release those funds back to the customer. That is the nexus of my complaint; if they are going to pre-authorize for $100 (without telling the consumer, mind you…and by the way who puts $100 in their gas tank these days???), then they should be obligated to have some way to release the funds once the actual payment amount is processed.

I am extremely frustrated as tomorrow is a the start of a long weekend, and I have been told that the pre-authorized funds won’t be released for 4-5 business days, which means that my $10.01 purchase on Wednesday November 9th will tie up $100 of my available funds until next Wednesday the 16th or Thursday the 17th!

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

I had a really bad experience recently with spinelli honda dealer in lachine(montreal), quebec.

I signed a lease contract in rush(within 1 hour) after I was told my deal is the best. because it’s already the off work time, so there is no time for me to start the financing procedure yet, we plan to do it next day.

after cooling off and talking with friend, I was convinced that my deal is not that good, so I decided to cancel it. I called both sales person and sales manager, and they became so rude that time. the sales person yelled at me, saying I cannot get my depost back if I want to cancel it, the sales manager threaten me of a fine of $1500 dollars, but my colleague help me to find the rule of cancelling the lease contract, the client has the right to cancel it within 24 hours without penalty, not to mention that I haven’t started financing procedure yet.

so I sent them offical fax with 24 hours and I received the email from sales person, saying he received my fax, but he still try to pursuade me to take the lease, I refused and asked the depost back($500). after that, I can not reach them anymore. they didn’t return my email, didn’t answer my call, didn’t call back after I left the message.

I wrote sales person another email, telling him I found the rule that “the client has the right to cancel the lease contract within 24 hours without penalty”, the sale person finally wrote me an email back, but what he wrote is just a crap. he tried to deny the truth. he seems very forgetful by stating that there is no writing demand to cancel the contract, so it’s not canceled.

I wrote him back stating that I have proof that the fax was properly delivered and I had received his email saying he received my fax, then he disappeared again.

I just wanted my money back, the OPC wanted to help me but it may take time.

what I wrote is 100% true and I have the email proof.
I am so angry about their behaviour and I don’t think they deserve the name of Honda Dealer.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.