I've received numerous PM's wanting to know why I decided to sell my Unfinished SL'C. Rather then reinvent the wheel by responding to each of these inquires individually, I thought that I would just post an edited version of the response I sent to one of RCR's customers who expressed so much disgust with the delays in the delivery of his ordered car that he wanted to trade me his undelivered car (this is the second person that wanted to trade a UN-built car for my partially completed SL-C).
The following is my reply to this frustrated RCR customer:
Dear Mr. Xxxxxxxx,
Thanks for the compliment on the quality of my unfinished build. Sorry, I'm not interested in doing a trade and even if I were willing to do a trade; I would never consider anything that had RCR's and Fran Hall's fingerprints on it!
Your RCR saga is very similar to my experience with Mr. Hall; unfortunately, if history repeats, your nightmares are just beginning! I waited over 6 months for my promised and re-promised “16 week” prompt delivery! When I finally received the car, I had no side exhaust and no exhaust what-so-ever and no ETA of when I could expect these items.
Also I had no starter, no axles, no clutch, no flywheel, no throw out bearing, wrong shifter and cable linkage. And the saga doesn’t stop there; they installed the wrong front springs, supplied the wrong brake line fittings, and IMO, the engine mounts are a joke. When they finally did ship the shifter and linkage....guess what; it was the wrong one “AGAIN” and I had to ship it back at my own expense
Before I placed my order, I was working out a budget, I asked Fran both on the phone and publicly on the forum if the gel-coat was of a high quality that it would NOT require painting.....Fran assured me that I would NOT have to paint the car! B.S, you can see the fiber strands through the gel-coat, there are unfinished seams that need to be sanded. Additionally, I paid for body fitment and body prep; what a waste of money that was! This certainly was not the quality I was expecting.
Mr. Xxxxxxxx, based upon my experience of missing parts, I would strongly suggest that when your kit finally arrives, you very carefully go over the inventory list and cross check it against the actual parts. RCR gave me a two page parts inventory list. Absolutely every box on the reprinted factory check list was checked off as being shipped....even parts that I didn't order and even parts that didn't even pertain to the SL-C! Someone just went down the list and just marked every box without physically checking it against the corresponding part! [Note: In all fairness, since that time, Fran hired Dean as a Customer Service Rep. and I think things have improved somewhat, but the problem is as I see it; Dean has no authority and has to run everything by Fran and it appears to me that Fran absolutely refuses to delegate any authority and there just doesn't seem to be any adult supervision]
All of this understandingly upset me but I actually forgot all of that negative junk the day my car finally arrived and was I so excited to finally start my long awaited build that all of that other stuff would have been just water over the dam. All would have been good if Fran Hall would have only kept his word! However, Fran’s broken promises and what I perceive to be out and out lies continued to the point that I just couldn’t trust a word he said! This was intended to be a fun project but Mr. Hall managed to destroy that dream for me and this project turned into pure aggravation to the point that it started to effect my health. That's when I said: “it's just not worth it”!
To be perfectly honest; I'm probably more upset at myself for falling for Fran's crap! I thought that I did a good job doing my homework on RCR, because I could not find any negative comments posted on the forum. How naive of me! That in itself should have been a big red flag! I now realize the reason there are no negative comments on the forum is because Fran is the monitor of the forum and he deletes uncomplimentary posts a soon as they are posted. However, since I have gone rogue on Fran and despite the short time my negative posts stays up before he deletes them, I have received numerous private messages (PM's) from other SL-C and GT40 builders. As it turns out, I am not the one only with a negative RCR/SL-C experience! It Seems that there is actually a small army of
dissatisfied RCR customers (“anti-Fran- er's” ) that tell similar stories of having experienced delivery, quality control and unsatisfactory problem resolution issues. I have actually become friends with some of these very nice but extremely P_ _ _ _ _ Off People. The common denominator in all of our horror stories in my opinion seems be:
”Mr. Fran Hall could not tell the truth if his life depended upon it”!
Mr. Xxxxxxxx, sorry for the long rant but believe me this is only a fraction of my frustration; there is much, much more and the problems go much deeper!
I finally figured out what I believe SL-C really should stand for and that is....
”Super Load of Crap”!
Best of luck on your build and here's hoping that the worst is behind you,
Jim
NOTE:
In all fairness, there are some extremely talented builders on this forum that managed to turn this
“Super Load of Crap” kit into a very refined machine. However, that was NOT accomplished at the commonly repeated Stacey David (Gearz TV) 2013 quote of: “build this SL-C kit car for about the cost of a new ZO6”; nor was it accomplished without much ingenious fabrication and many, many months/years of unanticipated labor! I'm pretty sure that the first thing that many of these clever people did was to throw away what I consider to be a completely useless RCR/SL-C Build Manual! Unfortunately, I don't posses the fabrication skills/tools, time or deep 6 figure pockets this kit requires to be what I would regard as a quality finished product that I could be proud to own!
I realize that everyone has a different aggravation tolerance level; personally, I could not tolerate doing business with someone I could not trust!
If history repeats, I suspect that this post will not last long before Mr. Fran Hall deletes it. If in fact that occurs, I'll just have to turn to the social media were Mr. Hall cannot control the delete button! If this information were available to me when I was considering doing business with RCR, I could have avoided a lot of aggravation and wasted money!
The following is my reply to this frustrated RCR customer:
Dear Mr. Xxxxxxxx,
Thanks for the compliment on the quality of my unfinished build. Sorry, I'm not interested in doing a trade and even if I were willing to do a trade; I would never consider anything that had RCR's and Fran Hall's fingerprints on it!
Your RCR saga is very similar to my experience with Mr. Hall; unfortunately, if history repeats, your nightmares are just beginning! I waited over 6 months for my promised and re-promised “16 week” prompt delivery! When I finally received the car, I had no side exhaust and no exhaust what-so-ever and no ETA of when I could expect these items.
Also I had no starter, no axles, no clutch, no flywheel, no throw out bearing, wrong shifter and cable linkage. And the saga doesn’t stop there; they installed the wrong front springs, supplied the wrong brake line fittings, and IMO, the engine mounts are a joke. When they finally did ship the shifter and linkage....guess what; it was the wrong one “AGAIN” and I had to ship it back at my own expense
Before I placed my order, I was working out a budget, I asked Fran both on the phone and publicly on the forum if the gel-coat was of a high quality that it would NOT require painting.....Fran assured me that I would NOT have to paint the car! B.S, you can see the fiber strands through the gel-coat, there are unfinished seams that need to be sanded. Additionally, I paid for body fitment and body prep; what a waste of money that was! This certainly was not the quality I was expecting.
Mr. Xxxxxxxx, based upon my experience of missing parts, I would strongly suggest that when your kit finally arrives, you very carefully go over the inventory list and cross check it against the actual parts. RCR gave me a two page parts inventory list. Absolutely every box on the reprinted factory check list was checked off as being shipped....even parts that I didn't order and even parts that didn't even pertain to the SL-C! Someone just went down the list and just marked every box without physically checking it against the corresponding part! [Note: In all fairness, since that time, Fran hired Dean as a Customer Service Rep. and I think things have improved somewhat, but the problem is as I see it; Dean has no authority and has to run everything by Fran and it appears to me that Fran absolutely refuses to delegate any authority and there just doesn't seem to be any adult supervision]
All of this understandingly upset me but I actually forgot all of that negative junk the day my car finally arrived and was I so excited to finally start my long awaited build that all of that other stuff would have been just water over the dam. All would have been good if Fran Hall would have only kept his word! However, Fran’s broken promises and what I perceive to be out and out lies continued to the point that I just couldn’t trust a word he said! This was intended to be a fun project but Mr. Hall managed to destroy that dream for me and this project turned into pure aggravation to the point that it started to effect my health. That's when I said: “it's just not worth it”!
To be perfectly honest; I'm probably more upset at myself for falling for Fran's crap! I thought that I did a good job doing my homework on RCR, because I could not find any negative comments posted on the forum. How naive of me! That in itself should have been a big red flag! I now realize the reason there are no negative comments on the forum is because Fran is the monitor of the forum and he deletes uncomplimentary posts a soon as they are posted. However, since I have gone rogue on Fran and despite the short time my negative posts stays up before he deletes them, I have received numerous private messages (PM's) from other SL-C and GT40 builders. As it turns out, I am not the one only with a negative RCR/SL-C experience! It Seems that there is actually a small army of
dissatisfied RCR customers (“anti-Fran- er's” ) that tell similar stories of having experienced delivery, quality control and unsatisfactory problem resolution issues. I have actually become friends with some of these very nice but extremely P_ _ _ _ _ Off People. The common denominator in all of our horror stories in my opinion seems be:
”Mr. Fran Hall could not tell the truth if his life depended upon it”!
Mr. Xxxxxxxx, sorry for the long rant but believe me this is only a fraction of my frustration; there is much, much more and the problems go much deeper!
I finally figured out what I believe SL-C really should stand for and that is....
”Super Load of Crap”!
Best of luck on your build and here's hoping that the worst is behind you,
Jim
NOTE:
In all fairness, there are some extremely talented builders on this forum that managed to turn this
“Super Load of Crap” kit into a very refined machine. However, that was NOT accomplished at the commonly repeated Stacey David (Gearz TV) 2013 quote of: “build this SL-C kit car for about the cost of a new ZO6”; nor was it accomplished without much ingenious fabrication and many, many months/years of unanticipated labor! I'm pretty sure that the first thing that many of these clever people did was to throw away what I consider to be a completely useless RCR/SL-C Build Manual! Unfortunately, I don't posses the fabrication skills/tools, time or deep 6 figure pockets this kit requires to be what I would regard as a quality finished product that I could be proud to own!
I realize that everyone has a different aggravation tolerance level; personally, I could not tolerate doing business with someone I could not trust!
If history repeats, I suspect that this post will not last long before Mr. Fran Hall deletes it. If in fact that occurs, I'll just have to turn to the social media were Mr. Hall cannot control the delete button! If this information were available to me when I was considering doing business with RCR, I could have avoided a lot of aggravation and wasted money!