Buyer beware! An indictment of gordon levy/levy racing, llc

[kappasiglegend]

BUYER BEWARE! An indictment of Gordon Levy/Levy Racing, LLC:

Firstly, this IS NOT what I wanted to do, nor is it something that I take pleasure in. However, I need to let everyone know what is going on so that, hopefully,
no one else will find themselves in the situation I've been in for over a year now.

I AM NOT THE FIRST, ONLY THE LATEST. *CAN'T POST THE LINK TO THE "OTHER FORUM", BUT DO YOUR OWN SEARCH. IT WON'T TAKE LONG.*

I also understand how this will come as a shock to some of you given Gordon's history and reputation. Well let me say that you can be a stellar Naval test pilot
and astronaut, but as soon as you put on a diaper to drive cross country to kill your co-worker's wife you've kinda torpedoed your life's work prior. #LisaNowak

That being said, below you will see attachments supporting my statements. I have had ZERO correspondence with Gordon Levy (after our initial phone call) beyond the emails you see below. I have assumed nothing, and will only state facts.

In November of 2021, yes 2021, I built and placed an order with Gordon Levy (invoice attached) totalling $13,376. Payment was sent and cleared on 06 Dec 2021 for the full balance as shown by the attached bank statement.

**OF NOTE: On 03 Dec 2021, Gordon stated he had "a bunch of your parts ordered up" and was already asking if I'd sent payment.**

If you read the email chains below, it will show that I periodically checked in with Gordon every few months throughout 2022 to see if anything had been shipped.
I was trying to be as understanding as possible given the continued automotive supply issues globally. Each email was met with a "working on it/been busy" type of reply. I wasn't concerned until July 2022 when my car finally arrived from FFR and I still had received nothing from Levy Racing, LLC.

**OF NOTE: On 19 July 2022, after Gordon said has was having difficulty acquiring some things, I asked him if he would at least ship out some of the things that I
knew were in stock, or that I'd seen other customers receive such as the control arms and brakes. I even offered to pay for shipping to help Gordon out and got
no reply.**

Again, on 01 Nov, 2022, I asked what was the status of my order and Gordon replied "I have a bunch of stuff I can start sending out". I received nothing yet
again and on 14 Dec 2022, a full year after Gordon cashed the $13,376 check to pay for my order, I asked what the deal was and even offered to help work out
whatever issue he could be dealing with citing his solid reputation. He stated that he was just extremely busy and he had some things "laying around" that he
could send out.

Remember, his email a year prior stated he'd already ordered things. So either he hadn't ordered anything, was lying then and all year long, or he was selling my
parts to other customers and stringing me along. Either way, drastically unacceptable.

I did receive the control arms, shocks, and front brake assemblies just prior to Christmas, but nothing else.

**OF NOTE: My invoice charged for "rebuild and modification" of the rear spindles. What I recieved was a set of junk yard take offs that were hastily and poorly
hacked down with a grinder and in poor condition (photo attached)**

Gordon got real squirrelly when I began to further press him on 01 Feb 2023 after receiving the rear spindles as you can see by the last batch of emails. He began avoiding and trying to redirect his answers around what I was directly asking...READ IT ALL FOR YOURSELF.

On 01 Feb, 2023 I asked Gordon what the status on everything else was and only repeatedly got the run around. I told him anything not shipped by COB 03 Feb, 2023 was to be refunded in full, yet he continued to ignore the issue. I have given Gordon over a full calendar week to respond and remit a refund, but have had ZERO communication from him, so it's come to this.

Bottom line is Gordon Levy has done this to others several times in the past and, for whatever reason, screwed the pooch on my order and instead of just making it right 8 months ago, he chose to keep lying to me. I gave Gordon and Levy Racing, LLC a free $13,376 loan for a full year with nothing to show for it. So now here it will be for all potential customers to see and consider before buying anything from Levy Racing, LLC.

I WILL NOT allow this to quietly fade away as others before me have done. I learned from Whitney...I keep my receipts!

Are you all going to continue to tolerate a major vendor lying to and cheating other FFR Family?

[kappasiglegend]

17976217976317976417976517976617976717976817976917 9770179771

[JeffP]

Sorry you're going through this Brandon. Fortunately, there are alternative vendors!

[David Hodgkins]

Brandon,

I've contacted Gordon about your complaint. I'm allowing him time to compose a response. Until then I'm closing this thread.

:)

[David Hodgkins]

ADMIN NOTE: I received the response below from Gordon:



Let’s start off with a little background on myself for those that are newer here. I started on this business in the 80’s restoring original Shelby Mustangs and Cobras. Most notably Dick Smith’s CSX3035. We were great friends and it was me that introduced him to Mark and Dave Smith in 1997. I got my first FFR in 1996 and have been building them ever since. We have built around 250 to date, done setup and upgrades on hundreds others so primarily I am a car builder. I was motivated enough to learn all I could about everything performance minded with cars when I was younger and was fortunate enough to learn from some of the best there were in the industry. For 30+ years of using these parts in builds I am an OEM dealer for Wilwood, Comp and their related companies, Scat, AFR, QA1, Total Control, ETC…. I have many kits we designed and carry our own parts numbers, some are off the shelf. Selling parts is a relatively small part of what we do and you can ask anyone in the parts industry the 15% margin is barely worth it. At the shop I build the engines, build the rear ends, most of the fab work like header building or 5 links, painting, much of the polishing and answering the phones and questions on how something works or the best way to set something up or…. The load is a little heavier since my right hand was killed in a motorcycle accident 18 months ago. (Ask Jeff Miller how much that hurts everything). I am also trying to teach the younger generation how to do this stuff and I have a few that are learning but it takes a while. Being older I am a bit old school, need to talk, pick up the phone. I will answer. My phone is a land line, it doesn’t take text messages. I don’t do twitter and while email it good I don’t sit and write long emails explaining things. So after 35 years of doing this you make a few enemies and have some unhappy customers for various reasons deserved or not. I’m sorry, I do what I can to help.

Brandon is building an obnoxiously over powered car. I have dealt with a few cars like this and know how to set them up. He placed an order late in 2021 for parts, Brakes, DA shock and spring setup, billet arms. Re-geared Torsen IRS. The gearing really required for this engine is not available off the shelf so a donor was going to be used. Along with a trans and clutch setup. He was freshly retired Vet and pushed the Vet discount so I did discount the parts a little and did free shipping. Think about that 15% margin again and think about what it costs to ship anything. In my office I have 3 bins I keep works orders and invoices in. They are separated into car builds, engine, and parts. Through paper shuffling his order got lost. I knew there was one and I know a couple of the items but I could not figure out who it was for. It rarely happens but it happens and it is usually figured when I receive a call. That contact didn’t come for a year. When it did I explained the lost order and started sending him parts like the billet arms which are incredibly hard to get, brakes, shocks and started prepping the rest. It was like starting from day 1 again. On Tuesday he asked for a refund on unshipped parts and I said OK. (many of you that have been around a while know my like of 1 word answers). And Saturday he blows up the internet.

So what was the purpose of the post? To get the refund? He was already getting that. To warn people I am a bad person? Not really, this situation is an anomaly and not the norm. No, he wanted to vent and try inflict pain on a small business and get patted on the back by keyboard warriors. It may hurt parts sales for a little while for a few but then parts is a pretty small part of what we do. Maybe it hurts one or more of the people that work here. Where it does hurt is the folks here that won’t benefit from my 27 years of building, racing, updating and setting up FFR’s. The car you’re building is going to be frighteningly fast on a 90” wheelbase and no traction control. I have setup few cars like that; they rarely get driven. One customer calls his his garage statue because he doesn’t enjoy driving it. We will probably be pulling that engine and putting in a 65 Falcon pro touring car and put back a warmed up coyote so he can enjoy it. Have fun with your build and good luck.

Part of this I need to speak on is the condition of the aftermarket. The pandemic may be over but the aftermarket is still very broken. Parts and vendors have changed greatly. I will talk mostly about engine stuff but it goes along many of the things used in these cars. Dart blocks are backordered at least another 20 weeks. If you want a 363, 427 small block there is nothing that can be done unless someone already has a block. The reason is the foundry got an order for train trucks that was so huge it couldn’t be passed up. So they told Ford, Dart and others that they would have to wait. That has what has been happening the last couple years. They will do train trucks for 8 months and do blocks for 2 and back to train trucks. This has become the norm and not the exception. Machine shops, water jet, will all do the big run stuff and maybe do the small run specialty stuff if they have a minute. The pandemic lock downs and the skeleton crews basically stayed after it was over. It helped their bottom line and people got used to waiting. Think about lead times now VS 4 years ago, 3 weeks vs 8 months. This is industry wide. Piston that used to take 2 weeks now take 3 months or more. At one point Comp was 4000 cams behind because they didn’t have cores. They are still behind. While prices on a lot of parts have been pretty decent and only gone up a few percentage points there are some giant exceptions. Cylinder heads are up 40%, anything comp is up 25% then they added a 10% surcharge across the board on wholesale accounts. Wilwood was up about 10% so the first time in 15 years I had to raise prices. Shipping prices are up 200% in 3 years. A front brake kit used to ship UPS for $35 is now over $90. Sorry but that is cost, vendors don’t make money off of shipping. Unfortunately I really don’t see it getting better anytime soon. Makes it incredibly hard on everyone. The older guys like myself aren’t going to be around forever and there really aren’t many coming up behind us to take over. At least in a way that we did.

That is about is much as I have written since college. Have fun, hope to hear from you.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I received this response on Sunday. I'm waiting on an internal discussion so I am not prepared to open this thread yet. Please be patient.

As always, I am available via PM (https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/private.php?do=newpm&u=2) for questions or concerns.

:)