Mark@MaloneTuning
Vendor , w/Business number
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2003
- TDI
- '14 GSW TDI, '11 Golf TDI, '97 Golf Variant Syncro 1.9L TDI, '96 Golf 1.9L ASV TDI, '93 Eurovan Westfalia 1.9L TDI, '09 BMW 335d, '17 BMW 328d
Hi,Malone needs to get his act togethet or else he'll keep loosing customers. The tuners are frustrated that he keeps announcing that he'll be out of the office at the drop of a hat. This is no way to treat customers. I'm sure he has his reasons but there should be a way to keep the bussiness going if you are shotting down operations for 3 weeks in this month.
It was probably the first time in 10 years that I've been away for well over 1 week.
More than 3 weeks before my departure, I sent a message to every dealer informing them of my plans. It was not at the drop of a hat. I also set up an e-mail auto-reply roughly 1 week before my departure reminding everyone, just in case. I also posted a notice on top of every web page at malonetuning.com for everyone to see. Despite all that, a very small percentage of dealers were still not aware of my absence until they tried to get a tune while I was already gone. I will find a new way to minimize that issue next time.
I still offered tuning work during my 3-week trip, albeit with a 1 week or longer delay (mostly due to no Internet access in remote parts of Asia). I did tell all dealers about this opportunity weeks before I left. Understandably that kind of delay does not work for every customer, but it was better than completely shutting down operations for 3 straight weeks.
Right now I'm inundated with hundreds of unread e-mails that accumulated while I was away, and I'm still working on responding to each and every one of them.
Yes, the demand continues to climb and I'm working on the scaling issue. Basic 101 economics dictates that I should increase my tune prices, but I'm trying other options first: I recently hired a couple engineers to help build an automated online tune delivery system and a bunch of other cool projects, so I'm very excited.
I'm sorry about the bad timing and I hope you were able to get what you wanted.
Cheers,
Mark