... And if anyone has any disilussions that I am making a killing, try shimming several sets of injectors sometime, it take a hell of a lot of time.
I know Mel will back up that last statement.
Appearantly not only is it wrong to offer a service, but it's wrong to offer it and not absorb the costs of doing so yourself.
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Both Russ and I spend a good deal of personal time helping everybody out. Not only is it a royal pain in the butt to perform these services, but it can cause a lot of grief at home. My wife rides me a good bit sometimes if I ask her to stop by the shop and pick up a pump that is finished, and she has had a bad day or doesn't feel like it. She complains when somebody ships me a core, and it leaks diesel fuel in the trunk of her Mustang, or sits on the kitchen floor and stains the linolium. My kids complain when I have the computer tied up filling out a FedEx shipment, and I've gone to weigh a box or measure it, and they can't use it because I'm halfway through doing it. Or the times when I deal with an international brother who needs to use PayPal to handle the curency conversion, and I'm not able to get the money transfered into my checking account because I don't feel like giving Paypal my SS#, and I have to float several hundred dollars for a full month because they limit you to $500 worth of transfers a month. Or when I've bent over backwards to do a coreless exchange... finding a suitable donor that won't break the customers back. Or when somebody needs their pump so bad they don't want their truck to be down and I have to "lend" a core until I ship the new one, they install it, and I get their core back. Oh the list goes on and on of inconvienences and challenges. This is why my builder doesn't want to deal with you all directly. I tell people right up front, I tack on $75 to whatever the pump costs, and this $75 pays for my transportation charges (my wife... oh, and you should see what bribes I've had to dole out to get some of you guys your pumps in the time frame I've promised), gas (yes, hard to believe but your Moose Products are 4.6L gas engine powered
), shipping, which can cost as much as 1/3 of that fee, and the other $25-$35 I get to keep helps pay myself for things such as the interest I've had to pay when I overdrew my bank account to pay the builder, so you guys wouldn't have to wait longer than I told you, the bubble wrap I put the pumps in, and to pay for the dinner that I will end up taking the family out on in order to make that last minute run to get stuff to make your pump happen. There is very little left if anything at all to pay myself back for the money I fronted for that first Moose Pump. In fact, I would be willing to say that I loose money on every pump I sell. Fortunately, I'm not a good accountant and I don't keep close enough track of this activity to find out that I really should just give it up. Then along comes some A-hole with an agenda way out of left field that just blows your mind away wondering what the hell this guy is thinking, and why he intends to alienate himself, on this board and every pump builder out there... oh yeah... Joel has friends... I can't see this guy getting very good service from anybody once his name is well known. It really makes no sense. Now he is spreading his filth to other boards, and so the lies will perpetuate and go on and on and be on public record for years. I was never being secretive because I wanted to hoard loads of money for myself and milk the IDI community for all its worth
Give me a break! Does this guy even know that I do timing clinics every year, and have timed literally hundreds of trucks and which who's owners would gladly have paid me $20... $50... maybe even $100 to have their trucks timed, and that I've done this every year since 2003 and have not charged a single dime, and that when the owner has DEMANDED to pay me (and some do.. they just appreciate it too much not to feel humbled), that I have told them to "give the money to the rally host" Hell, liberally, I might have profited $400 total in the last 3 years from selling Moose stuff, assuming the financial obstacles I've laid out were not real. If I had asked for $25 to time trucks, I could have made $600 in the same amount of time with a TON less hassles AND I wouldn't have some jerk chasing around on the internet professing that Russ and I rip people off. I guess it's just impossible for that person given their mentality to honestly believe that some people do what they do just because they want to help people, and not because of some self serving greed that is previlent in the circles they run in.