Send every screenshot, receipt, invoice, communication, this whole thread, attempts to contact via Facebook, Instagram, etc all to your bank/credit card. That's what Navy Federal had me do and they refunded my full cost to me.

 

The caveat to this is that they can't do anything if the transaction occurred more than approx 540 days ago. This is assuming you paid with CC. If somebody paid by EFT/Debit then they may be screwed. You may also get blown off by low-pay call-center types who only know to refund within 90 days of the transaction date.

I fought this fight (with NFCU) last fall/winter after not getting an offset smoker I paid for. I paid $6,500 and got $6,000 back. The $500 deposit was outside of that ~540 window.

 

Contact the Middlesex County DA’s office. Make sure you have your receipts and any correspondence you may have ready. I had my engine delivered after going this route. They contacted IRP and told them to deliver it, refund me by a certain date or the county was taking them to court. This is ridiculous that it has taken this long to even contact customers to try and make it right. Seems they might be outright ignoring you guys now. I would get emailing the county.

 

Hmm...this is interesting. My FC has been there for a basic rebuild for 23 months as of today. How did you get it back so quickly, did you call/e-mail frequently?

 

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Jesus... this whole thing started over my alternator.... so sad

 

If anyone has a good attorney email me at jaycintron5@gmail.com or DM me here.

 

seems like someone here should be asking for this

 

I might be late to the party, but I heard IRP is RIP. Can anyone confirm?

 

IR Performance is closed.

 

Do we know why they closed down?

 

The writing's been on the wall for a few years now. They have been in death throes for a while.

 

I was at the shop for tuning in December and Ihor mentioned that he might be shuttering operating as IR Performance because the previous manger did too much damage to the business' reputation and sabotaged things on the way out. I found out from a friend in January that he did shut down IR Performance.

 

Sigh.... So sad for Ihor. He is a true enthusiast, very hard working and got totally fucked by trusting the wrong people...

 

I saw pictures of Ihor building a motor on the 16th on Facebook. Looks like they are at a shop.

 

Agreed. I do all my own work but understand the need for quality shops and I had high hopes for IRP. Saw many great builds and reviews for years. Sounds like it was a poor choice in manager/employee or something that caused it to go south. I hope for the community's sake that he stays in the scene at some capacity.

 

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Yeah, no longer operating as "IR Performance". I think he's working to finish up cars that are there.

 

I don't buy the whole blame the bad employee for everything talk track. Yea, that person caused big problems, even yelled at me on the phone one of the times after 6 months of me calling to ask about my parts that he actually picked up.

But it's a business. After the issue was discovered, what about the people that didn't get engines they paid for years ago. Or cars sitting for years. That all should have been handled very differently. And I get that we won't see everything here. Once you start getting sued,you likely can't respond publicly to explain anything. But no way this should be brushed off as one bad employee.

 

I really lucked out. I ordered a greddy v-mount for the twins kit dropped shipped by them. They almost aired me until I called, and they tried to get me to pay shipping from their shop to me in California again, but ended up shipping without much of an issue.

Not too long later all this happened. Feel bad for folks, and can only imagine how the shop must have been feeling under pressure like this, not an excuse but it seems like a common theme for many shops to get overwhelmed with work often.

 

Its definitely not the fault of one individual and overall is the fault of the owner since they are ultimately responsible for their shop. The reality is, not everybody is good at running a business, or working on cars, or programing etc. I'm only spit balling here from what I have seen with many shops over the years (including one I was involved with a long time ago) but I have seen some amazing fabricators, mechanics, engine builders etc. fail because they weren't good at running a business. Part of that is being able to say "no" to jobs when you are already overloaded (I know this from personal experience from the shop I was with.) which will spiral out of control and only increase backlogs. Time management, job promising, Supply issues, event dates etc. all play a major part of running a business. I used to take naps in some of the cars I was working on because the months leading up to the old IDRC events were our busiest months of the year and the owner would make crazy promises to pretty much everybody so I essentially lived at the shop for a couple months almost 24/7. Needless to say, the owner was poor at running a business and it ultimately went south because what he was doing was not sustainable and we grew too fast for the small team that we were with no plans to expand. I built some of the fastest street cars in the state at that time and I had a great reputation for the quality and caliber of the builds, but that didn't keep the doors open. I still have my reputation and keep in contact with a lot of my old customers because even when the owner shut doors and bailed essentially going into hiding, I helped those customers out in my personal time as to not wreck my reputation and finished builds which would have turned into a thread like this with people not receiving what they paid for. It was not my shop and I didn't have to do what I did, but my reputation is something that is pretty important to me and its served me well over the years. Those customers I finished builds for I still keep in contact with and have a good relationship with while the owner pretty much can't show his face in the car scene.

So watching this unfold kind of hits at home to me and is a Deja Vu situation which like I said above, I've seen a lot in aftermarket shops. Passion for something is not good enough to operate a successful business. Some people are good at it and some people aren't. I've seen some of Ihor's builds and it seems like he offers a service needed in the community. Just unfortunate that he couldn't keep the business afloat for whatever reason it was.

 

Exactly!

 

Since IRP closed down for good, anyone know of good shops in the NYC/NJ Area?

 

it's sad to see so many shops that had so much potential resort to spending more time working on their own cars/projects and on social media than in the shop working.

i ran my shop for 12 years, i spent 0 time on social media hyping myself. i spent 0 time working on my own cars when i had work piled up in the shop and i NEVER ignored a customer who called or walked in the door. the key to any successful business is to only take deposits, being paid in full up front turns good people bad, robbing peter to pay paul. i never took on more than a 6 month backlog of engine rebuilds, even though people would constantly badger me to be added to the list. promise for being paid AFTER finishing a job is called MOTIVATION.

human laziness, selfishness and greed is easy to get addicted to, i would never let myself be affected by them. morals are something we all should aspire to earn and keep. if they were working even just 40 hours a week, there should be zero reason to fail at running a performance specialty shop, we all know the labor and parts are not cheap. i did it for those dozen years while charging less than HALF of what the big name shops did and still had money in my pockets when i went home at night.

most engine rebuilds took 1-2 weeks, project cars took months to at most 6 months to just under a year. it's mind boggling that there is shops holding cars hostage for multiple years.... red flags everywhere, you can build a car from scratch, by yourself on a full time schedule in less time.

i know i never made every single person happy though, but i also dealt with some of the cheapest customers out there. i still would have to say i had less than 1% of my customers unsatisfied, to me i felt pretty humbled by that.

There is still Goopy Performance north of the NYC area. Jon has always been very kind to me, but i have no first hand experience with their builds, just parts. if you opt to go there tell them Ben from now ex rotary evolution sais brap brap!