Heatwave379

Good Morning Fellow MBer's. STAY AWAY FROM LA WHEEL AND TIRE!!!!!!!Please take a moment and read the following REVERSE endorsement and WARNING about a wheel vendor in L.A. My qualifications for such are as follows. 5 time National Champion in motor sports. Holder of 16 world rechords in Drag Racing. Owner, builder, and driver of such vehicles. Please do not take this as bragging. I list my past experience only as to qualify my post.
In August I took a set of AMG wheels to LA Wheel And tire to be chromed. I drove 225 miles one way so I could explain excatly what I wanted. Full Polish, and chrome on the entire wheel, and barrell. I explained the price was not an issue but quality was. After explaing what I wanted I was given a price which was fair. Several times I made it clear I wanted a show chrome finish and was assured by Nick they were able to do this. After a month of waiting(suppose to be two weeks) I was told my wheels were tready. Before driving down (225 miles) I asked Nick how they looked. I was told he personaly inspected them and they look great. I drove down to LA only to find Nick had left the building for the rest of the day. A person named Robert helped me and seemed like a nice guy. First thing was to get the wheel paid for then we proceeded to the back to inspect the wheels. Upon seeing the wheels that had been wrapped up from the chromer I new the wheel had not been looked at prior to my arrival. I started inspecting the wheels and to my HORROR they were awful. An extreamly poor polish job was done on the entire wheel. Let me make this clear. The poor finish was not from pre-chrome wheels..... it was just horrible workmanship. I understand what the stripping procees can do to wheels with some pitting issues, this was not the case, again just poor workmanship. It was so sad to see the wheels knowing that just a few more minutes of polishing on the wheels would have made them perfect. I left the wheels there for them to re-run the wheels and try to make them right. I called Nick on Monday morning and was told they would just refund me my money and ship my wheels back to me. This would leave me whith a set of wheels that were horrible, and could not be chromed again. I told him this was not and option and if that were the case he would have to send me the same quality wheels back as I left them. Bickering went back and forth until I told them I was fully prepared to take them to court. Finally they agreed to do another set but had to get 3 more wheel because they did not have any cores. I was told by Allen the owner it would take a while to get the other wheels. I was unaware he was talking about 10 weeks. The internet is plastered with these wheels and I could have had a set of cores in two days. I was being told they kept getting in bad wheels, whells were here, not here, you name it. My guess they were just waiting until they sold the other wheels to some poor guy, and were going to use those cores. A total of three months went by and I was finally told the wheels were ready. According to Allen the wheels were specially chromed and look great. Off to LA to pick them up, and another 225 miles. I could not beleive my eyes when I saw them. Some were pitted(no previous chrome) mostly poor workmanship again. Allen tried to tell me another line of crap and I stopped him dead in his tracks. At best the wheels are below average and not anywhere a great looking wheel. All the wheels had several large imperfections. I was litterly sick to my stomach. I could go on and on about the lies that were told, poor quality etc.etc. BOTTOM LINE. LA TIRE and WHEEL in my opnion does not, or cannot produce quality wheels. They sublet all their chrome work to another source, and do not have the ability to insure quality workmanship. I just hope this post prevents another hard working MB owner from my experiences.