Topic: Bad DSR Turbo Experience

[pTen]

Damn I wish I had checked the forums before buying. I purchased a walbro pump from this gentleman in January. It failed within three hours. He had no interest in rectifying the problem at all, and even claimed that Walbro don�t offer a warranty on their pumps! I purchased another pump from a reputable dealer, which showed up some interesting differences in the appearance of the first pump� like the lettering on the housing of the pump being hand stamped (as opposed to stamped by a roller), and it was missing the small machining scallops beside the terminals. It doesn�t really matter to me what the pump looks like, the issue is that he flat-out refused to replace or refund the faulty pump and even lied about Walbro�s warranty.  It wouldn't be so bad if he just stood by his products and had some decent customer service. Any one else had issues since?

You could of easily taken him to small claims, not really worth the money, but could of been done because of princeable and could of put him in a lot of trouble for false advertising

[PulsarGTI]

Bought an AEM wideband off him (I know, but he was cheapest by $30+) and had a few issues with it. Got in touch with him first and he didn't reply for weeks, with a followup email he got very defensive and accused me of abusing him when I said I'd take him to trademe to get my money back if he didn't reply, but said he'd contact AEM. Never heard back from him after that, contacted AEM myself and had the problem resolved within 48 hours.

[Hungry]

My younger brother bought a "genuine" walbro pump for 255LPH or however much they flow, it maxed out at 140wkw. DSR Turbo didn't want to know anything about it until he mentioned that it was Speedtech in Wellington who told him is was stuffed and he then got given a Deatschworks 1000hp fuel pump in exchange.

[more_fasterer]

Hi everyone,

The owner of DSR Turbo, Dayne Johnston, is now threatening legal action against me (as the domain owner) on the grounds that this thread contains allegedly defamatory content.  As this thread is likely to be a key piece of evidence should Mr. Johnston choose to pursue this case, I have locked this thread until further notice.

If you have any information that supports any of the claims made against DSR Turbo in this thread, or any information that challenges these claims, can I ask that you contact me directly via PM or email - you will find my email address by clicking on my profile.


Thanks,

Kieran
Primary website administrator

[more_fasterer]

Hi everyone,

In response to the threats made by Dayne Johnston, proprietor of DSR turbo, the committee sought  professional legal advice to ensure that the club would not be negatively affected by Mr. Johnston's threats of legal action.  As a result of this legal advice, the committee chose to:

1. Remove 23 posts in this topic that provided no value to the discussion, and would have potentially inflamed Mr. Johnston's anger towards our club and its members.  Examples of the posts that were removed were posts that said things like "dsr rules... not", or posts that were made solely with the purpose of bumping this thread;

2. Request the author of this post to amend it to be less offensive towards Mr. Johnston, but still be factually accurate;

3. Request the author of this post to amend the post to be a purely factual representation of what they found with the fuel pump they purchased from DSR turbo.  This involved removing from the post their opinion-based comments on the provenance of the pump.  While the author's opinion may have been reasonably held (based on the information available to them), and the author may be someone with over 20 years experience in automotive engineering, the legal ramifications of defamation mean they (and/or the club, as the publisher of this content) would have had to  prove in a court of law, and at great expense, that their opinion was a statement of fact.  Given that this would have cost many tens of thousands of dollars, this was not a palatable solution.

It has now been a month since the above changes were made, with no further comments or complaints from Mr. Johnston in that time.  As a result, this thread has been re-opened for comment.  Please feel free to share your experiences with DSR turbo in this thread, but please, please be mindful of the forum's rules, particularly the first paragraph:

You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any New Zealand law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this forum.

Thanks,

Kieran
Primary website administrator

[more_fasterer]

Hi everyone,

I've just fixed up this thread as something appears to have gone awry with the technology behind the scenes. This manifested itself as posts either appearing as blank (despite the text still being in the database), or links to other posts resulting in a "404 not found" error message.

I've fixed these up where I could, but if you find some unusual behaviour in the way the forum is behaving in this thread, please post up here and I'll fix it.

[Cantab]

My son & I recently become familiar with the quality of the DSR product line and subsequently this thread.  Shame it wasn't the other way around!  In this particular case it was a DSR 430 turbo that had a casting issue that meant the oil and water didn't stay separated.

We eventually got a replacement unit from DSR which is excellent.  That wasn't easy or straight forward and we are out of pocket in terms of the other costs we incurred as a result of them supplying faulty goods.  We haven't given up on options to recover those and once they are complete I will update this in more detail, but please be careful!

[Cantab]

Well, as promised, here is the update after my day in court, in fact I have had 2 days in court as you will see, so here is what happened.

My son purchased a new DSR turbo as a replacement for the DSR unit that was already on his Skyline but was beginning to fail.  The one Dayne Johnston supplied via his DSR business had a casting fault that meant the oil and water mixed which was not discovered until the car was running.  Of course at the time it was a new turbo and the assumption was that the lines had been swapped around.

We contacted Dayne via phone, email and text and got little in the way of response from him and certainly no indication that the turbo itself could be faulty.  Out of his depth my son sent the car to a mechanic who established that the plumbing was fine but the turbo itself was faulty.  Further contact by both myself and the mechanic finally extracted a replacement unit from Dayne, albeit a different model but fine, we could get the car back together and running.

At this point I emailed, phoned and text Dayne to advise that I expected him to meet the mechanic's costs which was not surprisingly met with no response.  Further follow-up messages went unanswered and so I filed a case with the disputes tribunal for the recovery of $1,193.95 being the we costs incurred with the mechanic diagnosing and fitting the new turbo.  The case was set down to be heard in Christchurch in mid-January which is when it gets a bit weird.
1) I was appearing in person
2) Dayne was appearing via phone
3) The adjudicator calls the mobile number for Dayne and gets no answer so asks me to wait outside for 5 minutes
4) After 5 minutes I am asked back in and the adjudicator advises that he has been called back from the same mobile number by a 'person for whom English doesn’t appear to be their first language' to advise they have no idea what we are talking about
5) Adjudicator checks the number I have given, which is also on the invoice from Dayne and in the response Dayne provided to the court.  These all match each other and with the number he called.
6) He then discusses the dispute with me and agrees with the facts.  He makes a judgement in my a favour.

Great we have won, now we can try and extract the money. But wait, there is more:
1) At the start of Feb I get advice from the court that Dayne has applied for a rehearing of the case
2) His claim for a rehearing is that whilst the correct number was used and despite him waiting by his phone he didn't receive a call at that time
3) I have the opportunity to outline why I think there is no need for a rehearing which I do
4) A few days later the court advises that there will be a hearing to decide whether or not the original case should be reheard
5) I attended in person, Dayne opted to attend by phone again
6) The adjudicator calls Dayne who does not answer personally and his voicemail asks that the caller text him
7) The adjudicator leaves a message advising he will call back in 5 minutes
The adjudicator calls back in 5 minutes and gets the same message on Dayne’s phone
9) The adjudicator declines Dayne's request for a rehearing and the original decision stands.

So now we can move to the next stage of trying to actually extract the money, how hard could that be!

At the end of the day, the supply of the faulty turbo isn't really the issue.  Shame it happened but stuff like that does from time to time.  What really pisses me off is the response to it happening.  I cannot believe that he didn't know as soon as we contacted him that we had one of the turbos that had the problem, it had been some weeks between purchase and the problem being discovered.  I also doubt we are the only ones with this experience.  If he said then 'shit, sorry guys I will get a new one down to you asap' we would gone OK, thanks.

So there you have it STAY CLEAR and if you do chance it don’t expect anything like professional service, quality or actions from this bloke. 

[NOGR1P]

good to hear a follow but bloody hell sounds like it's painful, how is he still in business?

[robbo]

Wow 

Sorry to hear you had these problems with DSR, like you said if only you'd found this post first.

Here's hoping you can get your money

https://www.justice.govt.nz/fines/about-civil-debt/collect-civil-debt/

[Cantab]

Thanks for that link Robbo, I had already begun the collection process and had notification that a bailiff had been engaged when there was yet another twist in the story.  So off we go again:
1) It turns out that Dayne had a back injury in mid-Feb at the time of the hearing to establish if the case should be reheard. As a result of the medication he misunderstood when the hearing was and so failed to answer his phone
2) On that basis he requested that the hearing be held again and offered to attend his local court on this occasion
3) I am again given the opportunity to state why I think Dayne's requested should not be met
4) The adjudicator then considered Dayne's request and declined meaning that the original decision stands

Whoa, we are back in business. 

Now, I can only conclude that the mail delivery time from Wellington to rural Canterbury is approximately the same as that to Northland as within an hour of me being notified that the original decision stood I had an email from Dayne asking for my bank account.  Even more impressive was overnight Dayne paid in full - RESULT!

It has certainly been an interesting process, but one I would have preferred to have avoided.

[Rabbit]

Wow impressed you got payment in full. Glad to hear a happy result. It could have been worse, i imaging engine oil/coolant mixing into your engine in the wrong passages could cause catastrophic failure.

[robbo]

Thanks for that link Robbo, I had already begun the collection process and had notification that a bailiff had been engaged when there was yet another twist in the story.  So off we go again:
1) It turns out that Dayne had a back injury in mid-Feb at the time of the hearing to establish if the case should be reheard. As a result of the medication he misunderstood when the hearing was and so failed to answer his phone
2) On that basis he requested that the hearing be held again and offered to attend his local court on this occasion
3) I am again given the opportunity to state why I think Dayne's requested should not be met
4) The adjudicator then considered Dayne's request and declined meaning that the original decision stands

Whoa, we are back in business. 

Now, I can only conclude that the mail delivery time from Wellington to rural Canterbury is approximately the same as that to Northland as within an hour of me being notified that the original decision stood I had an email from Dayne asking for my bank account.  Even more impressive was overnight Dayne paid in full - RESULT!

It has certainly been an interesting process, but one I would have preferred to have avoided.

Wow what a result,

Talk about "Cry me a river" with all his delay tactics and excuses.
Just goes to show how careful you need to be keeping records of dealing with guys like this so you can prove how much of a prick they are to deal with once the deal goes sour.

[PulsarGTI]