Testimonials
Testimonials
When this website was first put together, some discussion was held as to whether or not a testimonials page should be included. Some consider testimonials to be of dubious worth if they are not compiled by an independent body. Here at The Magneto Guys, we created and continue to look after our own website, so we could quite easily include good testimonials such as this one:
"Very helpful. A good job done in record time at a very reasonable price - J.D. Clark, Manchester"
and conveniently forget about any critical testimonials such as this one:
"Useless. Took ages to finish the job, then it let me down first time out! - A. Cox, London"
Of course, when starting a new business, it takes time to collect testimonials from customers anyway. Until then, one option would be to just make some up.....
As has just been done with the two examples shown above....... So the early website design had no testimonials on show.
Then, several years later, we repaired and overhauled a magneto for a customer who happened to be a professional website designer. He'd looked at our website and was very critical about the lack of a testimonials page. So we decided to have a rethink but still felt that, to compile our own long list of 'Didn't they do well' quotes from completely unknown (to the reader) customers was not really what we wanted to do. That said, we considered that some of the communication we have received from our customers may well be of interest so we have now created this page.
Retail Sales
In the very early days, any business was worth pursuing:
One day we received a phone call from someone claiming to be desperately in need of a new condenser for their magneto - it was urgent! We explained that we fit modern day capacitors to replace the old condensers and because we buy in bulk, they weren't particularly expensive. Eager to help, we put one in a jiffy bag together with a request to cover postage costs and took it straight to the Post Office.
No payment arrived but then, about a month later, the jiffy bag, with capacitor, reappeared with this note.......
We soon came to realise that, for us, the amount of time required to perform retail sales properly was not covered by the small profits that could be made. For this reason, the decision was made......
The Magneto Guys do not supply spare parts
....our time is better spent doing what we are good at - repair and overhaul of magnetos and dynamos
Magneto Static Timing Light
We do our best to provide a quality product but we don't always get it right. If there is a problem, our priority is to make sure that it is dealt with promptly and that the customer goes away happy. Then we look to see what we can do differently to make sure the problem doesn't occur again.
Early on, we were informed by a customer that his timing light had been damaged on arrival. Although sent in a Jiffy Bag, we immediately started to put the Timing Light in an extra bubble bag before placing it into the Jiffy Bag. This customer was sent a replacement.
One customer phoned us to say that the batteries were dead on arrival. He had noticed that the slide switch was in the 'on' position. Leaving the unit switched on will drain the batteries. Since then we have always covered the switch with a strip of sticky tape to ensure it stays switched off in the post. This customer had already replaced the batteries and got it working - his phone call was in order to inform us of a possible problem rather than to complain - Thank You!
Another customer, phoned us to say that one of the croc clips had come off but that it wasn't a problem, he'd just soldered it back on - Thank You!
it's true that most problems are initially reported to us over the phone. We like to think we are approachable and easy to talk to and a satisfactory course of action is usually agreed there and then.
This is an email we received from someone who had bought one of our Magneto Static Timing Lights several months earlier. It's pretty clear that he had been having some problems with it. Our reply email is also shown.
When the 'faulty' timing light arrived back it was accompanied by a letter asking for a refund. By then he had evidently tried it on yet more magnetos without any success. The timing light was in very poor condition - it obviously hadn't been looked after - but when tested, it worked fine. Even so, we gave him the refund as requested. The timing light was too badly bashed about to be able to put it back into stock so we started to use it in the workshop ourselves. It's still going. strong - no problems at all..........
Of course it's well known that people are quick to complain but tend to say nothing when they are happy. None the less we often get calls from customers saying how pleased they are with their new Magneto Static Timing Light. Thank you - nice to know you are happy!
We were very pleased to receive this letter from a customer in the United States.
Yes, there have been a few problems with the
Magneto Static Timing Light. However, with sales well past the one thousand mark at time of writing, percentage returns have been well below 1%. Our money back guarantee has ensured that everyone goes away happy!
Points Cap Cut Out
Sales of these have been steady but obviously much lower than our Magneto Static Timing Lights. At time of writing we have only had to give one refund. When a customer received the points cap cut out he had ordered, he phoned to ask us why it wouldn't fit. We asked what type of magneto he had and he replied that it was a Lucas NR1. Our advert describes cut out cap as being suitable for use with Lucas MO1 and N1 face cam magnetos. We had to tell him that his Lucas NR1 magneto doesn't use face cam points. He returnd it and we gave him a refund.
Magneto/dynamo overhaul and repair
Regrettably, we do sometimes get magnetos/dynamos come back after we have worked on them. Rest assured, we always work very hard - and quickly - to put things right on the rare occasions when it does happen. Again, any problems are usually reported by phone. We always start by reminding the customer of our guarantee - if there is a problem, we will
put it right! We won't offer excuses - we are more interested in helping to find a solution so we would much rather discuss the symptoms of any problems and suggest possible remedies. We wouldn't want any one to say we 'Didn't want to know' when a problem is reported! So, having explained how we deal with real problems, here are a few stories about reported problems which turned out not to be a problem after all:
We had a phone call from a customer who had just refitted a magneto we had overhauled. He was extremely disappointed that the bike just would not start - after all, that was why he'd sent us the magneto in the first place. We started asking a few questions trying to get a better picture. One of those questions was 'Have you tried a new plug?' to which he replied ' Oh yes. It starts straight away and runs fine when I fit a new plug but it's an 'oily rag' bike and I want to use the old original one'. We suggested that maybe he should look for another old original plug and hope that it still had some life left in it........
There was the time when we repaired and overhauled a Bosch magneto for use on a large Daimler car. The customer lived locally so dropped it in and collected when we had finished it. A week or so later he reappeared with it. He told us that the car used a dual ignition system. Started fine using the battery/coil on one set of plugs but when switched over to the magneto feeding a second set of plugs, there was excessive back firing and poor running. Quickly switch back to the battery/coil and everything was good again. The magneto was left with us and we gave it a thorough check over but couldn't find anything obviously wrong. We called the customer and he came in, saw it running OK on our test bench and went away happy. Three or four weeks later he called in again, this time without the magneto. He had refitted it but nothing was any better. Then he'd taken the magneto back off the car and taken it to another magneto restorer who had given it a good check and could find nothing wrong with it. In fact when he gave it back, he told the owner that whoever had done the work had done a very good job - which was good to hear. So, back on the car, start the engine and the same problem was still there. That's when he and his two fellow mechanics sat down with a cup of tea and thought 'What are we doing wrong?' Turns out that two of the plug leads were on the wrong way round. They couldn't understand how they could get the firing order correct on the battery/coil side but got it wrong, three times, on the magneto side! The owner was good enough to admit the mistake and to call in and tell us what the outcome was. All worked out in the end!
Another customer phoned to say that he had fitted the magneto we had done and couldn't get a spark out of it at all. He asked if he could bring it in personally rather than send it. We were more than happy with that and said we would have a quick look at it while he was here. When he arrived, we attached a test gap and turned the magneto by hand. There was a good spark every time. 'Yes', he said, 'but you're turning it the wrong way. It goes the other way when it's on the bike.' When asked if the magneto in question had ever been fitted to the bike before, he replied 'Oh no - I got the mag from an autojumble'. He seemed a little put out when it was explained to him that he had bought the wrong magneto. He had to leave it with us a bit longer so that we could reverse the direction.
We were very disappointed to receive this note. Yes, the magneto had come back before but we had not been able to find anything wrong with it then. This time it was no different so we phoned the customer to ask for more details of the symptoms.
He said that, once running, everything ran perfectly. It was just so difficult to get it to start in the first place. That's when he mentioned that all of his friends could start the bike for him with no problem at all - the magneto only seemed to fail when he tried to kick it over himself....
After some fairly diplomatic discussion enquiring about his age and physical strength, he agreed that maybe there was nothing wrong with the magneto after all.
We got a phone call early one morning from someone we will call Jim, about a magneto we had done for a vehicle owned by a well known museum. It had worked fine for several months but had just suddenly stopped sparking. Jim was obviously very stressed because the vehicle it was fitted to was booked on a cross channel ferry first thing the next day for the start of a tour around the WW1 battlefields. Jim explained that he would have about a sixty mile journey to reach us so we were to expect him to arrive late morning - could we fix the magneto straight away?. We had almost given up on him when he and a colleague finally arrived early evening. A quick look showed that the insides were quite rusty so we asked if the vehicle had been used in the rain. 'Never!' Jim replied. His colleague then reminded him that he was always using a pressure washer to clean the engine.... We sent them off to get a meal while we worked on the magneto. Once it was in pieces we found another problem - the slip ring was quite literally melted! It was a very early magneto and we had no replacement slip ring so started to manufacture a new one from scratch. This work was still in progress when they reappeared. When he saw the slip ring, Jim was very annoyed, claiming that we 'had obviously used sub-standard parts in the original overhaul'. Then his colleague asked him if, maybe he shouldn't have used such a large blow torch to release the drive gear off the armature taper...... It was the early hours of the morning by the time we had got everything finished and working again. We later found out that the battlefield tour had been completed successfully. When the museum contacted us about a year later about a new job, we learnt that Jim no longer worked at the museum.....
It is important to remember that, although some parts are renewed during an overhaul, the bulk of the magneto or dynamo is probably at least 50-60 years old - could be more than a century old! We are confident that a unit we have repaired and overhauled will, if properly maintained, give good service for quite some time but it will not last forever - parts will wear out. One such example of this was a Lucas K2F magneto which we had overhauled. It had performed well for five or six years covering thousands of miles. Then, on a 400 mile weekend run, the first day was completed with no problems but on the return journey, a misfire started to develop. The misfire gradually got worse and there were still sixty or so miles to go when it was decided that the cause of the misfire ought to be investigated. The problem was quickly identified - the riveted contact point on the moving contact breaker arm had loosened giving an intermittent connection. A temporary repair was done at the roadside and the journey was completed without any further mishap. None the less, we were not happy because a magneto failure on one of our own vehicles can be very embarrassing......
Right at the top of this page, we suggested that testimonials not compiled by an independent body might be of dubious worth. Just such an independent body would be the eBay feedback system. Please check us out - we trade on eBay as 'themagnetoguys' and, at time of writing, with a feedback score of over 1000 , we are proud to say we have 100% positive feedback.