At 09:36 AM 19/04/2007 -0400, marcus.e.helman@gm.com wrote:
>I recently had Franklin Frames repaint my Cinelli.
>But the color is wrong. It is silver, but not Cinelli silver. There is
>way too much metal flake in the paint. There is a place on the downtube
>where it feels like a corner of a decal wants to poke through the
>clearcoat. I supplied a replica headbadge. Jack attached it with rivets
>rather than screws. The whole job took over three months. It cost $550,
>and it is not quite perfect. I know that most people won't notice these
>little things, and that handwork requires time, and one should expect
>variation, but I am just a bit bummed at how it turned out.
Well, most paint shops stand behind their work and try to put things right, even if they end up losing a lot of money on the deal. I remember many years ago I had some bodywork and a paint job done on a car. The shop goofed up on the paint code and the colour was off. When we discovered it, they offered to redo it after the paint had hardened for a month (this was in the 1970s) or I could take it as it was for half price, which is what I did.
Now, if yours had been a $150 paint job, I could see it as "getting what you paid for", but a shop that charges $550 or more may be only too eager to put things right to maintain their high reputation. I have no doubt that achieving perfection for finicky customers is built into the prices of the more expensive paint jobs.
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada