Thorney Motorsport

This guy seems to post everywhere, perhaps he should spend some time doing the work he's paid to do and not arguing the toss on about 15 different internet forums? :p
 
basically somebody paid 16k for a M3 CSL to be race prepped

the car they got was missing a final map, high pressure fuel injectors, and was scratched to hell, and dirty. Furthermore, the owner was continually having to prompt them from progress, and continually lied to about how the car was progressing.

In the end he just pulled out and requested his car back, and refused to pay the final bill. He'd already sent installments that covers the work done so far, and came to a informal agreement not to chase the outstanding ammount if he didnt go bad mouthing them on the forums etc..

John then sent him a letter after this demanding final payment, so the guy went on the war path and posted on as many forums as he could about what he'd done.
 
oh i c

was just a normal M3. Think i got the csl bit from the thread on csl register. But of course, just because its on csl register, doesnt mean the car has to be a csl.... nevermind.
 
Mr John Thorne threatened us with legal action today and demanded we make an apology post, the text of which he kindly provided and insisted we make a sticky for "not less than 30 days".

Here is the email he sent us :-

----- Original Message -----
From: John Thorne
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 10:25 AM
Subject: Ref. Thorney Motorsport


WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Overclockers.co.uk Webmaster(s),

We’ve now time to receive detailed legal advice on this matter. I am afraid that the legal position is clear and we have instructed solicitors to issue proceedings for libel against Mr Lawes and his company MB Tech. The difficulty we have is that under UK law we have little option but to sue both the website that carried the content as well as their ISP’s as each level of the chain must be included, the same applies to newspapers where we would need to claim against the reporter, the newspaper itself, the publisher and the distributor.

It is clear that you are not involved in the content of Mr Lawes post, however by allowing it to be displayed even after we asked for it to be removed creates a liability for you and your site.

I am a full believer in the truth so I’d like to explain. Mr Lawes did indeed come and inspect his car on 6th March to inspect his car and he accurately lists out a variety of issues all of which were quite reasonable, that was the purpose of the inspection, sort any details out before delivery. Each one of these issues were sorted to his satisfaction ahead of the vehicles delivery a point Mr Lawes fails to mention. However the real issue is the allegations over the wiring loom about which we are very angry. Firstly let me point out, the loom is standard, it has not been modified in any way, please look at this link:

http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/CSL.shtml

These pictures show a standard CSL wiring loom and box, nothing has been changed, no relays have been moved no wiring has been added, amended or removed. The series of pictures shows that we were able to replicate the loom as alleged by Mr Lawes simply by removing the relays and laying the wiring over the top of the box, in other words it would appear Mr Lawes has deliberately manipulated the loom to make it look bad but at the same time all he has effectively done is simply move parts to make it look poor. Again, I categorically state, this is NOT how the car was delivered. We delivered the car to Mr Lawes with the standard loom in place, Mr Lawes spent nearly an hour inspecting the engine bay and car and nearly 20 minutes road testing the car, his only observation was that it felt a ‘little flat’, my response was that the car had been sat idle for some time and that all the sensors had been re-programmed so needed a few miles, however if it didn’t improve I would come back up, collect the car and remap accordingly, a point Mr Lawes agreed with. Mr Lawes proceeded to go into his office, write a cheque and I left.

The next day Mr Lawes contacts us saying he’s not happy, the car was ‘dangerous’ and the wiring loom ‘ lethal’, I disputed this saying why is suddenly wrong now but OK yesterday, but we still offered to collect the car the following day and investigate, Mr Lawes refused saying he had cancelled the cheque and wanted to pay a ‘re-negotiated’ price, we refused. Eventually Mr Lawes made it clear that he was unwilling to allow us to collect the car ‘I’ve sorted it now’, suggested that we would have to sue to get any money or we accepted his offer of a lower fee, we reluctantly agreed. We then sent a member of staff up to his premises with the remainder of his OEM parts and collected the revised cheque.

Following this he then made the post on your and other sites. In this post there is a picture of the cars wiring loom. I can categorically state that it NOT how the car was delivered to his premises, if it were why would he spend time inspecting it, road testing it then paying us for the work? If you see the pictures what we can assume has happened is Mr Lawes has simply removed the relays from the mounting box and spread them across the engine bay.

We have no intention to create bad feeling between us and Overclockers, we feel you are to some extent a victim of this as we are but the legal situation is clear, the malicious comments were allowed to be distributed via your site so we have no option but to issue proceedings against each site responsible for its publication.

However, the tuning industry is a community and one which we care about and we have no desire to cause you or the members at Overclockers any harm so we have been advised that if you make the following post on the site as a site announcement in the forum and ensure it remains ‘sticky or pinned’ so its visibility is assured for a period no less than 30 days then we will give a formal undertaking that Overclockers will not be included in any subsequent proceedings.

“Thorney Motorsport – an Apology

Recently a thread was started on this site by Mr Shane Lawes regarding work under taken on his car by Thorney Motorsport. The contents of his post made highly derogatory remarks about the quality of the work and the reputation of the company and its owner Mr John Thorne. We have now been shown evidence that the accuracy of the contents of his post may not have been as accurate as described and we understand that Thorney Motorsport have commenced proceedings for libel against Mr Lawes and his company MB Tech ltd.

As a website forum we have a responsibility in UK law for the accuracy of the content posted by our members, as this content is posted by individuals it is impossible for us to verify its accuracy with immediate effect. Once we were informed by Thorney Motorsport that the content of Mr Lawes post was in question we acted immediately to remove the content, however by this time the content had been re-posted multiple times to other website forums thus causing Thorney Motorsport considerable harm to their reputation.

This site made no such allegations against Thorney Motorsport or its owner Mr John Thorne, however our allowing the content to be displayed allowed the contents to be distributed for which we apologise. Thorney Motorsport have no wish to cause us any harm whatsoever and are keen to maintain good relations with our members so I am happy that we can facilitate in this matter.

Members need to be reminded that the contents of their posts are subject to the UK law as regards libel and slander in the same way that any other communication be it verbal or printed, at the same time we also need to ensure that we also have a responsibility to our members and the site itself to ensure that any and all content adheres to the same laws.”​

I am sorry it has come to this, I appreciate that all you have done is host a site where Mr Lawes has posted but our hands are tied somewhat in how we react. This thread has now appeared on over 19 forums across the World and has caused considerable financial harm to us, a point we refuse to simply accept. By posting the above content we will absolve Overclockers and its representatives from any subsequent legal action.

We look forward to your reply.

John
Click to expand...

We replied saying if he had something to say he was welcome to put his side of the story in this thread.
 
Doesn't he realise this kind of blanket legal action and threats only goes to further harm his reputation, people will just see it as trying to cover up what has been going on. Threads on this have been deleted and locked due to similar threats on many other forums, which only makes me think worse of him and his company. Well done Spie, i'm glad someone had the balls to stand up to him.
 
ganesh said:
Doesn't he realise this kind of blanket legal action and threats only goes to further harm his reputation, people will just see it as trying to cover up what has been going on. Threads on this have been deleted and locked due to similar threats on many other forums, which only makes me think worse of him and his company. Well done Spie, i'm glad someone had the balls to stand up to him.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with all of that. He's only making this worse for himself and the threats are only making me think all of the complaints are totally founded. I think Spie's exposure of his bullying tactics is speaking plenty. Well done that man.
 
The fatal flaw in this email is that Mr Lawes hasn't even posted here, so there's nothing to remove really.

Plus, if this was to be official, I'd need it on paper and signed appropriately.
 
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