First of all, I want to state that this is not a personal attack. Instead this is factual info that is useful to all future possible customers and hopefully the owner of the company.
Now I know the following may anger many, but if you have a problem with it, please PM me. I don't mean or want this to turn into a bash session or flame war in any way, shape or form, I only want to share my personal experience and some of what others have told me directly. So with that said, let’s get down to business.
As most of you know, Marty, aka Rock Lizard , is the sole owner of Rock Lizard Fab. Marty is only one of a hand full of fabricators that produces products for the KJ. Now, when most of the past fabricators have flaked out on customers, they have been grilled and roasted on here. Usually it ends up with a mod or admin shutting it down after the 23rd page. Please, please don't allow that to happen here. Marty is a great guy and has produced some of the most sought after KJ products any have seen, but after 3 years of issues I think that something like this needs to be addressed and discussed with the public since most on this board either refuse to face the truth or don't realize it.
Back in September of 2007, I was contacted by Marty to be the "test monkey" for his KK product line. Of course I said yes, and from that point on was the start of a rocky business relationship. So far I have logged 6 trips to RL in a year with 3 months of idle time in 07 before we could meet and just recently 3 months of idle without any contact from him. The first few trips were purely for test fitting of preexisting products and for measurements which any test monkey could possibly expect. One of those trips was wasted do to Marty double booking. The last few trips consisted of 3 roof rack fittings and a lift install. In a year and a half, all I have to show is a set of sliders and a joint project with JBA to produce a 4 inch lift. Even at that, the "joint" venture has all but broken up due to communication issues with Marty to Marlin. I have been driving around with an incomplete lift because of this. I will however say that Marlin at JBA is one of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to talk with. With a 40 minute phone call today, I was able to get more information to Marlin than Marty has been able to relay in the past 3 months and because of that I should have the lift complete within 2 weeks.
Now, I know fabrication takes time, but the amount of time Marty has had to produce products is beyond substantial. On my last trip down there, we failed at finishing the roof rack due to the steel yard cutting the cross bars to short which is not Marty's fault. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, however I have been waiting for 3 months and have not had my PM's answered by Marty with the exception of once this week, in which I was informed that he had obtained the steel "a while ago" but I had to initiate contact. This shouldn't be a surprise since I know of customers that have been waiting 2 years or more for products. JHCrash's customers waited around a year. On the flip side of things, I will recognize that Marty did go through some hard and troubling personal times, but in the end Marty has shown that he hasn't been able to break the cycle of repeated let downs and push backs, a cycle that has lasted for the past 3 years. So with that little bit of history out there for everyone to understand, I will now proceed with caution.
In the past, the KJ community has had many companies come and go with the most recent loss being JHCRASH. If you don't remember him, he required full payment for his front bumpers before he began production. After he made quite a few sales from this web site, he disappeared and broke off contact with his customers. After a flame fest on LOST, he returned and to my knowledge has fulfilled all of the orders he took and all customers have received their bumpers. Now in my eyes, I have trouble differentiating between RL and JHCRASH. Recently Marty made a thread about a sale that he was having which read, “This sale will save you some money, help me get this business back up and running since you are my individual investors as I mentioned in my off topic thread. And I am motivated to get these orders filled ASAP, otherwise I have to start paying money back”... “Prepaid orders paid in full except shipping, are on the prepaid waiting list, meaning you get your bumper in the order that it was received, so other prepaid orders ahead of you get theirs first of course, then when those prepaid orders are filled, the unpaid waiting list orders are filled next.” These are statements that I find very interesting to say the least. If Marty was serious about this, my roof rack would be done and a few other member's front bumpers would also be done already. However, Marty has chosen to bypass this system and in the mean time, produce unknown quantities of sliders, roof racks and a hand full of rear bumpers for customers that have placed orders after myself and the others mentioned. A perfect example of this would be the RL shipment to Australia. The order was placed on Feb 19, 2009 and completed and shipped by Mar 1, 2009. Now if I understand the ordering system correctly, should I not have received my products before this order went out since I paid back in Dec of 2007? Also, there have been remarks about not having time to fill orders, yet he is able to squeeze in two lift installs in one day. I haven’t heard of any one getting their bumpers and yet these other project seem to take priority.
By now you are probably tired of reading this, so I will end it here. I understand somewhat why certain things have taken priority over others, and it is mainly money, time, and family. I try and see things from many different angles, and from what I have seen, there are a lot of cracks and bugs in the ongoing system. Even so, Marty has the potential to turn his business in to something bigger than can possibly be imagined. I simply think it is very important for everyone to see the reality of how things truly are and for everyone to not be blind to the fact that things aren't what they really seem. I wish nothing but the best for Marty and Rock Lizard Fabrications and hope that this spurs a change in how things are run and handled there. Hopefully now he can get those products out to those customers who paid their hard earned cash and placed their trust in him to follow through.
Good luck and thank you for your time
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