These are letters from me to S3 and then finally their response. I think they pretty much speak for themselves.

Dear S3,

I was recently introduced to your magazine. My girlfriend picked me up a copy for Christmas. She is not a full fledged car guy but she is trying and her efforts and progress are commendable in my opinion. Whats more is she is just an outstanding girlfriend and woman. Who tries to please her man and by doing so she is familiar with what I like. Which happens to be S13 Chassis and anything related. She really did awesome she found a magazine that I was unaware of and to beat all right on the cover Project S13 Sr20 Build. Score with all the anticipation of a kid at Christmas I quickly thumbed though to get an idea of the size, content, and length of the article. Must be a mistake didn't see the article so I checked the list of contents aahh page 66 there it is a picture of the Sr20Det. Flip the page and wait a minute there is no article. There is however a stay tuned for the progress of this project on S3mag.com tag. How sweet I got a kiss after the whole shabang. I would have thought it might have been here in the magazine. It clearly says it on the cover. I might have been sated had there been even an agenda, outline something, anything. Now I probably would have checked in the store because I want something for my money generally. Now since it was my girlfriend she can hardly be blamed. Now had it not been a Christmas present from her that she put some thought into. I probably would not have been so perturbed as it stands though I am. Generally I am not the type to write and complain to anyone. Here we are though and I have to say I have been thoroughly disappointed by your magazine. Merry Christmas S3


Signed First Impressions

This is my second letter after they erased my first post a couple times.

Dear S3 Readers,
Problem 1 with issue 19:
Recently received issue 19 and I hate to use such a strong term as false advertisement, but I just call them as I see them. The sr20 build listed on the cover, is not in the magazine. That just sucks.
Problem 2:
As if that wasn't enough after I posted my complaint, not only did I not receive a response from S3, they just erased my post. I might have been satisfied with an "I am sorry", maybe just send me the magazine that actually has the article I was after. Instead they are just trying to ignore me and keep me from telling you "the reader" about this problem I had. Which I have become determined at this point.
I really hate to be ignored so I will post this letter and the copy of my previous post everywhere I can.

Thanks again for such outstanding customer service S3. You really are doing a bang up job running your magazine.

Finally I got a response and here it is.

Turtle,

I am sorry if you had your heart set on reading about the SR20 project. Issue 19 was extremely hectic because it was the issue
for sema and we had to put it together in a hurry as usual. We all have day jobs- some of us have multiple jobs.. Mistakes
happen all the time. I know you may think we have nothing better to do but comb over the issue 5 times but we have social lives,
jobs, and families. It doesn’t mean we don’t take it any less seriously than other magazines. We actually do it out of love and masochism – It’s true. If we didn’t love it we couldn’t do it because we sure aren’t getting wealthy off this gig. I used to think
how cool it would be to work at a magazine.. how glamorous it could be; it’s not. If you saw the work that went into these shoots
and the time I spend writing or laying something out- you would be shocked.
I’m sorry that you’re mad about that.. but there are more mistakes in that magazine. For example Jon was credited for writing
an article that I wrote.. Was I made? No. F*ck it. If you’re mad about that – well you have a lot to be happy about. Because I
wish I had such an insignificant problem to complain about… but if it matters to you. Sorry.

Greg,
We only do four issues a year. Four. 4. We all like the story of the car with the swap, etc… but it’s not up to the build quality
that we *try* to have in the magazine. That doesn’t mean it’s not a cool car. That doesn’t mean it’s not a unique story. But
there are a lot of other hondas with unique stories and amazing builds. Ol’ Gregg Buccell, and my self are both
building cars and we realize that it is unlikely that our own cars will ever be featured in s3. Why? Because there are tons of hondas out there that have done it all before. If you seriously don’t want to subscribe to s3 because of that reason and dont
understand that- Fine. Not my problem.

Have a nice day.

I had to reply maybe I am a bit petty but here we go.

Dear S3,

Wow that was pretty pathetic.
I have a job that I love and don't get paid much. I work in a shop and when I say I can do, I do. I don't slack on my customers and expect to get away with it. In my line of business they will call me on it. I respect them for that and always appreciate the feedback and use it to make myself better and improve myself. It is not always easy to hear criticism. I do admit that but, simply put I have to.
As for all the excuses and the half apology dripping with hostility. Thanks but no thanks. I am sorry you didn't get your credit were credit was due but, this only further illustrates my point. In your letter you pretty much just reiterated my problem completely.
Thank you for throwing us a half thought out magazine when most of us "Your Readers" are indeed in the same boat. Horrible economy, working two jobs, families and we can't forget the social life. Yet we still come off 5-6 bucks for what you admitted was a less than quality product. Then you get mad when we call you on that. Thanks again S3 for such wonderful customer service.

I will update if anything changes but as it stands I would stay away from that magazine. Not only do they not deliver but they don't back it up either. Maybe I am to critical but I want something for my hard earned money.

 

Really????? haha

That's pretty messed up of them, but then again I've never heard of them before and i guess I'm glad I haven't.

If you want to check out a really nice seasonal magazine check out 0-60.

 

I love s3 mag. I'm sorry if did not but to tell you the truth it's better then stupid street import tuner and all that other junk that's out there. I use to love super street and all that when I was a kid hell I still have mags from the black and white page days but they have all gone to garbage. I don't know why you would be upset over a missing sr20 build cuz really it's all on google 1000s of em.

 

I'm with you though. It doesn't matter what or how you're feeling behind the scenes, if you have a product you need to stand by it, make it better, and take feedback when necessary. I used to buy car magazines by the dozens, but not so much anymore -- where can you even find S3? Not that I've searched, but...

 

You Can get them at local books stores like barns and noble i got a subscription. Like I was saying one missed out thing like that is not that big a deal to me seeing as everything we would need to know about our cars is on the web. But i still like to sit with a car mag and read and look it over u guess I'm just a old man like that and IMO s3 is the best one out there for import cars. And welcome back by the way.

 

Hi ZenEngines,

Not sure if you're still checking this thread but I'm Cody Wellons, one of the owners of S3. I just managed to stumble across this thread and I'd like to apologize for any unpleasant experiences you've had with our mag and I am sorry we didn't live up to your expectations. I personally never saw any of your comments and wish you would've e-mailed or called one of our employees (our contact info is clearly posted in multiple areas of our website) instead of leaving multiple comments in unrelated posts on our blog (we have a few people that are admins on our blog and I assume your posts were simply deleted as they aren't the proper place for comments like these).

We apologize that the SR20 coverage was portrayed incorrectly on the cover title, and this was indeed a last minute mix-up that tends to happen when you only have a staff of 3 producing a full-scale magazine with extremely tight deadlines. While the story had originally intended to include a bit more information, we had to shift a number of pages as we approached our deadline date and ended up leaving it as more of a teaser to show off some of the parts that would be going on this car. We also feel that most people in 2011 aren't looking in print magazines for full install guides (as engine builds might require more professional knowledge than we can get across in a few pages of a magazine).

Again, if this mix-up led you astray and made you completely unhappy with our magazine, I apologize. We pride ourselves on down to earth, realistic coverage of the import scene and are typically well received as an option to the other much more corporate mags (who usually only feature cars from whatever companies that buy the biggest ads that much). If we aren't for you I totally understand, and I'll be more than happy to refund you for the issue you weren't happy with.

Feel free to e-mail me at cwellons@s3mag.com and I'll do whatever I can to make things right.

Thanks,

Cody
www.s3mag.com


Oh, and thanks for the kind words Jaescrub! We really do appreciate your support!

 

hey cody did you finally get rid of that Celica GTS?

 

Yea, over 7 years ago. Went through a few 240's since then and now ended up with a 500hp 1JZ-powered SC300.

 

Hey no prob I have a subscription and love the mag. always down to back you all up.