Leatherique's Customer Service is a joke!

I cannot comment on the customer service of Leatherique but I can say that I am not as sold on the product as many on this forum. I have used the mess out of it on my leather and really cannot say it did anything that all the other products on the market claim to do. Now I must say that the leather on my car was and is in very good condition so any help the product provides may not be easily seen at this time but I have also tried the product on some old dried out leather luggage and it did nothing to bring the leather back, absolutly nothing so while it may be a good product I cannot say it does anything miraculous.

I have dealt with Sticky no more and Ricambi and have nothing but praise for the professionalism and great service I recieved from both.

 

I have lots of Leatherique experience because I completely dismantled my car interior and did a full Leatherique treatment including changing my Tan color to a darker version.

1-Customer service: I deal with Robert at Leatherique Canada who was absolutely superb. If anyone has issues with Leatherique in the US, call Robert from Leatherique Canada (very nice, very generous and very helpful) I called him troughout my entire job and he was amazing. I cannot speak for Leatherique USA.

2-Leatherique treatment: I too did not notice and enormous difference. The leather did get a little softer and better but it wasn't very noticeable. However, the car sat for 16 years and probably never ever got a leatherique treatment so it may have reached a dryness level that is almost impossible to bring back. I believe that Leatherique should be applied every year from when the car is brand new in order to be effective. I also did it in the wintertime in the garage, not in the hot sun as reccomended.

3-Leatherique dye: The dye does the job but it's more of a paint than a dye. the word "dye" is misleading because it implies that the color get absorbed into the leather. The reality is that it doesn't. It coats the leather and is more of a paint. The surface becomes delicate and is prone to scratching which reveals the old lighter color underneath. I still reccommend the dye but NOT for a color change, only to touch up, repair and revive the existing color

4-Leatherique application: The brushing method in the instructions is next to impossible to excecute without looking like crap and the brush marks always show. I had to use an hplv spray gun connected to my compressor and that worked great. I applied 2 coats to all my parts and most looked perfect. About 1/4 of the parts needed a 3rd coat.

I know some Ferrari dealers provide a complimentary leatherique treatment to their customers when the car comes in for service and the customers love it. These dealers love it so much that they actually buy the product and use it in secret because they're technically not allowed to use any non-Ferrari products on the cars.

I am in no way affiliated to Leatherique and speak only from my experience as a customer.
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I had one dealing with Leatherique more than 10 years ago. They were very slow in shipping, then shipped the same order twice, and billed my credit card twice.

Also, their plastic bottles (with the leftover product in them) dried out and split while sitting on the shelf in my garage.

 

Got to say I've seen several products that claim to return leather to its former glory, had my car treated with one when I bought her. I've yet to see any that actually do what the product claims when you look at it up close. After paying to have mine completely treated with a product very similar to leatherique 'dye', a year later I had the lot stripped out and replaced with new leather. They do make it look a lot better but, contrary to some of the claims, I don't think they're close to a retrim in result (or course they are a tad cheaper though). Just what I've observed but I'm more than happy to one day be proved wrong.

 

I can tell you that 14 months after my treatment and redye, my leather looks and feels great. I spent less than 300$ to get it this way and it's absolutely worth it.

There are a few spots that need some retouching but I can do it in the car pretty easily and quickly.

Besides trying to change the color which I shouldn't have done, I don't regret using this product.

Also, most leathercare products contain silicone which has a short term payoff and a long term negative effect on leather. Leatherique is silicone-free and, when you apply it, the leather does absorb it so the leather is obviously being fed.

 

I will throw this out here now although I intended to document the results when it is done.

This company just happens to be located near me but they operate all over the world in providing leather restoration and maintainence services to the aircraft industry amongst other fields as well. They have been in business for 30 years and are a family run organization.

I called them and asked them if they would look at my car and they said sure. My drivers seat looks sat in and the passenger seat dos not. There is some pigment rub on the drivers seat bolster. I asked Sean there if he can make my seats look brand new and he confidently said yes that's what we do. They do the leather servicing on Air Force One and a lot of high end clients private aircraft.

I am taking my seats out and bringing them to them in a couple weeks. I'll post pictures , etc. He said that he had one Porsche guy send then his whole interior and said they would be interested in doing more automotive work. They do not have a facility to garage cars so it has to be out of the car but they do have a proprietary product line for DIY and maintainence that is on the website.

FYI He chuckled when I asked him if he had heard of leatherique.

Leather Institute: Home

 

So they treat your leather with something without changing it?

If so, this would be interesting, please let us know how it turns out.

 

I am definitly anxious to see how this turns out.

 

I will document all that I can. He strongly suggested that I do both seats although the passenger one does not look to me to need anything , so I woudl think that there will be a change in the appearance that they want to match.

I was concerned about the "shininess" of the sat on seat and wanted to know if they can restore the "stippling" if you will, the texture to it. Again, without hesitation he said yes. So I am not sure what their process is but it will have to involve some dye and resurfacing.

He is charging me $500 for both seats but he said the passenger seat doesn't need much work and my wife knew his family, etc.

I'll take good photos before and after. Going to them May6th. They'll have the seats for the work week.

 

If they can actually restore the seats to like new then 500.00 would be worth it. Like I said my seats are actually in great shape but they simply do not have that new leather smell adn feel. I recently had my steering wheel redone and the leather on that is kind of a mat finish and has a very nice feel.

 

Sorry Dave. I trust them implicitly.

 

I used leatherique on just my drivers seat which needed some attention and applied it
with a brush and rubbed it in with a soft cloth. I was very satisfied with the result and I had very good service from them. I can only speak for myself but i would recomend them highly.

Mel

 

Well they have been around for a LONG time and I'm sure there are tens of thousands of interiors done with Leatherique....in spite of the difficulty in buying the damned stuff.

I've personally done a couple of DOZEN interiors with leatherique...by now I'm quite good at it.


The Leatherique rejuvenating solution is not magic, but used religiously it works and works better than anything I've tried. Their Prestine Clean works great and their prepping agent works equally well. The key to Leatherique is ELBOW GREASE. Casual application is worthless. To strip, hydrate, sand, hydrate, sand, clean, sand, prep, sand and dye is a brutally taxing process. If you half-ass any part of the procedure it won't look right, feel right or stick right. THOUSANDS of us car guys have used this stuff and stuck to the directions and completely transformed our leather- so it is possible.

Great stuff- good people with NO CLUE how to run a business- that's Leatherique.

Right now I'm doing an 89 560SEC, a 95 S600 Coupe and re dying the bolsters on my 2004 Maserati Spyder. I'm fairly certain all three will turn out great.

Don't buy it and store it. Don't wipe it on and hope for miracles. Don't skip ANY step and don't think it will be easy. But it is well within the grasp of any hobbyist.

 

I am redyeing a set of seats in my shop right now using Leatherique products. I agree that, like a good paint job, its all about the prep to get a good result. Currently I have a sexy set of purple seats that look brand new.....except that they are supposed to be blue. I sent a larger sample to custom match back to Leatherique aong with a sample of the wrong color. My customer experience with them so far has been really good.

Dave's issue was probably because he is a damn Yankee and I am a Georgia boy only 200 miles from Leatherique's SC shop"

If Y'all are a little less fussy on the phone we southerners will treat you right

 

My experience with Leatherique is a negative one. I used their products on a concours winning Jaguar I owned a few years ago and it partially stripped the colouring. I had to have the seats re-dyed (not using Leatherique). Their customer service edit was woeful and they denied responsibility.

These days I use Zymol on my Ferrari leather seats with great satisfaction.

 

Lots of negatives here about Leatherique in this thread which is surprising. When I did a search on leatherique last year, it was filled with positive reviews...

 

Hi Fab. I'm not denying that products like leatherique fill a certain hole in the market, purely price wise they are good - that's not what I'm debating at all. The one used on mine was not silicone based either, it was a water based product very similar to leatherique. The interior was done with it to what I would argue was a very high standard - there was no colourant on the stitching as it was individually smeared with vasaline using a tooth pick, then wiped off afterwards to ensure the 'paint' didn't get on the stitching.

It's not that products like leatherique (which I have also seen) don't make leather look far better, they do, but they do not take it back to looking and feeling like "new" as they pretty much all claim. I could post numerous pics of my retrimmed interior, but I won't bore everyone as I posted them all before. But products like leatherique do not take your interior back to this, happy for you to post 'proof' to the contrary

As an aside, the leather I used was from a company who have supplied Rolls Royce and Aston Martin - they say not to use 'feeds' etc at all. This is a direct quote from their site, they provide some of the best leather available anywhere "Don't feed - modern leathers do not require 'feeding'. Despite this, there is much encouragement to use so-called hide foods, care kits, saddle soaps and waxes - avoid them all!"
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I do not doubt your experience with them and it sucks that it happened like that.

But I found the product to be very good for the work I did on my 308. It sucks and **** like this hurts them.

It seems they need to hire specific people to handle this and they have a skeleton crew to do it.
Someone will always fall through the cracks.

 

Not surprising. They are impossible to deal with. They do not return phone calls or emails. They often send the wrong stuff. Their color matching service CAN be very good but often is not. The stuff doe snot have a great shelf life, which they neglect to tell you.

The biggest issue is you need to REALLY go to great lengths to prep the leather for redyeing. Ambient temperature is critical- cleanliness is critical- all stuff not really stressed by Leatherique. Their website is an amateur hour mess. Their magazine ads are dot-matrix yearbook ads.

If you buy this stuff expecting a Pep Boys owners manual and a one-two-three magic restoration- you'll be bitterly disappointed.

I started using this stuff decades ago, and my first two Porsche seat re dyed looked like garbage. After I met a Jag guy at a car show who wrote down his exact procedure- I started to get it right. Just wiping the Rejuvenator on your seats and wiping it off will not be a miracle cure.