Body Shop Problems - Is this a Scam?
 

Hey Guys and Gals,

Had a unique expirence over the weekend and I thought I would post it here and see what everybody else thought.

I have a friend with a 1977 Trans Am. Car is a 4 speed car with a non-original 400 in it (built by jasper racing engines) and T-tops. My friend runs an industrial flooring business. Recently he did a floor at a "restoration shop" in New Jersey (I am not giving away the shop name yet as the issue has yet to be resolved). The flooring job cost him $35,000 and usually retails for $40,000. Instead of paying for the job the shop offered to do an equal value amount in bodywork and paint to my friend's car. He dropped the car off hoping to get a decently painted TA.


A couple of weeks ago he gets a call from the shop - aparently they spent 900+ hours on the car and he is looking at a $70K bill thus far. He hits the roof, espically since they didn't call him when they exceeded the original cost of the job - which is what they agreed upon.

So saturday I drive out with him to see what they have done to the car. After 900 supposed hours the car sits as a bare shell with the roof cut off (WTF!!!!!). New floors have been installed and the subframes blasted and painted. Car has all new hardware. All of the mechanical bits have been painted but not rebuilt (the engine recieved new gaskets). The quality of the work done is pretty good - although for the price, the claimed time, and the level to which they took the car apart he should be getting a concours resto and he is not.

All he wanted done was the rear floor patched, the inner left fender patched and the car repainted. The old paint was a decent job but it was cheap and had a lot of drips. He doesn't know a lot about working on cars and will not be able to put it back together himself if he takes it in the condition it has been rendered to. They have gone well beyond the specified job and now he does not even have a complete car. The car has no real sentimental attachment to him, he has no problem letting the shop keep the car, but 1) he can't afford to pay the bill that has been rung up, 2) he never got paid for his floor and he doesn't consider the work done getting paid for the floor because they "destoryed" his car.

Has anybody had a problem like this before? What do you think he should do?

Did he get anything in writing, what kind of receipt did he give the shop for the floor? I can't imagine a $70,000 bill for a 77 restore that's not even finished, I mean I wouldn't EVER pay that much, sounds like this could get ugly.

get a good lawyer, he'll need it.


mike

My friend has unpaid invoices and bills for the floor in writing. The shop owner couldn't produce the work logs or bills when we were there but said he would fax them (his shop manager fell off a ladder and was out and that is why he couldn't find the bills). My friend has yet to recieve one bill or scrap of paper detailing any work on the car since the work began. He also did not recieve a phone call when the work exceeded $35K

The agreement for trading services was all done over the phone, however nobody is disputing that the original agreement was to do the bodywork in exchange for the floor. When we asked the owner why he put his own money into the car he threw up his hands and said "where do you stop on a car like this" (to which we all replied at $35K and you pick up the phone). This is a fairly new shop and I get the feeling they have no idea what they were getting into (i.e. the owner did not realize he needed customer approval to continue to do work once he exceeded the cap or the work parameters).

As for the sawing of the roof off - The car had aftermarket T-tops. They did not leak, and really did not look any different than the originals. My friend did not want these replaced. The shop cut the roof off the car because the car had aftermarket t-tops, and didn't tell my friend until we showed up to look at the car. He is super pissed about that alone.

I agree it could get really ugly.

i agree with mike...get a lawyer...and keep us posted

I would call a Lawyer they have gone beyond the scope of work with out authorization. I have never had a good expierence swaping services, so now if I like a customers work i hire them and pay them and I now expect the same.

Tom Sexton

I was kinda hoping to get what people think of these shop practices, and hope that soembody had a similar expirence they wanted to share (not that the get a lawyer comments aren't appreciated).

I have a funny feeling that the shop charged him the time in chasing down parts. I used to work for a corvette resto shop and we never did this (I have never even heard of it being done), the time involved in locating a part was the cost of doing business. We are waiting on the paperwork from the shop to see where exactly these 900+ hours went.

Sadly, here are the ways this ends:

1. Your friend hires a lawyer and begins litigation. Lawyers are expensive (I dropped $5K last year on one related to child custody items). At best your friend "wins" which means he gets a judgement against shop. This "judgement" is a piece of paper that tells the shop to give your friend his car, or money, or something along those lines. The shop then "ignores" the piece of paper - it is JUST A PIECE OF PAPER (albeit a nice official pretty one). At which point your friend has to pursue the issue which means more work, more litigaiton, etc. Ultimately he MAY see some level of restitution out of the deal, but my guess is that it is unlikely, and in the meantime...his lawyer gets to buy a big new boat with all the money he has received.

2. Your friend comes to an agreement (in writing) with the shop owner declaring they are essentially "even". Neither party litigates, and your friend walks away with a hard lessoned learned...and half a Trans Am.

3. Both parties sue/countersue each other. Ultimately, neither one pays the other, and both parties' lawyers get to buy boats.

In my experience, it doesn't matter if you hire a high dollar lawyer or a cheap lawyer. The law is generally pretty clear on these things and most of the "work" they do is nothing more than secretarial in nature (which is why their legal assistants/secretaries do most of it anyway).

Have your friend go with option 2....

Just my .02...

We tried #2 on saturday, the shop owner refused since he put a ton of money into the car he want's some of it back. He was pretty pissy about the whole thing. I've never heard of a shop putting any of its own money into a car in such a large quantity without owner approval. This whole thing is crazy.

you should get some guys from here to stop by the shop,and say Hi to the @sshole,that would be fun but wouldn't help much.sounds like your freind has all the paperwork on the work he has done and the shop has none.I would get a lawyer quick.I have a feeling the shop is going to make up paperwork.I wouldn't give him a chance.I do it fast,it might tell the $sshole your friend isn't messing around.If he still doesn't come to a compromise I would smear his name everywhere.Us car guys stick together,not just pontiac guys all musclecar owners,thats what makes are hobby great.It would destroy the shop.

If you eventually can - post the name of the shop. I live in NJ and want to avoid any hassles when looking for a body shop. Thanks!

Am I missing something here? Am I the only one that thinks it's odd that someone was happy with paying $35,000(!!!!!!!!) on body work and paint for a 2nd gen Trans Am? The numbers being talked about in this story seem to have one too many zeros in them.:confused:

I would think that 35 grand would buy you one of the nicest 1977 TA's in existance. 70 grand should buy you two of the nicest '77 TA's in existance, not a hacked up body shell.

sounds like the biggest rip ive ever heard of , did the shop say what theyre hourly rate was? just wondering, for 35 grand he should have got the finest 77 ta in existence, i can see close to 30 for a top notch metallic paint job and a bunch of body work, but not what you described. hopefully if or when it goes to court you get a decent judge who knows a thing or two, my friends have had cases go in the down after he had won the initial and was in to the 3rd appeal, and the third judge had a nice 68 or 69 vette!

The Shop rate is $70 per hour, The shop owner is claiming 900+ hours in the car plus parts.

the things that set my alarm bells ringing when I first walked in the shop were:

1) new shop, no tool boxes anywhere in sight.

2) They cut the roof off the car without even having a replacement panel in their possession. When I asked where the old roof panel was I got a blank stare. They could not find it.

3) every figure was posied as an approximate and there was no paperwork anywhere.

4) The shop owner put his own money into the car!!!!!I can understand a shop footing the bill on small things where there has been a down payment, but this guy "claims" to have put more than $35,000 of his own money into the car. This blows my mind.


As for $35,000 into a car, I agree it is high. My friend even though it was a little high but it was a black car and he didn't want bad bodywork to show through the paint. He believed he was getting a finished driver with paint and new decals for the services he traded. The car was pretty nice going into the shop - it ran good for an old car and had a second rate paint job (lots of runs) but there were no major hits on the body.

I spoke with him today and I'll keep y'all posted as things devlop.

I agree with Goatless. No '77 T/A would be worth 35K to restore. That aside, there is no way that the work (butchering) described justifies 70K.
I don't mean to sound so harsh, but your buddy made several stupid mistakes. I hope it works out for him. But, the odds are that he will take a big loss of some sort in this deal.

no shop owner in his right mind would put up 35k in his own money , i think your friends got a pretty solid case, but that dont mean much in our legal system without a good lawyer

You can't put 70k of body work into a T/A to make it original. Maybe 35k if it was a rust bucket and you hired an artisian to massage all the body panels so as to eliminate the filler process.

Hire an appraiser
 

Hire an independent appraiser that specializes in classic and antique auto restoration. Have him go out and evaluate the work progress that he has in the vehicle and establish the labor hours that should be required to get to where it is. Then try to negotiate, if not hire a lawyer to negotiate. From what it sounds like, he does not have 900 hours in it at all.

I'm not sure I have seen a floor at a shop worth 35K, but I think your buddy should say good-bye to the T/A and send the guy a bill for the flooring job. I agree with 'Goatless', "too many zeros".
A lesson to be learned, never trade services with someone. It is much better to treat each job independantly.

WOW, I have never heard of that kind of money for anything but a 100 point showcar, completely done. Your friend got royally screwed. I dont know about NJ, but in MD you are not legally responsible for anything over 10% of the original quote. Unless he notified the owner and he ok'd it, he should not have to pay it, and the shop owner is out of his mind if he thinks otherwise.

This was easily a 10,000 square foot building and the floor was an epoxy floors with 4 coats instead of the standard 2 (in a custom color - green). Plus he had to repair some of the concrete and prep the surface so it would take the epoxy. At $3.50 a square foot (his cost - the job usually retails for $4 a square foot). This isn't some low grade paint on floor - this is permanent stuff.

He's spoken to his attorney and they are handeling it - not much has happend in the week since we were there.

I have never heard of these kinds of bills ever! And was appalled when the guy expected my buddy to pay them without ever providing any kind of accounting.

Originally we though of letting him keep the car and putting a lein on the building for the floor, but the shop could still sue him for the amount owed which would make very complicated and involve a lot of lawyers.

Either way everybody involved is pretty upset.

Thanks for the replies guys, keep them coming.

900 hours and there still isn't paint on the car yet???? I think someone is really milking the hours!!

To give you an example I just finished restoring a customers 57 Chevy this summer. It was a complete running car when I started. The car was completely disassembled down to the point of the bare shell on the frame. The car had some minor rust that I had to repair. All the drivetrain was rebuilt, also disc brakes and aftermarket A/C were added. The billable time I had into this car came up to just shy of 830 hrs and he probably supplied another 100 of his own time. And I don't consider myself a really fast worker.

Milking the hours is an understatement. 900 hours and there isn't even a roof on the car.

when we were there he kept talking about a weekend he spent searching junkyards for sheetmetal for the car. He came up empty handed, but I wouldn't be surprised if all that time he "spent chasing parts around goddamn pennsylvania" showed up on the bills, if we ever see the bills.

I think this situation is just the pits and the owner is just trying to extort money out of my friend.

don't misunderstand me to think I , in any way, agree with this shop. But,in regards to running down parts...well that can be billable time to me. Typically a shop charges retail for parts, but they buy wholesale. They make money selling you parts. If I am looking for and buying used parts..I either have to raise the price past what I charged you or charge for the time involved. Hell lawyers charge you to talk to them on the phone. Same difference here, it is time I have to spend because of the job I am doing for you. Again..don't think that I think anything, in this situation, sounds realistic :o)

Yeah but you wouldn't charge a customer for a weekend of running down parts without calling him and telling him that is what you were going to do, would you? Not to mention that he didn't come back with any parts.

I used to work in a shop that did 100 point restos on corvettes. My boss would buy wholesale and charge retail. Even with used parts there was a retail markup. However if a part was really rare and he needed to do a search for the part that required him to leave the shop, he would have the customer come in, he would explain the situation, and have the customer sign an agreement that it was understood he would be billed for the search time. Billing for search time in a resto shop is not all that common , and when it does happen there is a lot of communication between the shop and the customer.

If you look at standard business practices, this is not one that is common (unlike an attorney where his advice is the product and a common business practice).

searching for parts all weekend and not finding them is like a waitress expecting a tip for going to get your food but not bringing anything back. and anybody that can see should be able to find those panels. jeeze '77 i believe was the largest production year for those cars wasn't it? and don't the camaro stuff match as well. light a litigious(sp) fire under that boys a$$. no paper work? no communication? this is almost cut and dry. best of luck.

This sounds like to me a guy who opened up shop, knows he owes tons of money on start up costs. Had a buddy of his sit him down and explain this "bait and switch" + " add 35k " approach.

Then he targeted you.

Often different cultures and people of different back grounds have different reasonings for what is acceptable business practice.

Some people think asking a question about why a job was done a certain way is well...an insult..

Not sure if that applies or is relevant but when people go this far out to do something, there is some underlying reason...

because this sounds drastic

Lastly your appraiser could add up and view the work that was done to the car get an approx amount, ie removing engine, etc...down to frame.

It was a straight across, does he think your made of money?

Talk about unfair and rude, the fall of the ladder comment is icing on the cake.

That one he is saving for the judge, take mercy on me judge the receipts are in the ambulance.........

pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease

i own a restoration shop , and from what i'm reading and not seeing the car, your buddy is getting ripped off big time.

First off for 900 hrs into a car can be understandable and is very easy to do but that car should be completed or pretty much done

Second who in the hell would put 70 grand into a freakin 77 t/a
I agree with your friend the owner should have called when the 35,000 mark was met and the car was not completed. I always keep in contact with my costumers on exactly where thier hard working money is going, i keep logs on all the time spent on the car with exactly what was done in that billable time.

Third , i have never charged a costumer for searching down parts , i believe thats part of the job. If i have to drive for something and its within reason i don't even charge for that,and if i do its for gas.This shop owner must be doing crack and sniffing to much paint fumes

I wish him the best of luck with this one , keep us posted

well it is common practice in the business to charge 25% above cost for used parts. If that is what you or anyone else does...then charging for time involved becomes moot. It just depends on the way you do your business. In any case...you communicate with the customer. Today, sending emails are so easy..along with pics of progress. I do this and there are no surprises. I also bill along the way. It keeps both of us happy.

How many days did the shop have the car? 900 hours is 112.5 days of working on the car 8 hours a day. Unless they've had the car for at least 6 months there is no way they put that much time into it unless it was the only car in the shop.

no...you could have multiple people working on the same car..more hours.

didn"t the guy check up on his car while it was in the shop! i would have checked up at least weekly.

It sounds to me as if the body guy never had,nor does have the $35,000 to give your friend for the floor. I think you should post the name of the shop as a beware for folks in our area.

Have 2 shops, and typically mark up 25-30% on used parts, and then there can be additional charges to transfer items, repair damage, strip old finishes, test fit, etc. Freight and/or delivery charges are put on the ticket. With fuel charges as they are, have been experiencing fuel surcharges. I don't charge to shop for parts, but the nature of our buisness doesn't allow for us to go and pick up items.
Restorations are a whole different ballgame than from production work, for the work that is lost from the stall not being productive, the job has to have pretty good time (money) on it before I take the job in.
We maintain a call log, and this amounts to calling customers twice a week for updates. Always take alot of digital pictures, can never take enough. Don't want to throw anybody under the truck, but sounds like this shop is definitely one to put on the black list. It is difficult to be accurate in an estimate on restoration type work and/or rust repairs, but this is definitely off the deep end of the extreme. Believe me, I charge for everything that we do, but it all has to be communicated and documented. Good luck, will be curious to see how you guys make out.

Think at this point your friends gonna want to ditch the T/A, put a lien on the bodyshop ("the business") and plan on writing the $35K off over the next year or two depending upon his finacial circumstances. The lien can go a long way to encumber the shops ability to get business loans and or the future possibility of a sale of the business--if in fact this is even a business worth purchasing or sale value. Real sucko situation no matter how you slice it.

janderson...sounds like you and I are on the same page and do business things alike..I concur :)

Hey Guys and Gals,

Thanks for the replies so far, lots of good insight here.

I will be posting the name of the shop in the better business section of the board after things are worked with my friend's car. I just don't want to hurt my friend's chances of getting his car back or recovering the cost of the floor.

I found out some more interesting things over the weekend. When we visited the shop there were approximatley 7 cars in various states of completetion, including a 1967 mustang and two 1946 Dodge sedans. I turns out that all the cars in the shop belong to the shop owner or his employees. This means that my friend's car is the first "customer" car this shop has done.

The more I think about it the more this is a likely scenario:
As for the shop having the car, they have had it since December 2005 or January of this year (I forgot which it is), the hours don't add up to me either since I know there is only the Owner, A mangager/head mechanic and another mechanic and the owner barelys know what is going on.

As for my friend keeping contact he visited the shop three times - the first when he droped the car off, the second when they had finished patching the floor (way before they cut the roof off), and the third with me. He would call approximatley every two weeks when the project first started and got just blanket assurances and vague descriptions. At one point the shop called him and spoke to his elderly father (why I have no idea, my friend had been doing some work at his fathers place and had given the shop the number as a back up number to reach him at) and assured him that the car would be done for the agreed trade. After that my friend could not get a hold of them for three months - then he gets this call out of the blue saying he owes this huge amount of money on it.

the whole thing stinks and I will keep y'all posted on this as I find out more.

Why are you waiting to post the name? This isn't a case or resolving the issue; the guy is a crook, regardless to the outcome. Let's say that you walk into the bank, whip out a gun, and say "this is a stick...." then change your mind when everybody's eyeballs fall on the floor. This means that you're not a crook because it had yet to have been resolved? Yeah, tell it to the judge.

Same thing with this case, and you are doing the public a great diservice to cloak this crook by not disclosing who it is.

Posting the guy's name before legal action has been taken can complicate things even more and hurt my friend (I have first hand expirence on this). I have no disagrement about the guy being a crook, and when I feel it is safe for me to post the shop name I will. If someone in the jersey area is looking for a resto shop and is really concerned about this they can pm me.

As a shop owner, I always look at situations like this:

If I ever have to stand before a Judge and explain my actions, my worst fear will be if the Judge asks me if "as a professional, should I have know better that to do 70,000 worth of work to a ’77 Bird on a verbal handshake?”

With no written contract, I think that I’d lose that case.

Even to someone who doesn’t know, 70,000 for panel replacement and really nice paint is way out of the ballpark. When owners don’t know what is happening at the business, it’s usually a bad sign.

I'd like to know a bit more about the make of the floor and how long it took to complete and whether it got done all in one day.

I'll ask for more information about specific manufacturer of the epoxy and details but I can tell you what I know.

The epoxy floor is permanent - it is very difficult to remove once installed. It never goes bad and has a really nice gloss (if gloss is what you want - they have flat too). There are a variety of colors available and it is super easy to keep clean (I have yet to see anything stain it).

As far as applied in one day that all depends on the size of the space, the drying time, and how many coats are applied. I am not sure how many days my friend spent at the shop in question but I am pretty sure it was more than one day since it was 10,000 square feet and 4 coats (I think it was two or three days but don't hold me to that). I know my friend did his own shop floor and it has been there 4 years and looks brand new.

When I get more info from him I'll post it.

Please send me a PM on who the restoration shop is. If you feel that would be inappropriate, please PMl me what town they are located in. I will be getting one of my cars repainted in a restoration shop in NJ and want to stay clear of these guys. Thanks.

If I can help you out any let me know.

lets do some math here. At 900 hours at 40 hour weeks would mean 23 weeks on a car for a one guy. That makes me laugh just to think a shop is trying to tell you they had one guy on your car every day for 23 weeks and it ain't done. unless the car was built by ford workers I can't see it. The body shops around here want to send their kids to private schools and race snowmobiles in the winter and cars in the summer on you. I went to one shop who quoted me 10-12 grand for a paint job and it would be done in a week. Not including painting the wheel flares/air dams or putting the weatherstripping on and the paint/primer.

think about it. you could take a college auto body course in ten months and buy a killer compressor with tools and still get your car back sooner for under 10 grand. After that you could paint it a different colour every year for life and still be ahead. at 35 grand I would have ran out of that shop like forest gump. 70 grand is close to the GNP some countries have for an entire year.

GNP...Now thats an interesting comparison!
I was just reading a magazine article and it went through the normal process of hours spent doing a restoration etc...It broke it down, I'll see if I can scan it in.

Any update?

I think the shop practices are very poor and the big deal here is where are the logs showing how many hours were spent on the car and for what exactly. You should have the logs by now and by not having them suggests the shop dosen't have them. If not then the shop is trying to scam your friend. You cannot determine cost without labor and can't determine labor costs without the logs. The shop should have listings of the parts too and their cost. Waiting for logs is not acceptable and you can bring action now w/o them and state that in your claim. Who's to say the guys won't just make up the hours and put that into a document?

The guy is attempting to pull a scam it seems. I would call it a day, forget about the car and the floor work and get a lawyer. Forget about all the hassel and trying to get logs that could be fake. Let the judge or trail determine the shops actions.

With the shop leaving the car in it's current condition, saying that 900 hours are used w/o proof and doing work not authorized this will end up in court anyway. Get a jump start on him.

Brad

Any way to post some pics of the car before, during, present. The guy should be in the con game not resto, I can't believe the hours. Live in NJ also would like to know the shop. If close would like to go check it out & the car!! Is it still in the shop??....Dave K

Curious if there is an update...Dave K.

update?