Others have offered suggestions to fix. I am surprised you didn't take payments along the way. Even building an engine I would require half up front just to cover parts. Then after the parts were in I required another payment of half the remainder, so when they show up they only owe me a couple grand at the most.
So for the future, do just that.
When I had my tube chassis built for my car, it was the same deal - the guy that did the work required half up front, another quarter at half finished, and the last quarter to remove it from the shop. Makes a $10K bill a $2500 bill at the most (as he is never potentially out of pocket on the money 'til the end) instead of having $8K dumped into tubing and labor costs and have me not come thru on the whole $10K. He would have "lost" $500 if I didn't pay the final amount, but he would have also had my car.
Then while you hold the car (in my case engine), you have it clearly stated in the original quote that they have 2 weeks to pay after final assembly or you start charging storage. That really tends to motivate people when you start tacking storage fees onto the bill.
Cars are harder than engines since a title is involved... with engines after 6 months I had the quote say I had the right to ebay the engine no reserve and whatever amount was earned above what they owed me I would reimburse to them, up to the amount of the original quote. That meant if I quoted $10K, they paid $7K and didn't come thru at the end, I just needed to sell it for $3K to break even. Did it one time, sold the engine for $6K (which the buyer got a smokin' deal on!!), reimbursed the original guy $3K since I was only owed $3K and told him where he could put that $3K when he started crying. Cost himself $4K to never get the engine.
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