am I over reacting on the body shop?

[70rs]

Get your car and forget the guy even exists. Cut your losses and run. Sorry to hear it happened.

[elitecustombody]

search my sandblasting ordeal me and my customer went thru yearly this year on Porsche 356,the owner pulled the car out without paying a penny,after sandblaster's $800-900 quote became $6100 bill, he spent few days going downtown and getting cour order,got the cops to escort him and pull the car, I don't know the details as far as how,but I'm sure if you call or go to court house ,they can help you. It sucks ,since I lost a good powdercoating contact because of this, but life goes on

[kttrucks]

Do your homework, talk to a lawyer and police, get your car back and then go after him with both barrels. Guys like that make me sick and give legitimate shops a bad name. Bottom line, get your car back so he cant use it as leverage, then take steps to go as far as you are willing to force him to make things right financially. I wouldnt let him do any more work on your car... that ship has sailed and you wont get any better satisfaction than you've already gotten.

Sorry to hear about this **** head.... good luck!

BTW, next time have a written agreement drawn up, not just an estimate.... this gives you concrete proof regarding what you negotiated, not just a handshake.

KT.

[BritishGreen68]

Yep i would take it out of the shop ASAP, just for the guy being an asshole. I would never let a prick like that work on my car i dont car how good of a deal it seems. I work at a bodyshop, and we never charge a customer storage on a resto type job, that's just retarded. I would be mad just about that let alone the work on the car. Get the car in your hands, and do a little research if you don't want to finish it yourself and get it to a good shop to finish it. Hopefully the guy just didn't finish the work, and didn't hack the work he did do (remember repop parts dont fit). If he has done an ok job up to this point you should be fine. $5K doesn't go real far in the restoration world so i wouldn't say you lost too much.. we just got $13K to paint a car with no sheetmetal replacement, just did a couple little patches, body work and paint inside and out, and its a white car that was already white. If you want to start replacing all the sheetmetal your talking time and money.. I would NOT pay his storage fees, and i would only pay for labor and time he can prove based on the original deal. If he has no documentation there is nothing he can do about it anyway... of course its the same on your end when it comes time for legal action..
-Funny story actually, we had a roof put on a house we own, and the roofers did a terrible job on the front fascia, so my mom who is in charge of the finances, took 15% percent off the bill when when she paid, and they couldn't do a damn thing about it because the work they did and the agreement was not documented well, and obviously it did look bad. The company came out and just looked at the roof when it was done and pretty much said ok fine. Same kinda deal, you could probably just take your car without paying him anything more and he wouldn't have a leg to stand on because he has no proof of what he did. Bring the sheriff, get your car. Roof doesn't leak though lol...

[Flash68]

I know this story too well.... you aren't a high priority customer because either you have not much profit in it for them on your project, or in my case, I negotiated a very good deal for myself on the work and therefore any higher profit job that came in jumped to the head of the line.... got my car out of there 18 months later after a 6-9 month estimated time to complete.

I agree with others that you don't have much into it (except a loooong time) and just be happy you are only down 5 grand or so. Just go get it and maybe take him to small claims since the amount is low. Don't bother getting an attorney that's for sure....

Sucks... good luck.

[rjsjea]

Did you get the car back yet??