stephen.osborne1

The military probably would have given me at least some legal advice... But I am no longer in the Army... I am a DOD contract civilian now... So that rules that out.
My wife is picking up the car later today (I'm 10 hours ahead of the west coast). She has the trailer reserved at u-haul to pick it up. All her friends are working to day, so she is looking for someone to go with her, no only to help guide her onto the trailer, but also as a witness in case they mention anything.
She called again yesterday and of course the manager "wasn't in". The guy she did talk to said that he doesn't see them giving us any moey back... My wife is no push over, so I expect her to really ches some @$$ when she does get there.
I'll tell her to be on the look out for some sort of business license that might have the owner's name on it... They still refuse to give us the name and I couldn't find it online.
I am still waiting for the e-mail they said they sould send me, or even a call back. I really kind of think they manager is just spineless. I've never met him, but my wife says he's kind of a weasle.
As far as the crack head and lead pipe goes, that wouldn't be nearly as satisfying as filling the air with so much lead that it no longer can support life. That's my old platoon's motto. Life was so much simpler back then...

MetalEd

I would post the info all to a blog and make sure you Digg it. The publicity works both ways for a company. As long as you have everything well documented and post everything. Post the name and all related info. Use the internet to get something done. You can get a lot of help from the Consumerist.com forums and people will rally to get it corrected and get any info you might need. Tons of help and great advice on how to handle it correctly. Everyone over there loves stories like this in order to help straighten it out for you.
Companies like this rip people off, use your disassembled car as a threat to get more money. Thinking that if it is apart and no hope of getting your classic car back together in working order will get them more money. Or worse that you will just give up and be in debt for the storage fees, so they can keep the car.
Don't let it go, get what they owe you.
Thanks for your continuing service and personal sacrifice!

odonian

i've dealt with small claims court before, and what i can tell you is that if you are serious about getting some money out of these morons you need to file a pro se (on your own/no attorney) small claims complaint. it will accomplish two things: 1. it will make the shop owner seriously consider just giving you your money back to avoid him having to waste time or hire his own attorney, and 2. it will give you a good shot at getting your money back via a small claims trial. assuming you have evidence that you paid them, what you paid them to do, and generally, what took place (small claims evidence is most often paper trails.....you may also be able to call independent witnesses, like your wife or mechanic), you have a good shot at getting a part or all of your money back.

small claims judges are typically exceedingly forgiving when it comes to the litigants before them, and so you just need to be prepared to show the judge what happened and to back it up with documentation.

honestly, if you file suit i've found that more often than not the shop will not want to deal with the lawsuit and will just pay you to go away. there's no guarantee that will happen in this case, but a little leverage never hurt anybody.

in order to file a suit you would need to go to your county courthouse and go to the clerk's office, ask them for a small claims complaint, fill it out, and give it back to them. you'll have to pay a small fee (typically around 100 bones), and then get it served on the shop owner/shop via the sheriff (typically around 25 bones).

once the shop has been served, call em up and tell them you don't want to go to court, but you want your GD money back. good luck man, i've had good results with this method, though it is a bit labor intensive and requires some serious pissed offedness at times to stick with it.

stephen.osborne1

My wife picked up the car today. She chewed them out extensively... Then they offered to pay about half of what we asked for... 1,300. She told them she would have to talk to me about it, but more than likely no.
I told her hell no. She is going to the court house on monday to file with small claims. Maybe after they are served, they will change thier tune. I am confident they will lose if we go to court. We have a lot of documention. Hopefully we can get more people to come with us as witnesses.
What else can I claim in court? Rental costs for the trailer to take it to/from the shop each time, money for the inconvenience of not having our extra car, pain and suffering(mental anguish), anything else other than the obvious paint and prep/labor?

hiboostwoody

They will probably give her some literature as to what can and can't be claimed in the lawsuit.

oldrock

glad to hear you got the car back. I'd probably change all fluids and drain the gas if it were me just to be safe since you never know what they might have done to it once they knew you were picking it up.

As for all that pain and suffering stuff, I don't know about your state but I suspect the max amount will be hit just with the actual cost so doubt you will be able to go for anything else. Might just have to consider this a lesson learned about what can happen when using a shop for repairs on a classic car. I wanted to also say thanks for sharing your story since it helps all of us when we share our experiences both good and bad.

MetalEd

If you find out who the owner is, still make sure the sheriff still serves the shop, not his home. Nothing will let them know you are more serious about it than having the sheriff serve a lawsuit to the business in front of other customers. They may want to settle with you just to keep their image clean. I know I wouldn't do business with any shop that was being served by the sheriff in front of me!

stephen.osborne1

From what we can gather, the owner lives in Florida... We are in Washington state... Told my wife to look for a posted busines license, but she was so flustered when she got there, she forgot. She'll be going to the county clerk tomorow to file, or at east see what the first steps are...
The new paint shop has already written me and said they should be able to get it done, make it look good and have it ready for me when I get home. They are at least willing to contact me, which is more than I can ay for the other place...
My wife did say that while she was loading the car onto the trailer, a couple workers from the neighboring body shop came out and asked what took her so long to pick up the car... I don't know in what context they meant that... As in they have seen thier neighbors do this to people before, or they are on thier neighbor's side and were being smart @$$es. She kind of thinks the first of the two... so maybe they have a history of this.

noroof66

You have a great wife for working on all this.
I would agree with the others about small claims court, should not take too long and with photos you would get some money back. Keep in mind I serious doubt you would get it all back. The judge will try to make a decision on the work they did complete and the value. Hope it works out for the better.
Thanks for serving.

stephen.osborne1

yeah, my wife is great... She really does a lot for me... And she works at an auto parts store, so I get a great discount. I just updated my avatar... That is the two of us last August, right after we got the car back from the paint shop the first time and I was home on vacation. We were so happy with the paint back then...Looked good from afar, but as soon as we looked closer, we bagan to see flaws, then bubbles/lines, etc...