Sorry, but I think you (and the OP) are being overly anal. You get a detailed invoice from me (the shop owner) with the parts installed and the charges for same parts. You do NOT get my invoice, a copy of my invoice, a blacked out copy of my invoice or anything with my company name on it. Period. End of story. Take your build and your car to someone who can accomodate you. What I pay, who I buy from are MY business. You are not going to go back to X company for warranty work/replacement because you have not paid for the item, I have. X company has no record of doing business with you and won't warrant an item that is secondhand. I stand behind my products and my work and I warrant my products and sales. Now as you've previously stated, that's not how you do business so you wouldn't be having me build your project and I wouldn't be accepting your project. But we would have discussed this at the beginning because I give you a contract ahead of time and we would never be at this position.
You and I are on the same page, you give a detailed statement, as I have stated several times, that suffices. It's the absence of that practice that would have the owner ask for copies!!! I get the warranty thing, you are right!!! I am a customer that understands targets and estimates, you are a builder that apparently offers them, a contract along with a detailed invoice. Those are my expectations as a customer, so frankly you are the kind of guy that I would want to do business with!!! You are one of the good guys!!!!!!
I get it, see the above post. Communication is key!!! As to your last paragraph,I'm sure you took a photo or 2 and gave the guy a call to tell him about the problem. If so and he still biched, the customer was unreasonable and is better somewhere else!
when i build stuff for people they know how much it costs because they have to pay me 1/2 up front. heck it took me a year just to read the work they've done. you should have worked this out in writing beforehand. its just good business. you watch too much Overhaulin' and not enough Peoples' Court. vaya con Dios
Man do you got me wrong. I could care less if you pay someone to work on your car. Hell, I worked in a rodshop for several years and that put food on my table. What I did say is "stereotypical" as in the bad stereotype we tire of. Not the average Joe that wants to pay for quality work. Bitching about the expense, asking for the shops copies of THEIR confidential invoices? Well, thats being a whiney bitch where I come from. And you can call it crass but in this day of overly PC tiptoeing I would rather tell it like it is than to coddle someone, our public schools do enough of that already. No, everyone is NOT a winner
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to expect to have some idea when they will get it done - 6 months, 12 months, whatever, realizing that's pending no one dying or anything in the meantime. Other than some fab work for the motor swap, this doesn't sound like a terribly complicated build, just paint and assemble at this point. So the guy watches Overhaulin' - if 60 guys can put a car back together in 24 hours, how long for just one guy to do it? 60x24=1440 hours - 180 days at 8 hours a day - six months. Not including the paint. If he works on just that car 4 hours a day, then 12 months. Shouldn't be that hard to figure out and then give the customer an estimate of 12-15 months using my figure as the example. Or am I oversimplifying things? As for the reciepts, the smart shop guy will make the dude some copies of them, put them all in a book for the customer, and then charge him a couple hours labor for it. Black out the prices if you want, a lot of that stuff a guy can look up what the consumer retail price is anyways.
No it isn't anywhere near Houston. I live in New Orleans...I just thought Houston wasn't so far away that I couldn't drive in from time to time and see how the work is going - if the opportunity presented itself.
Everything you have said here so far is absurd, if you want an estimate of the cost then it IS going to be done the same way a collision estimate is, where a 5 hour repair on paper only takes 1 maybe 2 hours tops. Do you really want it to be done this way??? Do you want to pay double or triple what you should??? The fact is that you will not get a price estimate, nor should you. In order to figure out a ballpark estimate would take a full day or more, you don't think about all of the researching, pricing out the parts, trying to guess the labor hours involved, trying to figure out how much to add to account for the unexpected. If you are willing to pay the hourly shop rate for the amount of time it takes to write up the estimate then sure I would gladly make one out for you, our shop rate is $50/hr., that will be $400 dollars please. This is pretty cut and dry here, you as a customer ARE being unreasonable, if you want the work to get done faster then talk to the owner and explain to them that you are willing to pay for more hours per week to be put into your project. If you make demands and expect the work to be done in YOUR time frame, then expect the quality to suffer. To the o.p., you have been provided with invoices that show in detail what you have been billed for, you see in person that the invoices were indeed correct. The shop looks well organized and the quality of the work is up to or above your standards. To expect the owner to give you any estimates is unreasonable, BUT for him to not give you original receipts for parts is also unreasonable. Explain to him why you want the receipts and that he can black out the prices, but instead of demanding them now, tell him you would like them at the end and copies are fine. You need to sit down and discuss a few things with him, set out a plan of what you still want done to the truck and what you are willing to pay each week. Tell him that you will do anything you can to speed up the process and ask if he is willing to do the same. Explain to him when you would like the project back and ask if that is even possible. Just remember, it all boils down to money, quality takes time and time costs money, if you have the money he WILL have the time.
Wow. I hope I don't get shot at for this response. As a shop owner an estimate can be made but the fact of the matter is no one knows what is under the paint and bondo. It's not like going to a restaurant and ordering something off the menu and adding lettuce or something. If I got my parts dropped off by a big truck 3 times a week and I was spitting out the same thing at a high volume, then the estimate wouldn't be an estimate, it would be a reciept. I pride myself and my shop on the fact that everything I do, I've never done before. What you the customer have to do is *trust* me. I know that's a hard thing to do in this world of ripoff artists, but again when you pick a shop for a job, REPUTATION is greater than price. You can't look for shops to do work like you look for that pair of shoes at the lowest price. Bottom line, anything in this world that involves talent or someone doing a job for someone else will be hard to find. Once you find that one shop that is good hang on to them. What happens a lot is the person is talented at what they do but the business suffers because they are not a businessman or they get burnt out and go down hill and become like the rest of mediocre fill-it-with-bondo shops. Business owners need to be payed by the hour or else there will be short cuts because you the customer have a set price you want to spend. In my shop we do it right or we don't do it. If you don't have the money, I don't have the time. When you play a game at the arcade, you put money in, you play the game. Want to play some more? Add money. Every car needs something that is hard to find. I am redoing a 73 caprice vert right now and the HARDEST thing to find was the rubber boot for the steering shaft. Who would have thought. This is what I am talking about. Having to stop to make phone call after phone call. I turned a 64 fairlane into a gasser and one thing the tranny needed was a dipstick. Ok right? Wrong! Look for a 2 speed auto dipstick and see what you come up with. The builder needs to cater to your needs and he also needs to be compensated or else he won't be around to help you later.
Here's the quick and easy formula to go by: Time to complete project: take estimate and multiply x 3. Total cost: Take estimate and multiply x 4. Building race cars is a bit different. There everything is x 2.
Some of you guys are missing the point!!!! An estimate is an estimate!!! If you get into the project and find some things that weren't seen you communicate with the customer and tell him how much longer and how much more!!! It' s all about keeping the customer informed. If I as the customer decide at that point that I'm getting too deep then I decide whether or not to get out!!! Pay my bill to this point and take my toy box and split. Some shop owners that have posted here get it, many of you don't. Being responsible for your word is important to me and other customers. My leaving my project with you is not a blank check and an open calender for you to do with what you want and when you please. Some of you forget that you work for me and that it is my money (and others) that pays your bills.Making excuses why you cannot create an estimate and communicate with the customer about changes in the contracted project is beyond me!!!!
Man... Is this thing still going? BTW, tell the next guy who works on your Streetrod to center the Front Wheels in the Wheelwells correctly. That would bother me more than anything else you mentioned...
Hell bigeasy...I didn't even see that. Looks like the front end needs to move an inch or so forward!!! Good luck...you may need it!!!!
Good. Cause you might find that its closer to 1 3/4", and that would almost double your original number...
What, did lay you it out on your cad system to figure out that measurement. A pro builder I'm not. That's why the "or so". You must be since you are so specific. Maybe you should be the guy building bigeasy's car!!!!
The reason most shops don't want to give a number and an end date is because as soon as they do, that number and that date is written in stone, regardless of the conditions they were issued under. If the guy gets the job done for less than the number, the customer wants to pay the lower figure, if he goes over, the customer wants him to eat the difference. If he gets it done early, the customer is happy and doesn't think a thing of it, if he's late, the customer loses their mind (never mind that their "cherry" body turned out to have multiple sections 4" thick with chicken wire reinforced bondo). I don't own a big Rod shop, but I do deal with customers on a pretty regular basis as an engineer, a machinist, and a builder of custom firearms and paintball markers. In my experience, one in ten customers is reasonable enough to take an estimate for what it is, and absorb the lumps and delays as they come. Most folks balk when the price goes up, and they really start to bitch when it takes longer than you said it would. I've taken to giving estimates for price that are "Not to Exceed", and estimates for time that are three times what I think I can reasonably complete the project in. Then, when I deliver early and/or under budget, I look like a hero, and the chances of looking like a zero are somewhat mitigated. However, I probably miss out on a lot of work by quoting such a long lead time. Scares some folks off, I'd say. I think the OP is being unreasonable to expect to have an accurate time line and very close estimate of the cost of a project such as he is undertaking. You can maybe ballpark it to within -+$10,000 or so, but even that would be iffy with a very rare car where everything is hard to find and expensive. Time wise, a year doesn't seem out of order at all for what has been done, assuming the shop has any other customers at all. Also, I have to say that I would never turn over copies of my invoices to a customer, regardless of how redacted they were. I would quite happily tabulate a nice list of parts used in the build, including the price I charged the customer for each one, but you'd never see my invoices. My suppliers and my costs are my business, and no one else's. I've been down that road before, and it always ends in harsh words and general grumpiness. The OP should have hashed all this out with the shop in question long before his auto went under the knife. After the work is half done is a piss poor time to be discussing contract arrangements.
His original post he received a estimate on time to finish maybe that time has ran by . He also posted a reply that he would like to varify the parts he wanted on it by brand or supplier all he asked was to see a copy of invoice with costs blacked out NO PROBLEM !! RIGHT if you cant supply that you are not a organized business owner . Again as a manager of shops i had work orders that had the part written on or a description of some type and the list price not the cost , how else are you going to keep up with the repair . The labor was booked on the back in hours so the man earning a paycheck was charged to the cost of rebuild . Everything is documented and can be shown at any time to anyone . Now you bring a car in to a collision shop with a 3 hour dent expect 4 to 5 days to repair , things can and do happen . If it was done in 3 days the customer was real happy . He will return on his next mishap in his car . But you have to know your men to estimate this . I had 3 sheet metal guys and 2 painters and new their talents of all of them .
On a different subject, Hows everything in Nawlins? Things getting back to normal after Katrina? Thanks
You'd have a hard time telling a hurricane came through - most structures in better areas have been repaired. Those areas that were really damaged nobody would really want to live in. The lakeview area is struggling to make a comeback...and families have move back in.
Finally,some sense. If I am the customer and you can't give me a reasonable price and time to completion,how can I possibly tell if I can afford the project or want my car tied up that long? You run into problems,tell me and we'll discuss the increased cost and time and what I want to do. And you damn well better be able to show me what went into the job. Some of you want to be "artists" and want a blank calendar and blank check to work with. Name one other business that runs that way.
Uhh...our government? Thanks for the supporting comment - This project isn't exactly pocket change for me and I need to move my finances around ahead of time if I'm expect to have the cash on hand to pay the bills.
Question on the subject of "timelines". A friend of mine dies while waiting over 12 YEARS for a restoration to be completed by a very reputable shop. Money was paid, most in advance, as were 2 parts cars and a ton of NOS parts to help the builder and lower costs. He had no "time of completion" in his contract, and was given many excuses by the shop as to why he was finishing other cars around my friends car. Mostly personal problems with the shop's owner, not problems with the car. With so much invested in advance, taking the car and parts back from an out-of-state shop would be difficult. When he attempted to take legal action, Missouri laws said that as long as the shop was making "progress" on the car, without a completion date, he was out of luck legally. He hired a photographer for over 6 years to go the shop monthly and record the progress, which was as slow as possible. He was an angry mess for the last years of his life, all he wanted was his car done. He felt ripped off, embarrassed, and pissed that after years of customizing his own cars, when his health prevented him from being able to build his own car, he relied on a shop that did the unthinkable. There are some incredibly talented guys from great shops on here, and I completely understand your point of view when it comes to "unforseen problems" that car present themselves during a restoration. As a plumber, I agree that my costs should not be on your invoice, just what parts were replaced. But, if a guy is having a car built, what can he do to insure that it will come back in a reasonable amount of time? It isn't always a case of throwing money at it, and even a reputable shop can do this to someone. And the courts say he had no leg to stand on without a dat of completion.
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