Thats it, I'm done, no more!
 

I've had it. I'm not fixing any more local bugs for people.

Here's the story:

I put 300 bucks worth of trim and rubber on a girls 71 vert, so she can sell it, charge 200 in labor. I did a few extra repairs and glued the carpet backdown. Windshield busted while changing the seal, so I pull a good one from my project car and give it to her (later I find out 71 super windshields are close to $200) Mom agreed to the price beforehand, then take over 6 weeks to payme (after I'm dumb enough to let the girl have her car back)

Fast forward 4 month, they kept the car, she calls to say the carpet is rolling up and the door panel, which was rotting away from being wet, needs to be repaired. I said, no problem, bring it over, I can fix you up, probably have a good DP you can have, blah blah blah.

She says, okay, here's boyfriend, wants to talk (brain says wtf?)
Blah blah blah, here's some "monkey" glue, you didn't fix the DP right, fixed with masking tape (PO doing), know you'll do it right this time, blah blah blah. I say whatever....hang up, we're done


So I stew over this for about half and hour. I try to be a nice guy (wife says too nice), but I can't do it this time. Had it now.

Call the place back, boyfriend answers, I tell him I can't fix the car, not gonna do it. Hand phone to mom, says he wants to talk to you. Blah blah blah, I'd be happy to fix the car for you, but you'r boyfriend just rubbed me the wrong way, and I'll never be able to make him happy. Sorry.

She puts him back on and I'm told I can kiss his a** if I ever see him in town. Told him I would be happy to.


The whole thing pisses me off. I'm a nice guy and like to help people, but I'm tired of being walked over. Not my fault her boy friend is a butt and I don't need to deal with it.

So, from now on, I'm sticking to GL cars and Porsches, and my labor rate is going up.

I'm done, rant mode off.

I hate it when people are ungrateful for work that gets done on the side. I feel for you, but tell them your work carries no guarantees. If they want body shop guarantees, tell them to go to one. I only take cash when I do side work, and I tell my customer I can only take it by law as a "friendly gesture". I charge $50 an hour at home. I once did an alternater on a saturn in my driveway on my fiancee's cheap friend's car. I said specifically I AM NOT LIABLE IF YOUR CAR BLOWS UP, or whatever else may happen to your car after I fix it. She called me two weeks later, and said she wanted to know why the dealer told her that her coil pack failed. Whenever you fix a car for a customer, if anything goes wrong with it afterwards, it's the tech's fault, even if they never maintain their car.

In my business Unless I really trust the customer, I never do anything for free, like throw in a little extra whatever, because if the job comes back to bite you in any way, whatever you did right or did for nothing is forgotten about.

Ron

Get used to it......

Make it hard for customers to do things like this to you! I have mastered that aspect of life!


One time a local guy (I don't do anything local anymore, I even send engine jobs to other hack shops) had me repair a dropped valve on a single port. I replaced the head with new castings, it ran like a to. 3 weeks later that Jackass came back and walked around my gate. I WAS ALREADY FURIOUS because he interruped a dyno sessionby doing so. He drops the car off, and calls me to say that I spray painted the heads to make them look new!

I was severely pissed off, I told him to come get his damn car before I pushed it into my pond, where it belonged, I gave him 30 minutes to get the car. He showed up, and started his crap.........It was all I could do to holdmy Marine temper. The car left, and so did he FOREVER! About a month ago he called me because he needed engine help...I laughed and slammed the phone down while he was still whining.

Fastest way there is to suck the joy right out of something you love... do it for someone else as a favor.

Coot, that is the truest thing about working on someone's car. "but my radio worked fine before you replaced the radiator hose!" ... "and now I hear a noise from the trunk".:rolleyes:

hi
i stopped doing things on the side years ago. too much **** not enough thanks people dont like the truth ie its a pos sell it its not worth the hassel

my bros got a couple of cars i look after for him ive got my own its enough just dont need the agro as it stands i enjoy it.

I never work on anything on the side. I'ts not worth my time for the money. The only things I will do is help my friends work on there cars and all I charge them is plate of hot wings and a few cold beers;)

Yep, some people don't have the brain power to operate a car much less understand how it works. There are alot of people that you will never be able to please no mater what you do for them. Just when you think you have done a bullet proof job, you find out that the person you did it for is so stupid they could F*#k up an anvil with a plastic hammer.
"Hey you re-tubed my amp and it sounded great untill the show I did at the **** Club. It started smoking and quit in the middle of our set." Hmmm do you think it could be this beer that has been spilled down inside the thing? "No I have spilled beer on it before and it didn't do that".:doh: "I need it for a gig on Sat. night".
Yep that happend to me, but I made him pay me to fix it and told him to find another tech next time. $2500 Vacume Tube amp head(Soldano) and he beat it all to hell in a year. Zen knows who he is.:rolleyes:

lol. took me about 1 sentence into the story to figure it out.

Which one? The anvil/plastic hammer one? LOL

I only do side work for family and VERY close friends who understand the concept of "Murphy's Law" and know enough to not to conjure up any correlation between, say, a timing belt replacement, and why their left rear blinker quit working as they pulled out the driveway.

Ignorance is bliss for a lot of people who don't understand automotive service and repair. Many of them will take advantage of some mechanic's good natured gestures of "making it right to keep the customer happy" and come up with some far fetched ideas for relating a new problem to a recent repair.

I had one guy try to squeeze a free tire repair out of me 'cause he SWORE it hapened in our driveway the day before. He had 160 more miles on the odometer than he did the previous day, so I asked him if he had any proof. He said he had only driven from our shop, to his apartment, and back again the next morning on his way to work.

"You live 160 miles away?" I ask.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"That's how far you've driven since yesterday." I said.

"Well... I drove to the store and back, and did a few things... I know I didn't run over a nail on the roads here in Cary. But...Well...you see your shop is the kind of place where nails end up on the ground."

"Nails... at an auto repair shop?" I say

"You must not notice all the new construction around here do you?" I added

He says "Listen, I know it happened in your driveway, so I don't see where I should pay for something that's not my fault!"

"Your'e right." I said "You shouldn't have to pay."

I took a screwdriver and pushed the plug down into the inside his tire.

"There you go! No charge!"

I didn't like the guy anyway.

Yetibone

LOL... thats really funny man. What did the guy do?
Did he look at you in disbeleif?

I can't say that I've ever worked on any one elses ride, with the exception of a few close freinds, but they have never complained about my work.....they really can't, they worked on them at the same time I was there. I never work on someone elses car unless they are in a lot of trouble or they just needed my help for the moment!

Sorry about the misfortunes guys! It gets better!:)

John

Yeah he was pretty shocked, but that's what it took to make a point to this guy. I told him there was a Goodyear tire store up the road, and across the intersection, and that he could make it if he drives real slow.

After he realized that I mean buisness, and don't like being blamed for things that are so unsubstansiated, he decided to pay us our going rate for tire repair, which is EIGHT WHOLE DOLLARS
and agreed never to return. (much to mine, and my bosses delight)

By the way, the guy drives a '97 Cadillac Seville STS, and makes six figures a year.

He brought it to us with the Check Engine light on. I extracted code P0306 (cyl 6 misfire). Read the freeze frame data which said that the code was set like 28 ignition cycles before, and hadn't repeated since.

I reset the ECM's memory, checked for an ignition wire arcing to ground, found none, told him it may have been a glitch, or it may indicate that hes car needs a tune up soon, and sent him on his way, having only charged him $10. for the 10 minutes or so that it took to extract the code.

Mabye he felt like he didn't get his ten bucks worth that day or something.


Yetibone

It always seems like those that have the least money are the most gratefull and those that have the most money are the least gratefull when you cut them a break on labor charges or "go the extra mile for them." I work on everything from $500 dirt bikes to $35,000 jet boats and the people that own the two types are generally very differant. I will bust my but doing a service or rebuilding an engine on a jet boat so the "doctor" can have his boat for the weekend and I don't even get a thank you for running around in a craze all day. On the other hand I will program a key for a personal watercraft which takes about 10 to 15 minutes and the customer will buy us (the shop) pizza or some thing. Sorry for ranting and raving but I feel better now.:silly:

Try dealing with Airline Pilots,some of the most arrogant people I've seen(not all of them, but many). Just because they can fly it, they think they Know how it works and what is needed to fix it. And some of them think that there is noboby with more authority than them. At least when they get to full of themselves I can throw the "Out of service tag" on the throttels and run them out of the ****pit because then the aircraft belongs to me and my guys. The only time I have to deal with Flight crews is when one of my mechanics has trouble with one of them, they call me out to deal with the crew so they can deal with the aircraft. Some times you just can't do both. In short, I get to deal with the ones that have already shown their @$$ and it is already a bad deal when I walk on the plane, so I just "tag" the ****pit and send the crew out (kinda like time out for the bad kids).