Shops of Horrors

Here's your place to share your experiences dealing with unethical, sloppy, or unprofessional shops. Please refrain from naming names of individuals. You can give city and location of the shop, but please keep details to private messages between each other.  

Well I got taken real bad by a shop.  When I was 19 I took my first shortbox, a 1990 GMC Sierra Stepside (which i still own) to a shop my friend took his ride too.  My friend and the shop owner got to know each other and it got to the point where my friend started to recommend this shop to me.  I bought some euro tails, I took in a Truckin' mag and picked them off an add in the back.  I recieved my euros no problem.  Everything was good.  So i decided to step it up a notch with my truck and I bought some used MTX Thunder 9 or 8000's form a friend.  I took my truck in for a custom fiberglass center console.  He said a grand I said ok.  I dropped 400 on the spot and left my truck with them, started to pay off the sub box.  Meanwhile I bought a Chev Phantom grille, supposedly complete with euro markers, billet bow tie, and new grille shell, so I updated my played out 1990 GMC front end with the newer 98 Chev style phantom.  I was working all over the province in the oil patch and I would occasionally come home travel to the shop, which was an hour from my hometown, and drop some more money for the sub box, and a few other goodies I bought.  (billet pedals, K&N filter lid, K&N Filter)  When I came home one day a friend had said that the shop owner was talking about how my truck was garbage and a waste of money!!  A 1990 GMC Shorty with a 350 TBI!?  Rediculous!  So I Called the shop owner and told him I was coming to pick my "Piece of *** up.  He back tracked and said it was one of his guys with a GMC Longbox who was envious and that the guy was fired.  It was enough to get me to keep my truck around his shop.  I started checkin in on it and the grille {which i paid 1000 bucks for!!!) was half on, kinda just hanging there buy a few bolts, and my front bumper was gone.  So i went back to work and i got a call from my friend one day saying "Derrick (the shop owner) was going out of business and it was time to go and get some money that he owed my friend, and to find out whats going on with my truck. So my friend dan and I went there in his 97 ford stepside lightning clone and picked up a cheque for Dan and I asked why my truck was still in shambles.  His response was that he didnt want the parts gettin stolen from inside/off of my truck.  Another lie i fool heartedly believed.  So I went back to work again and then i got another phone call saying that the building was going to get demolished and i had better get my truck outta there.  So my father had the truck towed to his office, (he also works in the oil patch) about 20 minutes away from the shop.  So when I finally got home to check out my truck, nothing was done!  No sub box, no subs, no billet pedals, no K&N, and no front bumber!  The grille was hanging on the front end by a few measly screws, which left me wondering where i went wrong.  Then i found out he also ripped out my power window controls.  The problem i ran into trying to hold him accountable was that he was putting all my purchases in the computer under my file, and i would recieve a reciept when the truck was done.  What a sucker i was!!  All i can say is make sure you get reciepts for all your truck purchases, oil, light bulbs, everything.  Im still sore from the whole incident, not only did i pay for parts that i never recieved, but he stole parts that were mine in the first place.  Now the Phantom grille is bent and i have an old bumper, i gave the euros to my bro and my truck looks worse than when i sent it in to him.  I still have my street scene cal vu mirros, which he broke the glass in the passenger side mirror.  Otherwise my truck now has dents, dings, scratches, and other marks and bruises to a once very clean truck.  Oh did i mention he stole my cd player too?  Not very nicely as i need to replace some clips for the center piece of the dash.  As i said i still have my truck and i hope one day to turn it into a nice, clean lowrider.  All I can say is If you're out there reading this, and you know who you are, you really screwed me over, and if i ever track you down i wont stop until you can't find a job in the industry again.  
-Cody

Wow I didnt think my post was that long, it was a nightmare dealing with this shop.  Please read my story and try to learn from my mistakes as a kid.  
-Cody

Actually, reading that reminded me of a personal experience working for a shop when I was younger. Right after my first stint on a magazine, I decided to look for greener pastures. So I quit the mag job and went to work for this BMW tuner/mechanic in the San Fernando Valley in California. The place looked really nice, with a beautiful lobby with leather sofas and everything. I told the guy what kind of salary I wanted and he said it shouldn't be a problem.

Well, not long after I started, I realized I'd made a mistake. The shop owner kept talking about "Ray." He kept saying how great Ray was, how organized and professional. Ray this, Ray that...blah, blah, blah.

Well, turns out Ray was in prison for stealing from his last employer. But the owner must have been drinking his Kool-Aid or something, because right before Ray was supposed to be released, he said, "I think I'm going to hire Ray back." I knew right then, things were going downhill fast.

I was only at that place for about four months, but during that time, I saw what an A-hole the shop owner was. He was really arrogant and rude toward customers, some of which had spent thousands and tens of thousands with him. I remember one time when he was on the phone with a customer, he rubbed the receiver on his crotch in a vulgar gesture.

If that wasn't enough, I could have sworn I saw him trying to roll back an odometer on a customer's car, which is highly illegal.

Long story short, soon after Ray started, the owner fired me, and even though I was upset at the loss of livelihood, I was very relieved in a lot of other ways to be out of that corrupt place.

Moral of story: Don't let first impressions deceive you.  

Unfortunately, I think all too often, you have good employees that work for rotten bosses, but it's the bosses that give a shop a bad name. That's why a lot of shops with a bad reputation have high turnover. I know from some past experiences, there were really good people that worked for a-hole bosses. It's a shame there are those type of people out there.  

This isn't really related to shops of horrors.  One of the reasons Body Shops have such a high turn over rate is because of the pay.  Auto Body workers are by far the lowest paid worker.  Im not saying they are making $2 an hour, but for the work and responsibility they have they should be gettin paid thousands of dollars more a month.  I know I worked for $10 an hour (remember i live in canada where $20 an hour jobs are easy to find) and the responsibilty and pressure to perform was intense.  I lost sleep wondering if i was going to get the next ride out the door by deadline, or if i was going to screw something up and have to fork over half my cheque to cover my mistakes.  Its a really stressful job.  
-Cody