Shop problems

My friend who owns a small shop was asked to do a system in a ferrari 550 maranello. The car was brought over from a body shop from a $80,000 reapir/retrofit. He was going to look it over, plan out what he was going to do, had a friend of his from the Ferrari repair shop over to help as well. With labor and and gear it was to be about $14,000-$16,000 job. Navi, some fabrication, Dynaudio, Brax, etc. Some of this gear had to special ordered like the Pioneer screen and the radar detector which was a K-40.

The owner said he wanted to sound great blah blah blah. Well the owner called yesterday and said he wanted to scale back the project, and only spend about $10,000. So my friend says oh if ($16,000) that is too rich for your blood  then we can maybe do something. The owner flipped out and started bragging about how he owned Bentleys and Mercs.

The guy called back later and was acting friendly and buddy buddy and wants to go ahead do it for the "lower" price. Well my friend said ok, but has since changed his mind and returned the car to the body shop without telling the owner. Pretty ballsy imo.

I think he should have swallowed his pride and just did the job at a lower cost with lesser gear. What do you think? 

    With a guy like that i would get the money first then do the job. Even rish people dont like to spend money. i did a ferrari not to long ago and the guy did not want to pay me so i had to take him to court. and when i got paid then he got his car back.  make people sign their names next to the total bill so they cant stick you with free work. thats what i do when the bill is more then 5k.

SoundExplosion

you are corect but 10k is 10k thats alot of money to take someones word on. but by doing what i said you can get rid of dead beet people. you dont want to have to wait to get paid. even if you ask for 1/2 payment at least that covered work and product. and 1/2 when car get picked up. in new york  where i am from thats the only way. its sad how some people are.

SoundExplosion

I agree with both of your points. They are both logical. However when a customer backs out of a deal, especially like this one, it is a real pain in the ass, and frankly a bit of an insult. Product was special ordered, I had to drive quite a distance to get that k-40, cost is about 650 w/ difuser.

I don't know if I would have done it, but the guy was a real jerk on the phone apparently. Is it worth the possible future confrentations with this guy? Like I said, he probably is a knit picker. 

Consider this, if this was your car, wouldn't you be picky about it as well? Just because it is a high profile vehicle does not mean that the customer should be treated any different that a customer who drives a Pinto.

Now if special order parts were necessary, the customer should have been made to pay in avance for those parts with a no return option on them. We all need parts and they differ from vehicle to vehicle. All it takes is getting burned by a customer once to instigate a no return on special order parts rule. Perhaps this is something that all shops need to be more aware of and how to make the customer more aware of it. If the customer is made aware, chances are he wouldn't have backed out of it, but since an escape route was there, he took it.

Buyers are liars is what it comes down to, if the job is done properly, it leaves out any of the uncertainties between buyer and seller. We all have had picky tempermental customers but suck it up and do the job that you are asked to do. I agree with what aeux posted about completed work or work in progress that the customer now wants to change or eliminate, that customer is responsible for that portion of the job at the completed stage it is at. This is no different than building a house and changing the paint colour.

Sure the guy can be a jerk on the phone, but to cast him aside based on it, well now the shop will never have him or the referalls to continue to grow the business. I would get the customer on the phone, get him down to the shop and go through the whole damn thing again. Make the customer feel important, be thorough with him and explain to him how cancelling special orders affects the ability to do business. He sounds like a businessman to me and without talking to him as one, how is one ever suppossed to find out?

Well I think my friend is on a bit of an ego trip and just doesn't want to deal with the situation. I am in between in his desicion.

He runs a small shop, and is justified in being picky when it comes to customers. I believe his reasoning for dismissing this customer was to avoid further issues that probably would arise. Whether or not it is an 1k system or 16k system the headache and time wasted dealing with the customer isn't worth it. But reapeat customers are where its at, I know, and so are most of his customers.