You’re reading things that don’t exist, likely due to carrying your animosity over from politics section. mentioned very early that warning others to not do business is a bad approach to getting the car and could make things much worse. Much safer to win a case and then post results. he hasn’t updated so it’s just a question. Hopefully he has the car. If not, hopefully by now there’s a case and he will win it soon and have the car. It’s five months from the start so hopefully there is movement one way or the other.
You are asking a lawyer 'Why so nasty'? I think he took offense that the OP did not hire a lawyer essentially, and now wants to rub the OP's nose in it.
Not at all. Hoping he has the car. Most often the “warning about such and such” has no ramifications at all. But when it goes south people can face real legal headaches that go far past the initial problem they had.
Car was back before first post? https://rennlist.com/forums/east-us-rennlist-region/1167459-anyone-else-problems-w-magnum-collision-predatory-biz-practices-in-atlanta-georgia.html
We have seen this before......when someone uses an on-line community to bash a service facility. I don't have a dog in this fight but the OP should have done his homework and hired an attorney at the first sign of trouble. He says he did hire one on the rennlist postings but who knows. Hard to tell without hearing the other side of the story. Just another drive by screaming injustice. Statler was right. 11-22-2019, 12:42 PM Join Date: Oct 2019 Image Unavailable, Please Login I am happy to report that I have retrieved my car from dishonest Magnum Collision. I'll share more details when I get a chance. Hopefully this will help others in the car community to be aware of the type of scam that I experienced and to avoid shops like Magnum Collision/Performance Auto Collision. Image Unavailable, Please Login 12-04-2019, 01:06 PM #13 ATL997.2 Image Unavailable, Please Login So as previously mentioned I did recover my car from dishonest Magnum Collision. I have to give the lion's share of the credit to my insurer Hagerty. Dishonest Magnum was going to steal my car using a well intentioned but flawed Georgia law. I said I would add more details when I had some time so here they are: The scam seems to go like this (there could be other ways that they take advantage of people, but this is the one that I experienced): get someone's car in and then kill a bunch of time. After having their car for a couple months but not really accomplishing anything in the way of repairs present the customer with a significant change in terms that works in dishonest Magnum's favor (in my case, their intake paperwork said that you pay when you pick up your car. Later they told me I had to pay up front). If you accept the significant change in terms, that works great for dishonest Magnum. If you say "I'm not ok with that." and that you are going to take your car to a shop that operates in a more ethical and transparent way, then they will try to (figuratively) rape you on the way out the door in the form of a fraudulent bill. This will likely be in the form of "storage" fees and the like (remember, they've kept your car for a while by now) but they grossly violate their own posted storage fee policy (see photo of their sign earlier in this thread) as there were no storage fees due on my car per their posted sign. If you pay the fraudulent bill that they send you then that works great for dishonest Magnum. If you refuse to pay their ransom then that works great for dishonest Magnum as well b/c then they will just legally steal your car by filing for a lien based on the fraudulent bill. You can then either let them steal your car or sue them in court over the fraudulent bill, which will deprive you of your property even longer while you wait for the lawsuit to run it's course. This post is getting a bit long so I'll have to add more later but the gist is this: once they have possession of your car they will exploit that to their maximum advantage. They aren't trying to be a good, upstanding ethical business. They just want to exploit you. Once they have possession of your car you have already lost so I would recommend avoiding them like the plague. Image Unavailable, Please Login
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Doesn't work that way in FL. If you dispute a repair shop bill in FL, you must post the bill $$$ at the local courthouse. You then have the legal authority to retrieve your car. You can then battle it out in court. Repair shops in FL are required to carry a bond. If you win in court, you are immediately paid ALL damages from either the shop's cash bond or the insurance company who guarantees their bond.
Are you an attorney with a specialization in this area? If so, in what state do you practice? Or are you otherwise an expert on this topic?
Yes, got the strong impression that they were experienced at unfair and deceptive business practices.
Thanks for finding that for me, my friend. Saved some time. Re: "hearing the other side of the story" I actually have that in writing and could probably share it. Let me check. They put quite few untruths in it that would need to be addressed though.
I wonder then what happened thereafter. Pretty hard to end up convicted guilty of stealing your own property. And not paying your bill might be considered a commercial dispute, not criminal. That said, I imagine there are some laws on the books to attempt to protect shops from this sorta thing.
Obviously knowing what I know now about their deceptive business practices I wouldn't in a million years trust Magnum Collision/Performance Auto Collision with a car but you do bring up a good question regarding doing one's homework. Before I took the car there what I knew was that the Magnum Collision arm of the business sponsored two of the main local car shows in Atlanta and that a friend had taken his car to Magnum several years before and was happy with his experience. (This was however under different ownership. Magnum now has the same ownership as Performance Auto Collision. Or "One team, two locations" as they call themselves. https://www.magnumcollision.com/one-team-two-locations/ .) I also wanted to support Magnum for supporting the local car community with their sponsorship of the local car shows. I didn't know at the time that the ownership of Magnum was now the same as that of Performance Auto Collision. Magnum previously had a good reputation in the local car community and I didn't at the time have a reason to suspect that they had started mistreating people who trust them with some of their most prized possessions. From asking around in the car community I have learned that their reputation has gone downhill in recent years b/c of the unfair and deceptive business practices, but I didn't know that at the time I made the mistake of trusting them with my car. Obviously with 20/20 hindsight I would have asked around and researched them a lot more. There is a certain amount of trust necessary between people for society to function. If we spent hours vetting every business we patronize every time we do business with them (b/c something could have changed since the last time you were there, right?) we would never get anything done. Unfortunately, there are those like the management of Magnum/Performance who take advantage of that trust.