My (Bob) Norwood Experience

How does a client get that deep into you? More than 6 figures and a year. I'm around boats a lot and the standard practice is a hefty deposit and progress payments if it is a project that takes more than 2 months.

 

Dentists.

I had to hire a new assistant last month and the stories I heard were unbelievable. Changing dates on insurance claims is just the tip of the ice burg fraud.

I have a file on one here in town that tells people that they need a crowns on teeth that don't need them (some do but I am talking about the ones that don't even have a filling and are not cracked or otherwise symptomatic). As if that wasn't bad enough, he charges out crown buildups (unnecessary if you don't even have a filling in a tooth), a porcelain crown THEN adds another $800 for the porcelain (when he is already charging you for it to begin with), then - and this is the cherry on top - uses a non porcelain plastic lab processed temp material to save on the lab bill.

That is fraud on top of fraud on top of malpractice.

I see it often enough in general that I want to puke but some are just worse than others. So, yeah, that **** is VERY widespread.

 

Mechanics, lawyers and accountants.

 

Some clients were billed quarterly, others were billed ... honestly, whenever mgmt decided to get around to billing them. It also takes longer to bill when you don't simply export the invoice out of Quicken but instead print it out, make lots of notes on it, and have the accountant redo various things to match your revenue goal.

It was an odd place to work. It was an unspoken rule (but you could tell it was the rule) that employees shouldn't talk to each other, except about project specifics which needed a quick info exchange with a co-worker. Question, answer, done, get back to your desk. If a manager noticed 2 employees chatting during a bit of downtime (and I'm talking 5 minutes during the day... ie, "got plans for the weekend?"), he would walk over and say, "So what are we doing?" "Erm... just talking... I guess...?" Both assigned a new task and directed to separate & get back to work. They didn't flat-out say "no talking, go back to your desk!" but that was the directive.

So as a result, info was very compartmentalized. I didn't learn about all the billing stuff until a few months after I quit, when Jimmy and I were having a beer and catching up on old times. There a few "you are fracking kidding me!" moments during the evening, and several unconventional things about the company made more sense.

 

I suspect there is more of the oddball billing going on in the world then we either want to know about or can accept. But is sure seems like it happens a lot. As a business owner myself I bill everything the same, regardless of who im doing work for. You could be Joe regular or uber millionaire it doesn't matter to me matter to me, I charge a certain rate for certain services. I also want to touch back on something Dave touched on and thats this, if i bill out say $40 an hour for someone, but pay them $10 per hour it actually costs me closer to $20 per hour to employ them. I wouldn't and dont use the method described, in fact i have a guy that only runs for parts, stocks inventory in the warehouse and does odds and ends. But this costs is figured into my actual hourly rate along with maintenance costs for equipment, auto insurance for company vehicles, ect act and everyone pays equally for this.

In the case of this situation I believe that the OP is getting stuffed and that Norwood made mistakes that the OP shouldn't have to pay for. And I sure dont think there is anyone here that would tolerate anyone using the same tactics on them either. Did the OP make mistakes, yeah but only because he didnt know any better, which I will point out alot of folks have done in and out of the automotive world. But to put it in perspective if I was having a ford pinto worked on and the price was agreed to before work started and then the work was done shoddily, and they charged 3 times the agreed price then held my car hostage I sure would hire an attorney and id make sure it was as public as possible so no one else got shafted by the guy who was doing it to me. But a good builder would have notified of trouble along the way, advised there would be cost over runs, offered to halt work while decisions were made, and ensured parts being installed were in proper working order before installing them, or at least thats how my mechanics have done it.

 

^^^^^Perfect

 

That seems cut and dry. But we are only getting Russ's version of events AND we not know Russ already hired an attorney. Surely if this situation were as simple as this any attorney would have no problem getting the car back to Russ.

I think that actually happened. I think Bob did notify Russ along the way, many, many times. And I suspect Bob has dozens of emails with "go ahead" and "gotta have AC in Texas" in writing from Russ...and that is exactly why Russ's attorney wasn't able to do anything. But that is just speculation.

Aaron

 

Holy crap..... Pure fabrication and speculation. Why would you even make a post like that?

 

Difference in the op’s situation is according to his account the price for something was well inflated from price told. Also in the Op’s Defense he has posted Norwood’s invoices that show some very compelling evidence that he is being milked for cash.

 

If I am THAT far off then what explanation is there that the attorney couldn't get the car?

Aaron

 

I don't have a dog in this fight, and you know Bob pretty well.

However, on the issue of an attorney not being able to get the car, there could be a lot of reasons. My wife is dealing with an estate issue right now, and her attorney is constantly having to school the other parties attorney -- even on basic stuff. It's actually rather funny (and sad) how incompetent the other attorney is, and how much that attorney is costing the other party.

My point is that Russ could have hired a completely incompetent attorney, or he could have hired one that is out of their depth, or one that has no idea of property law. Maybe he accidentally hired an immigration lawyer! We just don't know.

And, as a side note -- this post wasn't intended to knock attorneys. We have several of them, in different disciplines, that have become valuable to us, and in some cases -- almost members of our family.

Sid

 

attorney cannot get the car because this is not a criminal activity but a disagreement between 2 private persons.

customer says it is my car, I am entitled to drive it away.
shop owner says I have unpaid invoices, I am entitled to be paid.

The cops then say "customer, pay the shop owner, take the car, then sue him for any damages or refund you think you can get"

The additional glitch in this scenario is the shop owner refuses to release the car even with payment unless a full liability release is signed.

 

Russ hired an attorney and found them to be incompetent. Is looking for another. That was posted several post back.

Walk away. Suck it up and walk away. There will be no winner, not even Norwood.


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Stop making crap up....that's my take on your post. The end.

 

Crap attorney? For a profession with a high academic entry standard there is an unfortunately high percentage that are better at billing high fees than achieving anything like the result that they’re billing for (in my experience anyway).


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Hell yeah!

 

Just keep one thing in mind: Winning the case and collecting the money are entirely different matters.

 

I’m not familiar with the US mechanic lien laws. However, if there is no lien and you can find out where there car is, what is there in law, to stop you from going in there and taking it? What laws would you be breaking?

 

Since it's Texas, I'd guess it's the law of hot iron.

 

Russ,

Do you see any pattern here?



Matt

 

This whole thing is bonkers and it sounds (by your recounting, it must be said) that you got hosed financially. That sucks.

From an outsiders point of view, all of your problems relate to this quote of yours...

In fairness, if a thing keeps happening to you over and over and over (the Mondial, buying this car, Norwood, your attorney), the issue might, at least in part, be you. At the very least it might not be fair to lay all the blame at everyone else's door all the time.

It reads to me like you bought a parts car/project on eBay, that involved turning a real GTSi into a fake (targa?) 288 GTO, made up with a hodgepodge of parts from Ferrari models spanning decades. How that could NOT turn into a six figure cluster#### is beyond me. The fact that you trusted an unknown to you eBay seller to include parts not shown in the photos certainly didn't help matters, but piecing together what is essentially a kit car by trying to patch together the inner workings of a 308 and a 355 seems like a doomed idea from the start.

My take (based on your own recounting of the facts) is Norwood didn't set out to defraud you. He took your business, then gradually realized at some point (probably around the time you did) that this is a basket case job that nobody can set right for less than $250k total in labor and probably a bunch of custom fabricated parts. At that point he just started trying to get it "done and out" but kept running into issues. Whether they're competent or not, he still has crew to pay, and without you saying "let's cut this off and call it a day", it's not unreasonable of him to expect to get paid.

The liability release thing is a joke, but once the word "lawyer" gets floated, everybody starts acting like an ****** in my experience (no offense to our resident attorneys!). he's trying to cover his rear end because he believes (rightly it seems) that you intend to sue him.

I vote with the others who have said...just walk away. Eat the $100k. Move on. A lawsuit will just cause you more grief and money and in the end you'll likely lose even more, even if you win in court. With this thread you've got some nice shots in on Norwood, many that seem justified, and will give others pause before they use his services. Just leave it at that. Go sell some more guns and buy a new car. But for the love of God, please don't buy another project car over the internet! Go to a dealer and buy a stock Ferrari that you can test drive and get a solid PPI on.

 

Beat me to it.

 

walk from $100K? Without a fight? screw that.

Sue him now, you know where he lives and you can put a lien on his house for the judgement amount. Then wait.

 

Exactly what I would do.