My POSITIVE experience with Bob Norwood

Yikes, stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest. My bad.

I get what you're trying to accomplish, and I'm not saying there is anything wrong with undertaking the project, if it's what YOU want to do, and you've got the dough, I say go for it. REALLY.

But I also sense a disconnect. Almost like you're excusing Bob's bad billing and sloppy management of same because he's an artist, not a mechanic. I mean on the one hand, he's meticulous in his builds, at least according to you, doing stuff no one else could do as well, and that's great. But he's so bad at keeping track what he's doing that he puts "EVERYTHING" on the bill, and then hopes the customer either doesn't object or lets him bill for clerical work in exchange for his mystical powers to make these cars.

How can a guy be so exacting, and so sloppy at the same time.

We're gonna disagree on Bob's methods. I have no way to ascertain if his work is what you say it is. Bob Norwood is a name I've known for years, but I have no first hand experience with his work. I hope your project works out, that you get the car you want, and that Bob's lack of billing skills doesn't bite you in the ass.

It's my experience that sloppy bookkeeping covers a myriad of issues, and results in the customer getting the crappy end of the stick. Hard to know if you're being overbilled if the guy presenting the bill makes it so complicated you have to spend hours figuring it out. Oh, and if you do spend hours on it, don't forget to bill those hours back to Bob.

D

 

If someone's job is labor then I don't expect them to charge for anything but that. If someone's job is to access their own intellect to provide a product, then they can charge for talking IF it relates directly to the work for the client. I honestly don't know of any accountants that charge for conversation. Everyone I know charges by the job.

A guy building a car for me shouldn't be charging for anything other than hands on the car. Anything else is HIS overhead.

 

I work for an agreed annual flat fee.Charging for phone calls is ridiculous. Occasionally, a project will come up and require significant additional work, so we sit down and agree to an additional charge.

Bottom line is I WANT my clients to call me.

 

I disagree. Time is time - the profession should not matter (again, when doing the job by the hour). And to assume building a car is not "accessing intellect" is completely false. It takes massive talent and knowledge to do these projects.

 

Right - so you are not billing per hour. I don't want flat rates for that type of work - I want to pay for time spent that way I don't over pay and the service does not do work for free. I will add that my accountant does not bill me for chit chat, he bills me if I call needing advice and both my accountant and my attorneys certainly provide some "free" time.

 

Trust me. You're paying the same either way. Most CPAs use flat billings, they just don't admit it to you.

Plus, what you're really paying me for is over 40 years of experience. That has nothing to do with how much time I spend answering a question.

 

Nope - I get a detailed time log and my billing varies each year

 

Dave.

Here's the difference.

My lawyer doesn't charge me to dial the phone. He doesn't charge me when I'm on hold. He doesn't charge me to GET a case. Oh, and he doesn't actually charge me for all of his time, either. I don't pay him to put the paperwork into his briefcase, grab a notebook and pencil, all the ancillary work necessary for him to prepare to talk about my case.

Same applies for a mechanic. You put that in your hourly rate.

Suppose the mechanic breaks a very expensive wrench while working on your car. Is it ok for him to line item that and charge it back to you? Of course not.

In order to work on the car, you have to get it into the shop. In order to help me with my case, a lawyer (or most likely his assistant) has to dial the phone and get a hold of me. None of those are chargeable as a line item. Can you imagine on your next legal bill. ".10 hours, dialing phone" on each conversation you have?

I've had lawyers tell me what they think handling something for me will cost, as a part of the first call, which I don't get charged for. No different than the estimate a mechanic has to write.

There are absolute parallels between what lawyers do and don't charge for, and what a mechanic should or should not charge for.

The guys who moved my equipment, back in the day, would send an engineer and a techie to figure out the estimate. They'd spend a day on it. I NEVER got a bill for that. It was in their job cost somewhere as a part of the hourly rate, but not a line item.

If any one of these guys said, "To figure out what I'm gonna charge you, I'm gonna have to charge you." would be their last day in my shop, or touching my car.

D

 

To add my two cents to this debate. Here's how I deal with indie mechanics (I refuse to call them technicians) I trust. "Brian (or whoever), I just bought this car and would like you to get it up to speed. Because we don't have a clue what kind of monkeys worked on it before, how about a $1,000 budget to go through it and see what needs to be done? We can then come up with a plan from there."

BTW, I'm a checkbook mechanic. I've never had the three T's - Time, Tools, and Talent to work on cars, particularly high end sport cars. My basic instruction is "how much is it going to cost to fix it?" I figure I'm better off doing what I do professionally than screwing up my own cars.

 

I've done time and billing for years. Trust me, your CPA has a budget number for you before the year even begins.

 

I'm not going to debate about it - I get a detailed time card with my bill. You are trying to insinuate he fabricates that. My billing has varied every year, when building my facility it was double normal years as much more service provided. I actually log times myself so I can have a check sheet and they match pretty well - not sure what else to tell you.

 

You're misunderstanding. It's not fabricating. It's just write ups and write downs, which you never see, are built into the hourly billing rates. The real problem is time is not how CPAs create value. I've attended meetings, where in fifteen minutes, I saved my client millions of dollars.How do I bill for that? This is why many CPAs, and some attorneys are switching to an annual " concierge fee" approach (or maybe I should say consigliere?). We agree on a value, and, instead of spending all my time on time and billings, I get to waste time on Ferrari Chat!

 

One last story, then I'll quit. Back in my homebuilding days, we got sideways with one law firm. Their billings were outrageous. They even sent us a bill to announce they had moved their office. When I complained about the bill, guess what the response was?



Don't hold your breath.



They sent us a bill for checking into the billings.



I wrote **** you on the bill, made a copy, and kept it framed on my wall.



We eventually settled up, but at a significant discount. They also missed out on millions in subsequent legal work.

 

So then you pay them by the hour. But I don't have to. I pay for the work performed. And talking to me is not performing. You are welcome to think what you want.

 

It most certainly can be. On a project like this, many, many decisions must be made. The builder must provide the options and his recommendations while the customer must make the choice. Those discussions and educating the client can take hours upon hours. It's part of the cost of the project and the shop has every right to charge for that time spent, although I think it would be good practice to laid that ground work with an engagement letter, like lawyers do

 

Entirely different topic. If you are hired to provide a service and bill for your time, you get paid your time. If the client saves millions - you did a great job. If you are working on commission, it's totally different. I've designed and built machines for customers who saved god knows how much. Their obligation to me was to pay for my service - that is all.

 

Well to be fair Rob is right, you had a pretty cool car, now you've got a POS. I don't get the point of wasting all the time and money trying to convert it to a 288 GTO body? You think 99% of society even knows WTF a 288 GTO is? They do not I can assure you. Hell I bet you most Ferrari owners don't know what that is, thats for the real fans. I live in Miami and most Ferrari owners I run into know nothing about the car they just have it to meet girls or showoff or whatever. I have a 575 and I've had people ask me if its a california, a lamborghini, a koenigsegg, you name it. The reality is you ruined a perfectly good car for nothing more than ego stroking. You wanna drive around and tell people you have a multimillion dollar car that's cool, but there is no reason to rebody a perfectly good ferrari. What benefit does it serve?

I used to have an SL55 and I was at the mall one day and a guy had a rebadged Sl500, I could tell from the exhaust and rims and I called him out on the nonsense and he told me I knew nothing about cars and then mine pulled around he felt like an ass. I was particularly pissed off bc someone had recently stolen my lettering off my car and I had to go through the hassle of getting more. It's just annoying, be happy with what you have, a 308 is an awesome car, so is an SL500. The real enthusiasts who know cars, know they're fake, so again, who are you really impressing???

 

This post is a borderline personal insult.

It's the owner's car, he can turn it into wall art if he wants, but making assumptions about his motivation that serve no purpose and are insulting isn't needed.

Oh, and I'd bet 90% of the subscribed users here know what a 288 GTO is, and that EVERY guy I've ever talked to at a Ferrari concours does as well.

Dial it back, or you'll be watching from the outside again.

D

 

hold on, I know you're not jumping on me after what rob said to the guy, I get he owns the site, but cmon man take a chill pill, I didn't say anything bad. The guy was called an idiot earlier in the thread, I never said anything like that.......

 

He has a point Dave.