How can you be sure the car is inside the garage? I don’t want to be an alarmist, but you need to look for this car. It may be where you think it is, but if not, it may have been stolen. You don’t think it is worth much without the engine, but there are a lot of useful parts on the car. You could probably sell an otherwise sound roller for a few grand.
I wonder if something has befallen him. He may be in the hospital or worse. I might be inclined to ask neighboring people if they have seen him around lately and even inquire of the landlord. If he has been around, is there a time when they see him most often? Then show up unannounced around that time. If no one has seen him, the landlord may have a contact number other than his business phone. If the landlord evicts him, it could get real ugly liberating your car…
I dunno but it’s hunting season. Wouldn’t be the first time business operations shut down to go deer, duck, geese, pheasant hunting. Who knows?
So if at this point you are calling it a loss, then why not just let it ride for a month or even two? Who cares at this point? See if the guy ever finishes it. He may be as sick of the car as you are though and would love to get rid of it. If its only worth a couple hundred dollars now, then what’s the big rush?
Maybe that’s the family’s only car
Maybe the owner’s been paying for a rental these last 8 weeks
Being without your car for 8 weeks could be a really big deal for some people
We’re fortunate enough to have a spare car, so we could be without one of our cars for 8 weeks, but not everybody falls in that category
1 Like
Nope he already said they had another car and this one was in his wife’s name and the shop was the one the wife chose, not him. So if it’s a loss anyway, let it ride. Sometimes people just like to whip dead horses for the fun of it or to prove the wife wrong.
You can sell it for scrap with no title in some states if it’s over 10 years old.
A “winning” strategy . . .
If you lose, you lose
If you win, you still lose, because you’ll be sleeping on the couch, or in the garage 
3 Likes
There are plenty of workarounds for selling a car without a title. A car door, hood, another door, or a quarter of an entire car are not considered a car. They are like scrap metal just like a mower. They could sell the parts they want like the transmission and such and then cut the hulk apart with a torch.
I once bought a parts car without a title. It was junk and sitting in a field. Once I had the parts I wanted I found out that I needed a title to dispose of it. The scrap yard told me to cut it apart and bring it in during separate trips. I wouldn’t be considered a car but car parts. It was just the hulk of the body, doors, etc.
As for this shop, I have been on both ends of this as a customer and a business owner. More people do this kind of thing and dodge calls. I have had other businesses do this to me. The most notable was a guy who repaired one of my trucks. They dodge your calls and you have to show up at their business to get something done. This is best done when other customers are around so they don’t want to look bad and get you taken care of. As a business owner myself, you get customers who decide they don’t want to pay for my services pickup their equipment after I have serviced it. They just simply don’t answer the phone and such. One even blocked my number. I cut down on this crap by over 90% after charging them money upfront before I would even touch their stuff. Those that intended to do this simply wouldn’t show up once I informed them that I required money upfront.
You would be amazed at how many jobs I get from people who call and say “You are the first person who actually answered my calls and showed up.” I was kinda surprised but was telling another business owner that happens to build homes about this. He said he built this 3/4 of a million dollar home for these people. Once it was done and they were looking at it, he asked them why they picked him over the competition for this large and important investment. Their answer was “You were the first one that showed up.” Apparently this type of stuff is a big problem. Just answering your calls and showing up is a plus for any business.
I hope this doesn’t turn out badly but it kind of reminds me of an incident a co-worked told me about when a new guy hired on at the dealer where we worked. The friend told me to keep an eye on him because he seemed familiar but could not place him. A few weeks later he remembered…
This guy was running a one-horse operation in Midwest City, OK and took an Air Force Captain’s Jaguar in for a new engine. Six grand paid up front, multiple calls with no answer, and the Captain discovered his Jag sitting there in pieces and the culprit nowhere to be found. At least until he ended up with us.
Thankfully he bugged out 2 weeks later during lunch when it was becoming apparent that I was about to find out he had butchered a VW’s wiring and charged the lady 400 bucks for what should have been a 5 minute fix.
It just came to mind that I waited 11 months to get a new warranty engine on my snow blower, so I guess I’m a patient guy. I’d already been to one Briggs shop in town, and another Toro dealer and got no satisfaction, so this was the other one that could do warranty work. One man shop. Problem was he had to foot the bill for the engine before he could get reimbursed from Briggs for it. He always had an excuse why he didn’t have the money for the engine like his computer crashed or he was getting married. I would have fronted the money but was afraid I’d have trouble getting it back. So I just sat tight. I did have my son’s blower to use that was just in storage in my garage so I was covered. I finally gave up going down there to check and out of the blue in December he called that it was all done. Worked great. I put the other blower back in storage.
Sometimes though it’s just being pragmatic.