How you know you are spending too much on your car...

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It's pretty subjective, I don't like to exceed my disposable income. Experience tells me that I will be lucky to recover 50% if I decide to sell. So you better really love the car you are building.
 
Going back to the OP, I got fired from a job once because the owner of the dealership said my material bills were too high when I managed his body shop.

I never saw the invoices or the bills, that was all handled by the parts department.

So, I took a look at the invoices and low and behold, there's an extra gallon of clear I didn't order, a gallon of yellow I had no idea what it was for. An box of sandpaper and a brand new DA, all on the bill.

No yellow car sitting in the shop, two quick panel jobs a quart of clear would cover, and I owned three DA's.

The GM happened to have a yellow '57 Vette sitting at home he was restoring and the dealership was paying for tools and material.
 
ramenth said:
Going back to the OP, I got fired from a job once because the owner of the dealership said my material bills were too high when I managed his body shop.

I never saw the invoices or the bills, that was all handled by the parts department.

So, I took a look at the invoices and low and behold, there's an extra gallon of clear I didn't order, a gallon of yellow I had no idea what it was for. An box of sandpaper and a brand new DA, all on the bill.

No yellow car sitting in the shop, two quick panel jobs a quart of clear would cover, and I owned three DA's.

The GM happened to have a yellow '57 Vette sitting at home he was restoring and the dealership was paying for tools and material.
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I've seen that in a dealership already. Paint & materials getting used for someones little project. In that case it was a sales mgr that was having the stuff delivered on a Saturday. He would slip the bills under the parts dept counter. We would process the bills thinking they were legit. After that, the body shop mgr had to sign off on everything before the PO was written.
Had a receivables/payables clerk take the same dealership for over $300K. Probably more, but the insurance bond would only cover $300K so they stopped counting at that point.
She and her husband also did the clean up in the evenings at the dealership too.
The GM did a cash deal on a used car late one evening, he took the cash and locked it up in his desk. That went missing the next day, a lot boy got blamed for it, even though there was no proof. It was the clerk who pointed the finger that way.
The GM was fired over that, he should have put the money in the safe, but.....
The dealership group I worked for had 3 stores total, all three got hit, but never by anyone in the fixed end and that's where the Dealer Principal swore the theft would happen.
Just curious, did the owner give you your job back or not admitting to a mistake the easier route?
 
gunbunny said:
Just curious, did the owner give you your job back or not admitting to a mistake the easier route?
Click to expand...

The owner had a blind eye for the GM and refused to believe me when I told him those materials were for nothing in the shop or on the schedule.

He finally had to admit he was being robbed blind when the GM's wife took everything in divorce - including the cherished '57 Vette - and the GM's wife showed him the material bills that the GM had on Saturdays, billed to the dealer's account.

No, for me, they tried to make it worse. I was willing to let things go, no big deal, I know the truth. If the owner wanted to be an idiot, that was on him.

I got a visit from the cops with a sworn statement that I stole tools when I left.

"Says here you stole an Accuspray paint gun."

"No, I bought one. Had for a few months now. Here's the receipt."

Hutchins Hustler. Here's the receipt. MAC DA. Here's the receipt. There were probably about fifteen tools on the list they said I stole. I had the receipt for every one of them.

Get a call from the deputy about an hour later. Once he got the owner and the GM to understand what the penalty is for filing a false police report, the suddenly dropped all charges.

As I said: I was willing to let it all go. Not after that. A call to OSHA, DEC, and local code, he shut the body shop down and wound up paying a few hundred grand in fines.
 
Blind eye! Yeah, seen that too.
The current office manager bought a new $40K Ram truck for her husband (now ex), decided that the payments were to high. Since you can make your car/truck payment at any Chrysler dealer if you financed with Chrysler Credit, she went into the system and "made her payments". When the statements came, she just signed off on them.
When it was discovered by another girl and brought to the DP's attention, the girl who found it was fired for being in things that didn't concern her. We also found out that if the payments were made up, then all would be forgiven. It was.
 
gunbunny said:
Blind eye! Yeah, seen that too.
The current office manager bought a new $40K Ram truck for her husband (now ex), decided that the payments were to high. Since you can make your car/truck payment at any Chrysler dealer if you financed with Chrysler Credit, she went into the system and "made her payments". When the statements came, she just signed off on them.
When it was discovered by another girl and brought to the DP's attention, the girl who found it was fired for being in things that didn't concern her. We also found out that if the payments were made up, then all would be forgiven. It was.
Click to expand...

Oh, good grief.
 
My wife will let me know, she hasn't yet and probably never will. So I may never know.
 
My buddy said his wife was hinting about what she wanted for their upcoming anniversary.

She said, "I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 180 in about 3 seconds."

He bought her a bathroom scale.

And then the fight started......
 
My gf told me to surprise her with something expensive that she doesn't need for her birthday...

So I signed her up for radiation treatments...
 
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