A body shop can sure be an interesting place. Surely, most shop owners can talk for hours, or days even, about all the challenging moments (especially with insurers!) they experience. Then, there are those occasions when something happens in the shop that leaves one laughing, giggling or just plain scratching their heads. So, we reached out to some of our veteran shop owners to hear about some of the funniest moments they’ve ever experienced with their customers. We found quite a few laughs!
AASP/MA Legislative Director at-Large Tom Ricci of Body and Paint of Hudson recalls a time an employee (literally) drove him right into a situation with a customer that still has him chuckling to this day. A customer came in to pick up his vehicle; soon after, Ricci was called into the office. The customer was agitated, claiming he found some damage on the vehicle that wasn’t there when he brought it in. “So, I see it and tell him that my guys are usually pretty honest and would tell me if they did something to the vehicle and that I really didn’t think it was us. Just as I’m in the middle of explaining this to the customer, one of my guys pulls the plow truck around and bumps it right into another vehicle awaiting repairs! What could I say to the customer after that? I just looked at him and said, ‘Ok, give me the keys.’” As for the employee? Ricci says, “All I’ll say is, we had a little discussion.”
Long before his current role as executive director of AASP/ MA, Evangelos “Lucky” Papageorg ran a body shop at a Chrysler/ Plymouth dealer in Quincy. One day, he encountered a customer who had been in an accident. Nothing shocking there, but how this consumer and the woman he collided with handled things at the scene was beyond surreal. “The police said, ‘Okay, nobody’s been hurt. Just exchange your license and registration, and you’ll be all set,’” Papageorg says. “So, the gentleman from the accident shows up at my shop. He gives me a license and registration, and I start filling out the estimate. I go out to look at what I thought would be a Cadillac, but it was a Toyota. I told him he brought me the wrong registration. He said, ‘Well, we just exchanged our licenses and registration like the officer told us to do.’ That’s literally what they did before parting ways. So, it wasn’t just one crash test dummy; it was two crash test dummies!”
JUST4FUN 22 October 2021
New England Automotive Report
Doug Santa Cruz (Anderson Street Auto Body) recalls quite a mix-up that gave a customer and his wife a lot to laugh about. The customer came in asking the shop to check the noise he heard coming from his vehicle. After the car was on the lift and the source of the problem was found, the shop called him back. Santa Cruz says the wife answered, and they gave two estimates – a repair option versus a replacement of a part – and she approved the cheaper repair. “When he came to pick up the vehicle, he tells us he never received a call. Turns out we called the wrong phone number. Some lady in another state approved the job – the lesser of two options. When he got home to his wife, he explained to her that he has ‘another wife’ in another state. So, his wife says to him, ‘As long as she keeps the cost of car maintenance down, she is a keeper.’”
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