Uncollected repairs armed forces posted overseas

[Mick Bailey]

I took on a repair in September and after booking it down to a fairly local address, the guy said he was in the Army and posted to a UK military base. It cost me a lot in time and parts, as well as disputing on his behalf that it should have been a warranty claim and numerous e-mails and phone calls in support of this. When completed I contacted him and he was unable to collect. I asked him what would happen if he was posted overseas and he assured me he wouldn't be and would collect the amp in December - actually today. I messaged him to find out what time he would be collecting and he said he's now posted overseas and won't be back until after February, but that's only a provisional date.

I'm pretty annoyed, given that I'm not getting paid and need to store and insure the amp. The tubes will also be out of manufacturer's warranty. Found out the hard way on that one. Anyone else been in this situation? Any advice?

[Enzo]

No, not that particular thing, but welcome to the world of repair shop keeping, as they say.


I have had an Army wife bring in something so it would be ready and waiting when the soldier got home. Not the same. And of course, musician on tour isn't much different from soldier deployed. The musician is not going to fly back here from California to pick something up, any more than the soldier will fly in from Iraq.


Benefit of doubt: soldiers tend to be young, maybe he believed everything would work out, it just didn't.


My only advice, other than stay in good cheer, is that this scenario has to be so specific as to not come up a lot, so make it case by case. Do you get the idea the guy was jerking you around? Or did he just seem naive or disorganized? And unlike the drunken teenage rock star, at least in some small way, this guy is part of the reason you have the freedom you enjoy.

[soundguruman]

You are obligated to hold it till he returns.

It is unethical to do anything otherwise. He MUST obey orders, and if he is ordered overseas, he CANNOT disobey.

NEXT TIME: collect a deposit on every amplifier, live and learn.

If you do not like this arrangement:
You can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

[Leo_Gnardo]

I'd cut him some extra slack Mick. When you're in the Armed Forces, you get sent places sometimes without prior notice. Ideally he could send you payment then pick up the item when back home.

The little bit of repair work I did for the US Army, fixed a Twin Reverb for the West Point band then had to fill in mountains of forms to get paid $85. The well-meaning soldier that brought it to me also caught hell from his superiors for not having the paperwork sorted ahead of time on his end. Most of it had to do with the fact that I wasn't an a-priori approved and authorized government contractor. In the end, they did pay the bill. Can you say "pettifogging bureaucrats?"

[J M Fahey]

No matter where he's located, he can wire/paypal you the repair cost.
He can also instruct any friend/relative to pick it up in his name.
If he refuses such simple solutions, you are morally free to sell the item, giving him 30 days notice.
And all postal exchange must be between your shop and the stated local address, you needen't acknowledge any new address which to boot was hidden from you while relevant.
Or *at least* inform him the amp incurs in a $10 per day (or whatever you deem reasonable) storage+unpaid dues fee which must be paid in full before collecting the amp.
And when said value *doubles* the repair cost, it's the threshold which confirms posting on EBay or similar for sale.

[bob p]

Although it may be within your rights to take the hard-ass approach that Juan mentioned, I'm not sure that I'd go that route.

If the fellow is in the service and he is deployed, I'd be inclined to cut him a lot of slack. Not every solider has someone at home who can manage his affairs for him while he is gone, and he may be in one of those situations where his life gets uprooted at a moment's notice, leaving his state-side life in a state of suspension. Life in the military is very different from civilian life. He may not even have privileges to use the internet or paypal, or to even email non-family members.

Additionally, in my locale the laws pertaining to collection specifically provide exemptions for members of the military, and specifically invalidate the laws relating to service of legal notices for members of the active military -- for precisely the reasons we're discussing here. If you decided to go the hard-ass route by starting a documentation/service process and/or selling the amp, and it turns out that your customer is indeed a member of the active military then you're likely to unnecessarily complicate the issue, potentially making things worse for you. I'd be inclined to set the amp in a corner and not worry too much about it.

Like Enzo said, part of the reason that we enjoy the liberties that we have here in the USA is because young people are willing to allow their lives to be turned upside-down, if not ended, to preserve those liberties for us.

My personal approach would be Trust & Verify. Trust that the fellow is active/deployed and cut him some slack, but do what you can to verify that you aren't being scammed.

[Enzo]

And as embarassing as it is to me as an American, often our army doesn;t pay enough. You don;t have to look far to see stories of young military families on food stamps.

[solarbass]

I'd go a tiny bit farther and ask that you consider donating your repair time and materials. If the person is active duty & deployed they probably deserve the donation.
I'd consider it a small price to pay to be able to sleep safely in a free country.
I had a similar thing happen in a real estate transaction with thousands of bucks at stake. It's good to have laws protecting deployed service people.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Just like in the "real world" some military guys aren't the most honest or conscientious folks either. (And believe me, I've encountered some of those, some with stars on their shoulders and plenty of fruit salad on their chests.)

[g1]

I wouldn't mess with him. Mind the ordnance and all that.
Seriously though, although you may not want to comp the repair (and become the "go to" guy for the entire forces), you could probably say something like "I'm going to waive the normal storage fee I normally would charge". Might help compel him to deal with it as soon as he returns or maybe even have someone else attend to the issue. People who receive favours often like to return them.

[big_teee]

I'd go a tiny bit farther and ask that you consider donating your repair time and materials. If the person is active duty & deployed they probably deserve the donation.
I'd consider it a small price to pay to be able to sleep safely in a free country.
I had a similar thing happen in a real estate transaction with thousands of bucks at stake. It's good to have laws protecting deployed service people.

Not to kill a good warm fuzzy feeling of charity, or Patriotism?
You're sure being generous with the repairmans fees, labor and money!
I might cut him a discount, but that would probably be it.
Mick shouldn't feel guilty for expecting payment for his hard work, and Repair!
T

[Mick Bailey]

No matter where he's located, he can wire/paypal you the repair cost.

I found out that BFPOs (British Forces Posted Overseas) can use a secure gateway service to manage their financial and personal affairs, so this situation should get resolved over the next few days. Probably the same with US and other forces.

Interesting comments about freedom. As this is an international forum I'm sure there are views on this depending on which side of the fence you're on. But that debate's a whole hornet's nest and probably best left alone.

[km6xz]

This should not even be an issue, it is a fact of life in repair and calculated into fee structure. Consider it an "investment" that will pay off in the future. We had a lot of people have difficulties or were unwilling to pick items up and never charged anyone. We did not encourage it but having deferred pickup is so normal that it should be considered a mere fact of dealing with the public. If a project is large and expensive, and represents a major portion of one's work for a week , by all means, get a deposit for the parts at the least. Otherwise, it is just another repair out of hundreds during the month and it makes no difference to your life or choices.
If a custom builder devoted a month to a super custom amp, his business model would have been adjusted for such large portion of income riding on each transaction and probably got upfront payments for 1/3, at start, a mid point payment and final approval payment.
It should not make a difference whether they are armed forces are not, everyone is likely to need some slack sometime.
If you burned it well on a burn-in rack, I would not be concerned about tube warranty. If anything goes wrong you would likely have to eat it regardless.
I have a Mackie 8 32x8 in right now, and the owner claim she will come any day now, for the last 18 months. in the meantime she has moved to different cities twice. I think she lives in Moscow now. That one was taking valuable storage space since my shop is small now. In the old shop in California we had no problem with long term storage since there was an attached 5,000 sq warehouse with forklift so it could be strapped to a pallet and put high on a pallet rack. In this current case, I simply put the mixer under my bed;>)
I will say one thing, relatively speaking very good R&D style facility lease prices are dirt cheap back in the US compared to Europe or Russia. I used to pay $5k a month for a large modern place with big well kept grounds but here it would be $30k a month for similar but without a parking lot, or truck access. Storage costs are part of the business planning however so it should not be a surprise to anyone. Fact, shops need and have long term storage or they did not plan well for real life working realities.

[bob p]

There's a big difference between setting an amp aside and not worrying about it for a while, and comping an entire repair. As grateful as any of us may be (or may not be) when it comes to guys in military service, we all have to pay our overhead and cash flow matters. Not everyone can afford to comp a repair, and nobody should feel guilty about not wanting to do it.

This reminds me of a story -- I'm one of the people who likes to thank our boys in uniform for their service. Whenever I'm out and I run into a serviceman I like to buy them a drink, just as a way of saying, "Thanks for your service." This practice really came back to bite me once -- I was on a fishing trip in Los Cabos, and one of my buddies asked me that day if I still buy drinks for servicemen. He knew something that I didn't. I said yes, that I thought it was important to show my appreciation for our men in service. Later that night when we were out at our hangout, we ran into ~150 sailors who were hitting the bars. Yikes! It turns out that the USS Mt. Hood had docked in the port that day, and the crew was on liberty. My buddy knew this, and he set me up! I ended up buying a round of drinks for all of them. Ouch! Luckily I was able to goad my buddy into splitting the bill.

The moral of the story is that even though you may want to show your appreciation, sometimes the numbers just don' make sense, and it's OK to say no when that happens.


I also agree with Stan that you need to plan ahead, and be tolerant of people running into problems -- people running into problems who can't pay on-time is a fact of life that you have to be prepared to deal with, especially with the musician clientèle whose incomes are uncertain. Just because someone can't pay right now doesn't mean that they intended to scam you, or that they're not going to pay ... sometimes things just happen. Like it or not, setting an amp aside and not worrying about it is going to happen more often than you want it to, so it pays to be flexible and to be prepared for those kinds of events. I like the recommendation to protect yourself up-front with a large deposit when the repair is expected to be an expensive one.

(wow -- the server is really slow tonight)

[Mick Bailey]

I also agree with Stan that you need to plan ahead, and be tolerant of people running into problems -- people running into problems who can't pay on-time is a fact of life that you have to be prepared to deal with, especially with the musician clientèle whose incomes are uncertain. Just because someone can't pay right now doesn't mean that they intended to scam you, or that they're not going to pay ... sometimes things just happen. Like it or not, setting an amp aside and not worrying about it is going to happen more often than you want it to, so it pays to be flexible and to be prepared for those kinds of events. I like the recommendation to protect yourself up-front with a large deposit when the repair is expected to be an expensive one.

Don't get me wrong -
I've been doing this for a long time. It was the military aspect that was new to me - sometimes regulations that apply to civilian life don't translate. I do plan ahead but credit control is important to me. I've developed lots of software systems for debt recovery over the past few years and recognise that an unrecovered debt can quickly become an unrecoverable debt if not managed correctly.

Quite a few years ago I had a design business in Australia. We were doing well and I got a commission for set design on a Russell Crowe film "Hammers Over The Anvil". More work followed and Vogue Magazine picked up on my work. Things couldn't be better. A few cheques bounced, a few people didn't pay, but this got lost in the general profitability. I had an old red toolbox I kept bounced cheques in. Then one day a big payment defaulted and I lost 6 weeks work. Then another, and another. The worst recession in Australia's history hit and everyone was being squeezed. I counted up those bad cheques in that toolbox. If only I could have got the money back that I'd thought would eventually get paid - it would have been the difference between surviving and not. But it never happened. I closed that business with no losses to anyone else, but it still smarts. That's why I keep a handle on debt.

The one thing about the music business is that although it's service-based, there's generally some security against the repaired items and it's unusual for a repair to exceed the market value. I don't take deposits, on the basis that if I felt strongly that someone was unlikely to pay I wouldn't take the work.