Adriana from Fuerte Fitness writes:
Will you please warn people in our hood about this guy that calls himself Mark the Bodyman. He carries a flyer and looks for people who have dents on their car and promises to fix them inexpensively. He promised he would fix my car for 250 plus materials but 300 later my car isn’t finished. I saw him Monday approaching other peeps by Uptown expresso.
And let me tell you, she knows about body work!
Two fellas with slicked back hair and gold necklaces driving a shiny good looking black vehicle with California license plates followed me into the Bartell parking lot at Roosevelt Square offering to repair my front bumper after I had just left a repair shop on Roosevelt getting a quote. They were trying to get my attention as I drove and when I parked they shouted to me from their car. When I told them I was not interested the passenger informed me he was just trying to do me a favor.
And on this topic, I would like to share experiences that both I and my next-door neighbor have had (within the last couple years) – not in the ‘hood here, but elsewhere around Seattle. We both have cars with the newer kind of bumper that’s a black plastic that easily gets dented in parking mishaps, and were each approached by a guy (I have no reason to think it was the same person in each case) in a parking lot who said he’d fix it “for whatever it’s worth to you”. The guy did do the work as promised, and in my case accepted $40 for the half-hour of effort on his part, but in both cases they smeared a “finishing compound” over the final work, which we were instructed to remove after a few hours. I’m not a car guy, but I’m pretty sure the only reason they put the compound on it was to obscure the fact that the process of pulling the bumper out leaves numerous irreparable ugly whitish marks in the previously-black bumper. Some kind of blackening agent would have been a better choice, but maybe there is no good solution; dunno. Anyway, the un-dented bumper is arguably better looking that it was, but perhaps knowing what the final product is going to look like will allow you to weigh the value of having this done, if and when you need it.
/rob
The guy who volunteered to do some body work on my old car was a Gypsy, Roma if you prefer. I didn’t ask and he didn’t say, but it’s a safe bet. Because the work was relatively extensive, I left it at his place, and after a couple weeks I went back to get it, he wasn’t there at the appointed time. His wife (I guess) felt obligated (I think) to invite me in, but (I think) wasn’t too happy about it and he got an earful over the phone in some blood curdling foreign language. He eventually showed up with a couple sons who watched me kind of like a well fed cat watches a mouse while we settled up. The work was not too thorough, but cheap and effective. “George” is either a very common first name or is commonly used with outsiders, not sure which.
Why in the hekk would any reasonable thinking adult get sucked into this kind of thing? How stupid are these people?