Van Building gone wrong - Buyer beware - Sprinter Engineering

America is lawsuit-happy country and not much you can help it.
But again, the whole thing started very badly with huge deposit.
Now if the contract is on "time and material" bases, the customer has the right and should micromanage the job.
With partial jobs paid after completion - if something goes wrong both parties could go separate ways once they figure out it is not working.
And I would expect better than 29 cents electrical box on RV conversion.

Aqua Puttana said:

Not that anyone asked...


Good advice.

The correct attorney for the job can make a difference.

When Uncle Sam comes knocking for IRS issues you need a tax attorney. When you need a basic boilerplate business contract you should not contact your family law firm.

Surgeons specialize as do attorneys. I didn't want a neurosurgeon replacing my hip any more than I want my estate attorney specialist creating a small business contract format.

vic

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I figured that was obvious.

What you want is a litigation attorney. Also the best choice for reviewing the contracts.

One more note... If you think it will go to trial that is not the time to penny pinch. If its unlikely to go to trial just the treat of legal action may be enough to sway a party. If that's the case a good attorney is all that needed.

HarryN said:

I didn’t watch the whole video or care to, but a couple of things come to mind:

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Judge without reviewing the evidence??? I am going to offer another side of it.

HarryN said:

- Perhaps you don’t remember that there is this little, minor challenge in the world right now called a world wide pandemic?

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That would account for 2-3 weeks of his procrastination and mismanagement of his business.

HarryN said:

- You said that part of the “payment in kind” is for going to various van and trade related shows over the next 6 months. Just how many of those events do you think are going to happen? Most likely nearly zero, so you are just as much in default of the agreement on your side as he is in being late.

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The quarantine is only extended in California as of now till April 31. How forgiving will his mortgage company be if he says "well I expected the virus would last through the year so I cancelled all my events."

Any one of us running a business has to be prepared to start as soon as the quarantine is lifted. How many mortgage payments would his 25k pay if this last 8-10 months?

HarryN said:

- For people who don’t own a business where parts are part of assembling into a product, do you really think that it cost $10 for a business to go out and buy a $10 box of screws? Have we all forgotten that time is money?

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Why should I pay for their mismanagement of time?

If I hire someone to paint a room. They have the all the information they need. Here is the room. Measure the square footage. If they show up and half way into the project they realize they need more paint. Why should I pay them to go to the hardware store to buy paint.

If its a custom build with lots of custom requests. Sure. But this was as basic a build as I have seen.

HarryN said:

I guess in summary – my view is that you are completely out of line. Maybe covering for your own business operations taking a hit and trying to blame someone else.

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That is harsh especially since the OP started documenting his poor business practices long before any idea of a pandemic was evident.

HarryN said:

Go look up the concept of Force majeure and see if it applies? I bet a judge might think so and might not take so kindly to your prolific statements on every media forum out there.

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Ask the countless people who lost their homes in 2009-2010 how sympathetic the judges were of their hardships when their houses were foreclosed. I haven't seen the OP paperwork but if it says the project needed to be completed by such date then that is all that matters in court.

The pandemic will only gives him the "benefit of the doubt" that he had intention to complete the work on time. The evidence would prove otherwise.

I am not saying there isn't fault both ways.

But the OP fault is minor in comparison. The micromanaging would have annoyed me and I would have returned the money and van and said good riddance. He should have documented everything via email once he believed the builder was being negligent.

My

bored said:

.. The micromanaging would have annoyed me and I would have returned the money and van and said good riddance. He should have documented everything via email once he believed the builder was being negligent.

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I spend 25 years in house remodeling and have been dealing with such issues all the time.
I am genetically extremely patient person and micromanaging never did bother me.
Actually I advised my customers what are pros and cons of their ideas, so they could make more educated decision. Maybe that is why I had several customers who for over 20 years would not call anybody else?
Fact is that for my retirement I moved to Las Vegas and hired Pool Co. to build custom swimming pool for me. The 25 years experience in contracts did not prevent me from ending in court negotiation with "pool builder" who build nothing, but was charging a lot for being middle man between me and different subcontractors.
When you say you would return the money, from what I see in this situation, the contractor was dishonest right from the start taking huge deposit. That alone is illegal in most jurisdiction.
Fact is that OP, claiming being bussines owner shows lack of experience in dealing with contractors. Once a contractor takes big downpayment - he has no motivation to work hard on the project. Would you give him smaller checks after completion of each stage - the behavior would change drastically.
Than when you are setting deadline, it is good idea to make "if the project is not completed on time, each week of delay deducts $200 (?) from final bill"

bored said:

Judge without reviewing the evidence??? I am going to offer another side of it.



That would account for 2-3 weeks of his procrastination and mismanagement of his business.




The quarantine is only extended in California as of now till April 31. How forgiving will his mortgage company be if he says "well I expected the virus would last through the year so I cancelled all my events."

Any one of us running a business has to be prepared to start as soon as the quarantine is lifted. How many mortgage payments would his 25k pay if this last 8-10 months?



Why should I pay for their mismanagement of time?

If I hire someone to paint a room. They have the all the information they need. Here is the room. Measure the square footage. If they show up and half way into the project they realize they need more paint. Why should I pay them to go to the hardware store to buy paint.

If its a custom build with lots of custom requests. Sure. But this was as basic a build as I have seen.



That is harsh especially since the OP started documenting his poor business practices long before any idea of a pandemic was evident.



Ask the countless people who lost their homes in 2009-2010 how sympathetic the judges were of their hardships when their houses were foreclosed. I haven't seen the OP paperwork but if it says the project needed to be completed by such date then that is all that matters in court.

The pandemic will only gives him the "benefit of the doubt" that he had intention to complete the work on time. The evidence would prove otherwise.

I am not saying there isn't fault both ways.

But the OP fault is minor in comparison. The micromanaging would have annoyed me and I would have returned the money and van and said good riddance. He should have documented everything via email once he believed the builder was being negligent.

My

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Well said and valid!

HarryN said:

I didn’t watch the whole video or care to, but a couple of things come to mind:

- Perhaps you don’t remember that there is this little, minor challenge in the world right now called a world wide pandemic?

- 50% of the population of the world is on stay at home orders and even more are on “strong suggestions”

- At least locally, you better have a good reason to be working on a project (essential) or you can face some pretty significant fines.

- Just how “essential” is your project to the world right now compared to the risk of multiple people getting sick enough to require hospitalization? Regardless of the simplistic concept of a 6 ft safety distance, I have seen multiple simulations and tests which indicate that the real number is closer to 25 - 30 ft. How is someone supposed to have a 2 or 3 person team in a safe distance inside of a van ? Impossible.

- You said that part of the “payment in kind” is for going to various van and trade related shows over the next 6 months. Just how many of those events do you think are going to happen? Most likely nearly zero, so you are just as much in default of the agreement on your side as he is in being late.

You better plan on another marketing strategy because right now of your 19 shows, any reasonable person would bet that most will be cancelled and the ones that do go on will be poorly attended. That means that the value of your "promotion" this year is $0.

- For people who don’t own a business where parts are part of assembling into a product, do you really think that it cost $10 for a business to go out and buy a $10 box of screws? Have we all forgotten that time is money?

Go add up how much time it takes to think about what screws are needed for a project, perhaps go to a store or two, and try to buy them – and then go back to your place. Now multiply this by how much you cost your company (roughly 2 x your salary) and see what this $10 box of screws actually costs.

- I am not sure if you know this, but many businesses rely on a steady supply of pharmacy grade IPA to use as a cleaning solvent. There aren’t all that many alternatives to this. Go try and buy a bottle of IPA right now, as it is pretty much all being used for medical related aspects. Not arguing with the greater good, but it is a factor.

Thanks to our government’s concept that ethanol is a “sin”, I was forced to pay $40 for a 5th of everclear instead of the $5 of alcohol it actually contains to keep my own work going (replacement for IPA) – and I was lucky to get it.

As far as what it takes to build things:

- Your bags / products are little more than a few pieces of cloth and some straps. Pretty simple bill of materials.

- All I do is electrical stuff and I have 40 suppliers with a wide range of lead times and costs. Your little bags business is very simple compared to building something as complex as a van interior.

Yes, I do also get behind on things, but I also know that it is common for people to change what they need, when they need it, when they can pay, etc - and while in theory I could charge them for every change – I don’t and many small businesses absorb this. For better or worse.

I guess in summary – my view is that you are completely out of line. Maybe covering for your own business operations taking a hit and trying to blame someone else.

Go look up the concept of Force majeure and see if it applies? I bet a judge might think so and might not take so kindly to your prolific statements on every media forum out there.

Please don’t ever bother contacting me because there is no way that I would ever help you with any project – ever - for any reason. I have never said that to anyone else but I am saying it to you.

I am going to suppress saying what I really think because it is a family friendly forum.

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Wow! That is a pretty incredible monologue considering you stated you only watched part of the video.

The OP views himself sort of like an instagram model.

He attempted to do the conversion himself. Got as far as installing some insulation and realized that he is in over his head.

Now he imagines that having insulation in the walls is somehow helpful vs having the walls empty for installation of wires, etc. Trust me, it isn't.

Similar deals are more or less:
- Price for conversion cost is xxxx
- Discount for showing off the van at trade shows = discount A
- Discount for promotion on forums and IG - discount B
- Down payment is against the XXX conversion cost, not the discount price
- The main push for the timing is to have it ready for the trade shows

Even if the buyer had the van early, he is unable to hold up his side of the bargain, so those discounts are no longer valid.

His push for a fast turn around so that he can go to trade shows is also no longer valid, because those trade shows just are not going to happen.

The down payment for purchase of items and paying people for work is perfectly valid.

- Even worse from a "getting the conversion done" viewpoint, what upfitter is going to now take on this project?
- How is he going to walk into an upfitter and pitch that he is a great partner and will give great publicity?
- He is already proven that a) He wants something custom vs standard b) Iif he doesn't get his way, he will burn you, and c) takes more than normal time to support.

It is sort of like dating Taylor Swift - might sound fun but you are just as likely to end up being called a terrible person in a song.

It is a lesson - if you want publicity on IG and at trade shows - hire someone who does this professionally.

I am not even sure that his post deserves the dignity of being in this section of the forum.

Graphite Dave said:

Maybe I was just lucky. The key is to be very detailed of what will be provided.

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I think you were both good and lucky (and had good customers). As long as both parties are careful, have reasonable expectations, and nothing goes wrong during a project, then a legal review of a contract may be superfluous. However, when significant problems crop up, the contract may not have the legal underpinnings to bring about a satisfactory outcome.

I contracted to have a house built with a well-known, experienced builder (two brothers in business together along with a small staff of employees) in my area, and accepted the builder's standard contract after reading it over carefully. An unexpected disruption occurred to their business - seems the brother who did the field management of the work was carefully scheduling their head carpenter so as to maintain the availability of the carpenter's wife for romantic encounters with that same brother. The brother who managed the office side of things kept the business going, but with the loss of a) his philandering brother, and b) the head carpenter. (The errant brother would probably have been kept on except for the fact that the errant brother's wife was the office administrator, and the remaining brother had to make a choice of who to keep working with, and chose based on protecting his innocent sister in law rather the business.)

I expected some delays, but when one of the subs let slip to me at about the six month mark (when the house was supposed to nearing completion) that it was less than half-way done (I was naive about monitoring the progress of the building effort) I realized I had a problem. At about the 10 month mark I went to a lawyer. The lawyer let me know that since the contract had a clearly specified completion date but no penalties for not completing on time I had no recourse to force the builder to get the job finished, and since the contract didn't specified how I might be damaged by a late finish, I also had no recourse to recover even my immediate damages (escalating construction loan costs). Despite many meetings with the builder and attempts to get the work back in progress, the effort languished and get slower and slower. At the 16 month mark (as soon as I was able to get a certificate of occupancy for my still unfinished house) I moved in and let the builder know I was through with his services.

Closing out the relationship with the builder took another 18 months or so of legal wrangling with neither one of us happy with the result. The work was substandard in some regards due to the inadequate attention to the project by the overworked field supervisor, problems with subcontractors, and corner cutting by the remaining brother trying to do too much (three simultaneous building projects located too far from each other) in too little time. I should have been much more aggressive throughout the entire project and the closeout, but was distracted by a belief in the character of the builder. Unfortunately, builder's character was probably fine when not stressed, but when stressed was not so fine.

An important role of a contract is to specify who is responsible for the cleanup (and paying for same) when the sh*t hits the fan (figuratively speaking). You can't depend on an understanding of plain english; lawyers have managed to encumber language with special meanings and unwritten requirements that are a minefield for those not trained in the arcane structures of contract law. Even well-regarded, respectable individuals may interpret their responsibilities differently than you when circumstances turn sour.

[As an example of how circumstances can go sour... I just finished fighting (successfully) to get refunds for a vacation (April 24-May 6) I booked just prior to the COVID-19 breakout and travel restrictions. During the refund "negotiations" I twice had to argue with different vendors that no, they couldn't keep my money when they couldn't deliver the thing I had bought. One was a resort that had closed until the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted (they wanted to keep my money and give me credit towards paying for a stay at a later time with a limit of one year on the credit AND me paying any cost increases in their rates), the other was air travel booked through a travel agent (travel agent kept telling me that I was reading Delta's "Contract of Carriage" wrong and that I wasn't entitled to a full refund despite the airline suspending all flights to my destination (see Rule 22 on Involuntary Refunds) because the air carrier was offering me a credit towards future travel (as long as I completed that travel before December 31 of this year)).]

Having never built or converted a van before it took me about 80-100 hours to:

Strip, wire, insulate: Includes 12V/120V systems, solar, dynamat, thinsulate. Dual battery. Lights. refrigerator.
Install sub floor and finished floor.
Install water system: 20gallon undermount tank, sink, hot water heater and outdoor shower.
Build galley, rear bed and pantry storage.
Espar Airtronic D2 Install
AMP Research Step
Van Compass Mini Leaf pack, front Aux Shocks, rear shocks, Sump springs.
Install Hood light pods, airhorn, bumper bar light.

A competent shop should be able to knock out A LOT, in 80 man hours.

OffroadHamster said:

Having never built or converted a van before it took me about 80-100 hours to:

Strip, wire, insulate: Includes 12V/120V systems, solar, dynamat, thinsulate. Dual battery. Lights. refrigerator.
Install sub floor and finished floor.
Install water system: 20gallon undermount tank, sink, hot water heater and outdoor shower.
Build galley, rear bed and pantry storage.
Espar Airtronic D2 Install
AMP Research Step
Van Compass Mini Leaf pack, front Aux Shocks, rear shocks, Sump springs.
Install Hood light pods, airhorn, bumper bar light.

A competent shop should be able to knock out A LOT, in 80 man hours.

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And how many hours to design your rig, research the specific parts required, and acquire them?

That is the point that I am trying to make. The build time is relatively short compared to the time to do the other aspects, especially on a custom project, "simple" or not.

HarryN said:

And how many hours to design your rig, research the specific parts required, and acquire them?

That is the point that I am trying to make. The build time is relatively short compared to the time to do the other aspects, especially on a custom project, "simple" or not.

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Hundreds of hours. Your point is not lost. My counterpoint is this. I do design and engineering consulting as my side gig. I am a full time engineer who owns an LLC that I do contract work through. If someone were to come to me and ask me to do a van for them I would charge for the design work, not the research hours.

My cost model would be predicated on this: If I were going into business to design vans for people, the research is a business cost, not something I would foist on a customer. The simple reason is that if it takes me 100 hours of research to find parts/materials/best practices etc, I then have that knowledge database. I do not need to reconstruct it for each subsequent customer.

If I am hiring someone to do the later part of the project, build the van, I expect them to be technically competent, know what they are doing, and how to execute the design I am asking of them. If they are not, I expect them to lay out in the statement of work, that they will be charging me to sit on google and figure out commonly known things.

If I were charging someone to do a simple layout for them, both lay it out and build it, having the knowledge of a minimum of 1 van behind me, and charging a full engineering consulting rate, and the customer asked if I could do it for $15K, I would nod my head vigorously and hand them a contract.

What you are paying for is expertise. A person could spend 8 hours researching the correct inverter, or sourcing the right water fittings. If you are getting something off the shelf? Sure the extra time should be minimal for the builder. But once you get custom, time gets gobbled up. Obviously this doesn't excuse over booking, or under bidding.

I generally am not a fan of billing the customer for "learning" time. Educating yourself about the tech, materials, etc. At least for a production business. A novel design? Sure bill for research if it isn't standard knowledge for the field.

Midwestdrifter said:

What you are paying for is expertise. A person could spend 8 hours researching the correct inverter, or sourcing the right water fittings. If you are getting something off the shelf? Sure the extra time should be minimal for the builder. But once you get custom, time gets gobbled up. Obviously this doesn't excuse over booking, or under bidding.

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On this point I tend to bid things as NTE,or Not to Exceed. Basically, if I **** up and make a big error in judgement in how much time something is going to take me, that is completely MY fault, and my customer is not responsible for those overages. Its part of being a professional. Someone is hiring me to do a job because they are trusting that I know what I am doing. Maybe because someone recommended me, or maybe because I convinced them I can do the job. If it turns out I dont know what I am doing on part or all of the project, they should not be footing the bill for that.

Sometimes I get to the end of a project and I've made like $20/hour for mechanical engineering design. But I only make each of those mistakes once.

HarryN said:

And how many hours to design your rig, research the specific parts required, and acquire them?

That is the point that I am trying to make. The build time is relatively short compared to the time to do the other aspects, especially on a custom project, "simple" or not.

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paralysis by analysis?

it's been over a week since I watched the video, but from memory seems scope included:

- electrical wiring including battery installation and solar.
- a bed install
- flooring
- cabinets
- i'm sure i'm missing a few items.

i would say this was a minimum 1/3 - 1/2 of a complete fleshed-out build.

there's a reason complete quality builds cost upwards of $130K for this type of rig.. so the number should have come in between $42k and $65k. Honestly, I'd be surprised if someone could find a builder with a known good work product to do it for that..

and when you're doing a custom job for someone per their requirements you do need to charge for some of your research as there's no guarantee that IP will get utilized in the future.

having said this, the little work that was completed did not look of good quality and of course the guy did not even come close to fulfilling any of the multiple promises he made.

I worked many years on a carpentry crew remodeling houses.
This is how it goes.

I listened from a distance to so many of these conversations. The man who got the money is in trouble, the man who gave him the money is in trouble.
There is going to be trouble and no way around it. I roll up my cords, put away my tools and wait. I'm a sub.
I take my tools home every night from this point on.

When both parties quite working together everything is lost.
I have standards.
I get paid by the week/by the hour.
I don't work too fast or too slow, I try to do good work.
I needed the money.
I don't work Saturday or Sunday or overtime.

Both parties in this case are fools.

bill in tomahawk

Lol - T&M contracts sound good on paper, but in reality they are for clueless penny pinching buyers trying to get a service for below market from someone too lazy and inexperienced to come up with a real, professional bid. What could go wrong? My experience is near 100% abuse rate by vendors handed an open checkbook - and they know it. They're all dropouts to begin with - never did their homework. I recall the stats are that a high % (like more than 1 in 10 or so?) of these types of construction contracts fail and end up in mediation or beyond. F' all of them and their customers too.

Agreed, but only if the project is templatized/ not custom per the customers requirements. Go buy a Winnebago. Or if it is custom, old technology.

often times the ‘craftsman’ is communicating the latest and greatest way of doing something which challenges their current knowledge base. A certain amount of that ‘learning’ should not be billed, but at the same time if you want the best cutting edge ****, the dude/kick ass lady putting it in shouldn’t eat everything...

Hate to bring up gov’t tech, but at Lockheed Martin 95% of our projects were (I moved on) cost + profit.. pretty much t/m without profit built into the the cost. Most of these folks did their homework..

you want a spaceship land yacht, be prepared to pony up.

vanski said:

you want a spaceship land yacht, be prepared to pony up.

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Than it is our human nature, that when unsupervised we do a lot of BS while on pay time

Right, it was that way more than once

Thank you

Kajtek1 said:

I laugh watching the video how fast the shop owner went from "cross my heart" to "get the f... out of my shop"
And again, taking huge deposit should be red flag from the beginning.

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