Abandoned instruments

[Doug Grainger Custom Fretted Instruments]

“Mechanics lein”

You have the right to sell it after making a good faith effort to make them pay. I usually send an invoice with a sternly worded letter via certified mail with a return receipt. If they make no move to get it after that, it goes on the hanger and I sell for the repair bill.

[Bryan Parris Parris Guitars]

Thanks. I’ve had to do that in other businesses where I was working on a person’s home. Unfortunately, I don’t collect physical addresses for guitar repair, only email and phone.

These are crap guitars and the cost of the repairs exceed the value of the guitars. I really just want them out of the way at this point.

[Bryan Parris Parris Guitars]

Doug, I got the information I needed. Thank you. I can file the lien after six months in Tennessee.

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

In Oregon, the guy I was apprenticing with had a woman come back after 2 years wondering where her repair was. It was sold, of course and she sued. Turns out the law in Oregon is that you are entitled to sell the instrument, cover the cost of repairs and the remainder is owed to customer. After that judgment he put up a sign about storage fees etc. Storage fees such that there would be no remainder next time if you catch my drift.

[Bryan Parris Parris Guitars]

I am going to make that sign about storage fees, or put it on the invoice, maybe. The percentage of bad customers we get is very low and this is a first for me. Most are amazing…this lady is not amazing. lol

[Michael Messmore]

I’m not a professional luthier, but I helped run a computer shop from 2005-2011 near Memphis and had a similar problem. Not apples to apples, but figured I’d share my experience in case it’s useful.

We’d build up a pile of abandoned computers and purge them every 6 months or so. Reclaim anything useful and pitch the rest. We had 1 irate customer come back about 2-3 years into this more than a year after the work.

We changed the form we used for drop off to say “disposed of 30 days after completion.” We had them initial that and sign the quote. It wasn’t as much about the legality as the realization that we weren’t being completely transparent before. We were never as aggressive as 30 days, just when they built up we’d purge back to 60 or 90 days.

We had a few more come back after that, and pulled out their agreement. Usually offered to apply their initial labor charge to a new computer or something. Some took us up on a computer, where we basically sold at cost. Some shrugged. I think 1 left an insane rant review on google.

No one ever sued us or called a lawyer.

With new hardware, we kept all packaging when we could. When abandoned, we’d be able rebox it and sell as new or “like new”, or use it in a future repair. We’d offer the packaging to the customer when they picked it up. They’d rarely take it, but it oddly made them happy. I think it made things seem less mysterious or shady.

I had to stop focusing on losing labor like it was an asset and just track it in aggregate against costs. That was both for business and mental health. We bumped up the initial fee twice over my tenure to compensate. The majority of complaints we had about that were from people who were reselling our work 😂

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

Excellent reply!