Most of the people who get the bargain jobs are not happy. I am not saying there are not cheaper materials, or short cuts on prep work, but most of the people who want their car painted by me expect it to look like my personal car, and doing it for cheaper won't make it happen. If I even go $4000 on a full on job, I am left with $2000 to pay my labor, gas bill, electric bill, and I will have a good 2 months working nights and weekends. That isn't worth my trouble.
As far as taking advantage of slow shops, all you are getting are pi$$ed of flat rate techs working on your car that would rather go home than spend 8 hours fixing a panel and getting paid 4hours. Cheaper materials can be used, only accounting for afew hundred off the final bill, but the labor time will get cut making up for the other thousands, This is why resto's sit in shops for years, no one wants to work on them. When someone finally does, they are either the shop hourly guy, or a pi$$ed off tech who won't do it right. People have no problem paying big bucks for an engine, that can be built in 1 day, and most of the machining involves pushing a button. No one wants to pay for a high quality paint job that everyone will actually see, and takes 150+ hours to do correctly. The shop I work at has a resto only guy, which works great. Restos are so time consuming, they cannot be mixed with insurance jobs, you need to stay on them, or they become overwhelming working on here and there. We charge good money, not the lowest, but not the absolute highest in area either. I would bet we are set with resto jobs into next year. None of these jobs are under $10,000. People will pay, and in the end they are happy, which can't be said about the people who had someone else do the job for cheaper.
