Official Luthiers Forum!

For those of you who repairs for a living:

What do you do about guitar that has all repair completed (and the owner notified) yet the owner is unreachable despite every effort to reach him. The guitar has been in the shop for months and I tried my best to reach the owner, but he isn't answering any of my communications.

This isn't a cheap guitar but it still has an outstanding balance on it. What do you do if the guitar has been around for too long yet you just can't get the owner to come pick it up? Legally when are we allowed to declare the guitar as abandoned and remove it from the shop?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I have a sign in my shop that says " Items for repair that are left over 30 days will be sold to cover cost " And I DO I send a regestered Letter telling the person that its ready , if its not picked up I sell it . They have been notified .

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

The concern is that what if the owner suddenly decides to show up and ask why the guitar was sold, and could decide to sue if the guitar has been sold to cover costs. Does notification free you from any legal issue should the owner decide to sue?

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Thats the point of the regestered letter , He/she has to sign for it , once you have the return proof they signed for it , the responsibility is THEIRS . Thats the way it works in USA .... ask a lawyer there ... bet its same or close

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

What covers you legally depends upon your local laws. Probably you are similar to USA in this matter, but maybe not.

All that should be covered in a standard form you fill out and get signed as the guitar is dropped off. List what work needs doing, an estimate, and a timeframe, and a provision to contact owner if the job will be more than 15-25% more than the estimate. Specify what will happen to unclaimed goods in bold lettering in the box requiring his signature for the go ahead That should cover you, but none of us over here are likely to know your local laws. Personally, I would advise against selling it to cover your balance, it may give you a bad rep in the long run. Depends on how long it's been. But as you say, you haven't been able to get a hold of him, and you don't know his story. For all you know he's been hospitalized, incarcerated, sent on a deep cover assignment...or changed his address and number and forgot to tell you. Tuck it away somewhere safe and await the day. If it gets too outrageous, charge interest...

Don't know what the laws are in Taiwan, but I usually waited a year - and then sold it for market price. Made quite a profit once when a guy brought in his guitar for a restring.... he moved away and left it with me.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Check the laws first, they vary from state, city , county, country. When in L.A, it was 90 days.

About a year ago my brother got a call from a guy who owned a shop that repaired amps and stuff. It seems the guy was retiring and closing down his shop. He wanted to know if my brother could come pick up the amp he had left for repair 15 years earlier. When he left it there, both acknowledged that whatever component needed replacing was hard to find. Since there was no urgency on my brother’s part (he didn’t regularly use it), both agreed it was not a priority for the repairman. My brother moved on to different amps and the repairman carried on with repairs that were paying . . . both ended up forgetting about it. When the repairman found it cleaning out his shop, he had to track my brother down at his current address.

I would say, hang on to it as long as you can (space allowing), but definitely don’t do anything with it until you have found out what the law is and what needs to happen before you are covered. Losing a law suit will me more costly than losing the cost of a repair. Make it a point to weekly or monthly attempt to contact the owner (and log your attempts). Once you know what is required, you can start including in your messages that you intend to begin trying to sell the instrument (or whatever) by whatever date. . . Hopefully by the time you find out what you need to do to protect yourself, the owner will turn up and everyone is happy. It might suck when you need the money now and can’t get it, but the potential damage to your reputation will suck more.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I was told that if you sell the item, you may keep the cost of the repair, but the additional money from the sell belongs to the customer. If the customer does not return to claim the money, it then is supposed to be turned over to the state. The state then is responsible for the efforts to reach the customer. This is when the state puts an insert into the local paper for "unclaimed property". I'm in Texas and that's how I was told it works here.

That's easy, just sell it for the cost of the repair only.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Best check with an attorney in your locale. With all due respect, no one who has responded appears to be qualified to answer a question about the law in Taiwan (and neither am I.)

Joe

Personally, I would feel really bad about selling a guitar under the circumstances you describe.... I can't see a situation that I would need the money bad enough to sell it for the costs of repair, and I can't imagine that I would sell it because I needed the 'space'... I believe I'd keep it... put it up and out of the way, and one day maybe the guy will return... that's just me, but I'd feel better... and I'd wager you would/will too...
jack

WEll, you don't say HOW long. A week a month, a year? You also don't say if YOU have a policy in your repair agreement covering this eventuality, and you need to check the applicable laws governing these things in Taiwan, as everyone else has said.

You also ought to pay a shyster(lawyer) to write you up a legally binding agreement that all your customers must sign, which should include your terms and conditions for payment, etc, but also a storage fee for items left more than XXX days.

In Australia, according to my jeweller friend, after 30 days post-notification, they are legally allowed to sell the items....

Check it all out, and don't do anything before that.

This has happened to me on a few occasions, repairs and commissions. In Virginia the law states that after 30 days you can start charging storage fee's and after 3 months it's yours. I've never charged anything but after a while I've sold the stuff. It does indeed take up shop space when your shop is very small like mine. I was building two electric bass's for a guy who bought all that materials, wood, tuners everything but the pickups for one of them. HE completely disappeared off the map. Two years later I finish the bass's and one of them is now being used by the bass player in my band.

Yea, I don't have a very big shop and I really don't have the space to store more than 20 guitars, and I already have over 5. It clutters the shop and really makes it harder on the next customer.

The guitar in question is a black Gibson Les Paul custom by the way... fairly recent by the look of it.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Sounds like you are just over 25% capacity. I'd hang on to it as long as possible and try hard to reunite it with the owner. And as I said before make sure you find out the CORRECT answer for what you can do where you live. Hopefully it will find its way home before you are at capacity.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Actually its more like I have room in the main shop for about 5 guitars, and I have other rooms in the building where I can put the overflows in.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

You still haven't said.......what is your stated policy (on the signed work order, a sign hanging in your shop or whatever) on unclaimed instruments?
If you have one (& it's legal), you have your answer. If you don't, chaulk one up to experience, store the guitar someplace safe 'till he returns, and get one for the next time.

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Dave
Milton, ON

To drag this one out back from the dead....
There is a concept in American Law called a "Mechanic's lean" or something along those lines...

The idea is that you charge for services.. If they either refuse to pay, or don't show back up to pay within some period of time... you can file a lean on said item with the Magistrates court... There is some sort of required legal proof that you tried to contact them for payment and such... This gives you a bona fide legal claim to take possession of the item.... which then becomes legally yours.... You typically don't need a lawyer to go before the Magistrate's court... just to have your ducks in a row...

This allows you to do this sort of thing without the worry about the fellow suing you or trying to file theft charges against you.... I suppose he could still try - but at that point, you have a lawful judgement in your hands.....

So.. That's the direction I would go.. I would head on over to the local Magistrate's court and find out what the rules are... what paperwork you have to fill out, etc... because you don't want to find out that the local laws would allow you to be charged with some flavor of Theft if you sold junk left laying around....

Thanks

It works, at least in the US. And not just for mechanics, I did it with a horse I boarded for a gal once. She quit paying and after some months I took the horse, with the courts permission, and sold it to get my money back. I did have to send her several registered letters to prove I had tried to contact her. It turned out not to be that difficult of a process, just took a while.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I am not sure how Taiwanese law works... my Chinese isn't really good enough to deal with legal stuff.

The point is moot now, he came and got the guitar back. However this could happen in the future. I try to get people to pay up front, particularly inexpensive guitars.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com