All this, and to add if they ask for full or half up front , RUN. This means they are robbing Peter to pay Paul.
A shop that works off of a draw payment is more likely to be legit because it means they actually have working capital.
I have two juxtaposed experiences. One, I am out $12,500 and they asked for half up front, did enough work very early on to get me to give them $3000 more dollars. Ended up literally quitting work on the car and it stayed there for years with promise after promise.
Another one I had a limited scope of work needing to be completed which amounted to about $10,000 worth of work. He wanted just a few thousand to get started with agreed upon stages of completion that required payment before starting on the next phase. This made it to where if either of us wasn’t happy it would be easy for either of us to walk away. For example, if a life event happened to either of us the other wouldn’t be hit super hard.
