Paint Job ripoff... Ongoing struggles with a money pit EP

[ryboto]

This is more of a rant thread about a paint job.. But I realize I've overpaid since day one with this car. Overpaid for the car, and it had unreported damage. Overpaid for the K24A2 which was sold to me as only 40k miles old, turned out to have 118k on it. Paid for parts I didn't use, but hey, who hasn't? Ok, long story time...

Most recently I overpaid for a paintjob. In 2013 I was pointed in the direction of this painter based out of CT who does paint work for Toyota full time, and also takes jobs on the side. He quoted me $2210, up from the original $2000 when he found out the paint I wanted, Green With Envy, would cost him more than he expected. He asked me to split the cost of paint, which I was fine with since the next closest quote I had from my area(Southern NH) was $2850. What made his quote more interesting, was that aside from the price difference, he said he'd restore all the black trim, so everything matched.

Well, end of August 2013 comes, and I'm laid off. This was about a month before I was going to have him paint the car. He understands, I basically put all plans on hold. I get a job in June and I can finally afford it since the pay was quite good. We schedule the job for a time I'd be out of the country for training. I sent him an email with a list of the work we'd agreed to. I had also told him I'd pay him UP TO $600 more additional to take care of underbody rust, and I'd also cover the cost of paint since I basically strung him along for a year. Here's a snippit from the email I wrote to him-

Breakdown of job-
All metal body panels:*quarters, roof, hood, doors, hatch(including Emblem area above plate)- Green
Mirrors- Black
Trim at base of mirrors- restore to OEM
Side skirts, Front lower lip- Black
Lower section of rear bumper- Black(should this be flat or gloss?)*, rest of rear bumper- Green
Front Bumper- Green, Front bumper lower grill OEM black
Mud Flaps- match to lip color, or OEM*trim color
Check undercarriage for rust and remove/recoat areas if needed
Rear wing- remove and just paint the hole in the tailgate, leave wings unpainted
Upper Grill with H - unchanged

Payment- $1500 deposit upon dropoff

If the*the undercarriage doesn't need much touching up, would it be possible to have a reduced final bill? *What I mean is, I'm offering $600 in addition to the $2400(color change + cost of paint), but if you don't need to do $600 worth of work on the undercarriage, the final bill will reflect that, right?

Let me know if I forgot anything. *Thanks!

and his response-

Yes that's the agreed arrangement, you must be clear about shiny black or Matt black finish on the accessories. Meaning side skirts, mud flaps. Also I think painting the roof shiny black would look better. Let me no what you decide

So, I assumed we were on the same page. He seemed like a really chill guy too. Even when I picked it up he said "hey, now you have a friend in CT". BUT then I get the car on a lift, and see this-



-Notice the undercoat spray over the flaking paint. After touching the sway bar, this happened-


So, I was pissed. I didn't photograph the other areas, but the rocker panels are still rusty, and he literally sprayed over the rust on my subframe and oilpan like he did on my rear control arms. He now states that he scraped and coated my undercarriage in the places he saw as most rusted...but c'mon, he has to know I can replace a damn subframe, I can't replace the entire undercarriage.

So he's fighting me. Wont give me the money back, wants me to come down so he can touch up some of the paint work and do some undercarriage work for me, but I have no idea what he means by that. I'm unfortunately unemployed AGAIN but it happened after I'd already gotten the car back, so now that $600 could be better spent.

The paint actually looks nice though(sorry for the bad shot...been lame about taking photos of it)

[HFPcivicSI]

Your color choice is awesome, props for that at least! :)