If You’re Broke, He’ll Fix It : Costa Mesa Auto Shop Accepts Goods and Services From Those Short of Cash

No car, no job. Lee Rainville, construction worker and father of four, was starting to freak after his 20-year-old car died last week. Without it he had no way to get to his far-flung jobs to make money for the repairs.

As he struggled to fix the ’73 Caddy out in his Costa Mesa garage, his wife read an auto shop ad in the local Pennysaver: No money, no problem, it said. “We trade for automotive repairs.”

Wow, he thought. What could we barter so I can get to my jobs?

“We were kind of strapped, because we moved a month ago, and we had both cars go down at the same time,” Andrea Rainville said. “My (’69 Imperial) Chrysler still isn’t running, and I have four kids. If I hadn’t seen that ad, Lee would still be out in the garage bitching at the car and I don’t really know what we would do.”

But the family traded the boys’ surfboard, two bicycles and a Nintendo game for the price of towing the car and a new battery. Two days of work later, Rainville had earned enough money to pay his $109 bill and get the stuff back.

Times are tough all over, but a new twist on the oldest business practice around is helping the cash-strapped or recession-weary weather stormy financial times.

Behind a funky stucco comic book store in the industrialized part of Costa Mesa, car owners are bartering everything from a microwave to computers and a television for repair work at BCM Automotive, whose parts department is beginning to resemble a swap meet booth.

Which is precisely the idea.

Jim Dunn, 50, a self-employed financial planner from Santa Ana Heights, got a $200 brake job Wednesday on his four-wheel-drive vehicle by bartering an Apple computer he intended to unload at a dreaded garage sale.

Beth Kinney, 28, a clothing design assistant from Newport Beach, got her Fiat fixed sooner than she’d scheduled by bartering an unwanted Olympus 35-millimeter camera and a VCR.

Louise Fox of Costa Mesa got her car fixed in exchange for her public relations skills helping BCM market its new bartering service.

And Mike Robles, a 33-year-old Costa Mesa illustrator, will be designing a new logo for the car shop in return for servicing of his new Nissan Pathfinder.

“We’ll be trading my cost plus labor with their cost plus labor,” Robles said. “I’m not tight for cash financially, but I think it’s a great way to do business. It’s pretty cool for self-employed people like me.”

Bartering, of course, has been around for centuries, and merchants frequently swap goods or services.

“I furnished my whole house that way when I owned a sign business,” Dunn said.

But most people find it fairly unusual for a business to trade goods for services with the general public.

“I think it’s a unique way of doing things,” Kinney said. “My left wheel bearing and brakes need to be fixed, but all I knew was it sounded kind of bad and I was going to put it off as long as I could. But I called them after seeing the ‘no money, no problem’ ad, and they took the tires off and told me what was wrong.”

The repair work was done Wednesday, and Kinney will probably pay her bill by bartering clothes that she can buy with an employee discount.

Drumming up business that had dropped off by more than 50% was admittedly what drove BCM owner Ron Charter to cast about for ways to attract customers to his shop, which employs five mechanics.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m trying to think of ways to get customers in,” Charter, 32, admits. “And I knew their cars weren’t breaking down any less.”

He also knew that bartering had worked for him. Pinched for cash about six months ago, he found himself leafing through the Pennysaver for used sofas to furnish a small waiting nook at the repair shop. He provided repair service in exchange for the corner group now gracing his garage.

Business continued to nose-dive as drivers put off all but emergency repairs, and Charter became cashless again. He told a vendor he would pay off his outstanding balance for parts as soon as he could sell off a computer and car phone. The vendor said, “Hey, I need a computer.”

“It still took me a while to put together that, if I’m in this bind, maybe other people are, too.”

So last week, he ran a full-page ad in the weekly Pennysaver and shrewdly fired off copies via fax to local media outfits.

What he got floored even Charter, a man with a taste for attention. Ten or 15 calls a day flooded in from people either suspicious or amazed by the offer to haggle over used household appliances, guns, camcorders--even guitars.

“I’ve been offered an escort service and a limousine service, too,” he said with amusement. He’s trying only to accept trades for essential goods or services he can either use or sell.

The Costa Mesa Police Department issued him a business license to sell secondhand, but Charter says it requires reporting serial numbers on most of the items such as guns or stereos.

Unlike a pawnshop, he stresses, BCM will offer more than a dime to the dollar and will not loan money against property. Charter has blue books to help figure what he can resell the bartered merchandise for, and expects it will be closer to 50 cents on the dollar. He is talking to wholesalers who might specialize but also suspects he may have to peddle some of the stuff once a month at the swap meet.

An Anaheim man got his Toyota truck fixed and paid his $94 with a used microwave. “A pawnshop would have probably only given him $20 for this,” Charter said.

Collateral items also will be held for up to 90 days before Charter tries to recoup payment.

He said he agreed to take a watch for collateral from a mother of three whose car broke down Monday as she drove to work, so that the repairs could be made before payday today.

“I think (the program) would fail in any other times,” Charter said. “But people are having a tough time right now. And I think this recession may turn into a good thing for me. A positive. When times are good, you sit back and take in the money, but when things are tough you have to think, be more creative to compete and get the business.”

To that end, he tried another creative approach to win publicity earlier this year.

A few months back he participated in a food drive for neighboring Share Our Selves center and collected 4,000 cans from customers, who got a few dollars discounted from their BCM repair bill. He had pictures of himself taken and delivered to the media for a story about the food drive.

Even though he has owned BCM for 3 1/2 years, Charter says he is not a mechanic. And if this bartering thing takes off, he says, maybe he will end up teaching other businesses how to do the same. He’s already invested hundreds of dollars in blue books and a special license, and the time to investigate how best to give it a whirl.

“I’ve been needing the business really bad,” Charter said, “and I think people need the help as much as I need the business.”