I have said it before, and Ill say it again. If you do all of your own
Prep Work. This means trim & glass removial, sanding, masking, and
degreasing. Any goober can spray on paint and it look decent.

   Most Maaco's and Earl Shieb's are chains. The companies set time lines
for their production charts. It is up to each owner how they follow and
impliment that.
Charles
Sure everyone's eaten at a good McDonalds once

I have to agree with this.  It all depends on which one you go to.

Here are stories about Maaco and Earl Scheib...

1>  1993 - I was a junior in high school.  I had a 1986 Cadillac that I
bought from my neighbor for $3500 (Hell of a deal since it only had 24,000
miles on it and ran like a charm).  Some kid at my school thought it would
be funny to pour a bottle of brown goo all over the hood (I later found out
that it was tobacco spit).  Being in high school and having blown my wad on
the car, I went to Maaco.  My uncle and I stripped the moldings, filled the
stone chips, taped it off, etc. and trailered it over.  Maaco cleaned it up
and painted it.  I paid just over $400.  After it was painted, I took care
of the paint job and to this day, it still looks great.  I still see it
almost daily because I sold it to a hip-hop-gang-banger kid down the block
in 1999 for $3500 and it had 82,000 miles on it by then... heh heh...  He
put pimp daddy rims on it and neon lights underneath, but the paint job
looks good.  I think the Maaco job turned out good because my uncle and I
did everything but paint it.

2>  1999 - The Maaco I took the Cadillac to was closed down at this point.
So, I went to one in the city.  It was a 1993 Cutlass.  It had been
sideswiped and lightly rear-ended... it looked worse than it was.  I bought
it for $800.  I think the guy collected his insurance money and just wanted
to get rid of it.  I replaced the rear bumper, the driver's door, the
driver's side fender, and the front bumper.  I got the parts cheap from
people parting out their 93's in the paper.  I didn't want to drive it, I
just wanted to sell it and I wanted the paint to match.  I go to Maaco, tell
the guy I want their cheapie job.  Now, the car actually looked great except
for the mis-matched fender, door, etc.  I got it back and I was pissed.  It
had that orange peel look, there was dirt (not dust...  DIRT CHUNKS) in the
paint, paint drips, and there were wierd looking discolored patches.  It was
$350.  I complained and they said they'd fix it.  2 weeks later, they
repainted it.  It looked just as bad.  I complained and the guy told me to
get lost.  My dad's a lawyer.  We went over, my dad threatened to sue.  The
guy was a real hard a.s and told him to contact his lawyer.  My dad just
said, "Well, it's not going to cost my kid a penny to hire me as his
attorney, but I'm sure a lawyer will cost you more than the $50 profit you
probably made after painting his car twice."  The guy told us to get out.
My dad filed and sent him papers.  His lawyer called my dad and said the guy
offered to waive the $350 in the interest of "saving time."  My dad told the
lawyer we wanted $4500 for repairing the damage done to the vehicle and
described the pictures we had, the incomplete paperwork the guy gave me,
etc.  In the end, we got $3000 and didn't have to go to court.  We probably
would have won in court because the paperwork was screwed up, we gave him a
chance to fix his mistakes, and the difference in the before and after
pictures was like night and day.  I kinda think I was just lucky that my
daddy was there (LOL) and that the guy realized a law suit would probably
cost him more...  I had it painted at a local body shop for $2000.  It
looked damn good when they were done.  It wasn't perfect and some of Maaco's
screw-ups were still apparent, but it looked really good.  I ended up
selling it for $4500.  All tolled, I think I made just under $4000 because
the $3000 i got from the Maaco jackass covered the the paint job, the price
of the car, and most of the parts.

3>  Earl Scheib - 2002 - My buddy took his work truck to Earl Scheib.  This
truck was just scratched to hell.  It's a 1994, but after working in a
quarry, it was chipped, scratched, and generally looked like hell.  He got
their cheapie paint job and paid a little extra for them to fill in the rock
chips and scratches.  Surprisingly, it looked great.  There was a little
overspray on the tires and the bedliner, but a good scrubbing got it off the
tires and he didn't care about the bedliner since was putting on a new coat
of do-it-yourself bedliner anyway (like Rhinolining).

4>  Earl Scheib - 2002 - My cousin took his car (I think it was like an 85
Buick Regal...  It looked like a two-tone Grand National with T-Tops) to
Scheib.  It was the same one my buddy went to like a month earlier.  He just
wanted a "decent job."  The paint was delaminated and it looked like hell,
but it only had like 50,000 miles on it and it still ran well.  He wasn't
expecting perfection or anything.  He was going to put a for sale sign on it
and drive it as a work car till someone bought it.  He got it back and it
was unbelievable.  We actually stood there cracking up.  There was a solid
spot of paint on the windshield that was about the size of a CD.  The edges
of the tires were coated in a nice thick layer of paint.  The grill had
paint on it.  And the chrome door handles were painted over.  The hood
looked like hell...  as if they ran out of paint and the gun was spitting...
He complained.  The guy repainted the hood, cleaned up the windshield and
the grill, and gave my cousin something like $80 back for the door handles
(he looked up a replacement set on the internet and my cousin said he'd
replace them himself).  It didn't look perfect, but in the end, it looked
"decent."  My cousin was happy enough even though there were some screw-ups.

In my experience, it seems like Scheib stands behind their work a little bit
more than Maaco.

All in all though, you do get what you pay for and you might be able to make
it better if you do some work yourself and make sure to explain exactly what
you want.  Don't just give it to them and expect it to be done right.  If
you tell them what you want and they agree to do it, at least you've got a
leg to stand on.  Maybe even write it out and ask the guy to staple it to
the work order or maybe even see if you can get him to sign off on it (I did
this once...  I wrote a list of things I wanted a dealer to check.  It was
under warranty and I wrote down "CHECK BRAKES" and then wrote a description
of what it was doing.  The guy stapled it to the work order and when i went
to pick it up, he had changed the brakes...  on a car with 13,000 miles on
it...  and tried charging me $480...  I got him to take off the charges by
showing him my note that he stapled to the work order saying CHECK BRAKES...
I'd never have a dealer change my brakes...  First, they'll rape you and
second, I know how to do it myself!).

I guess my only comment would be...  If you're going for a $300 paint job,
expect a $300 paint job!  Expect to be dissatisfied because they're bound to
make some mistakes.  Even if the overall job looks pretty decent, I
guarantee you'll see something you don't like.  My suggestion is to either
pay more to get a better job or maybe work it out with the place so you can
do some of the work yourself.

FH674