Northside repair shop cashes insurance checks then closes leaving customers with no wheels
HOUSTON - FOX 26 Spoke to the owners of Northwest Collision which also goes by Collision Pro who confirm the business is now closed.
It’s due to legal reasons they say.
But they won’t tell us the nature of those legal reasons or what happened to all the insurance money they got to repair dozens of vehicles.
After his car was involved in an accident last summer Jason Martin says his insurance company gave Northwest Collision a check for 11 thousand dollars.
“I had the accident on August 13th,” Martin said. “August 17th they had the check and had it cashed.”
7 months later and Martin says his car still isn’t fixed.
“I ended up losing my job over it,” said Martin.
“My car went to the body shop a week before Thanksgiving,” said Michael Powell.
It’s almost Easter and Powell says all Northwest Collision did for him is cash his insurance check.
“He’s been giving me the runaround for 5 months now,” said Esmeralda Castro. “I can only imagine how many other people he’s done this to.”
“It’s just a big mess people come in here screaming thinking I have something to do with it,” said John Juanopulous, owner of J and A Paint and Body Shop. “I’m just the landlord here.”
Juanopulous says he allowed the owners of the now closed Northwest Collision to store the vehicles they failed to repair in his garage.
He says he’s trying to help some of the customers who say they got burned by Northwest Collision.
“I don’t want to see people suffer but again I can’t come up with 50 60 thousand dollars to fix peoples’ cars.
“I have 5 kids of my own and I have no vehicle,” said Missy Mitchell.
Mitchell and several other customers have filed police reports and HPD is investigating.
They say they also learned a costly lesson.
“When the insurance companies tell you to use their specific providers that’s who you should use no one else,” said Cornelia Conley.
Brian Sosa one of the owners of Northwest Collision told us, “Everything went wrong.”
He assured us he was going to do right by all of his unhappy customers in a timely manner.
We will of course let you know if and when that happens.