After dispute, Panthers player pays $3,900 car repair bill in coins

Panthers player Mike Tolbert paid a car repair shop $3,943.93 in coins after getting into dispute over the price and service for his 1975 Chevy Caprice.

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Mike Tolbert wasn’t at all pleased when he took his 1975 Chevy Caprice convertible to Motion Lab Tuning in June to have the engine serviced, only to have the bill raised on him and the work left incomplete.

On Wednesday, the Panthers running back said that he had checked in with the shop Monday to ask why the car wasn’t ready yet and found that not only was it not finished but that the bill had increased from $2700 to $3900.

“I was like, ‘Where’d that come from?’ And they were, ‘Blase’ this, work for this, this and this.’ But my car’s not finished,” Tolbert told the Charlotte Observer‘s Joe Person. “So we had an argument about that. I tried to pay them with a check. They said we’re not going to take your check because we’re not sure it’s going to clear the bank. I’m like, ‘OK, if that’s what you feel.'”

He then went to the bank to take out the money to pay the bill, but he specifically requested that the bank only give him the $3,943.93 in coins.

“They didn’t want to take it. The police officer made them take it,” Tolbert said. “I got my car out of there and I’m shipping it somewhere else to get it fixed. It’s not even done.”

While the shop owner has since said that the increase in the invoice was due to the price of parts that Tolbert’s friend, a middleman in the transaction, was supposed to supply, Tolbert maintained that he wasn’t concerned about the publicity.

“They wanted to get rude and disrespectful. And I handled it the funniest and simplest way I could,” he told the Observer. “I paid them what they asked for. How else can you defend it?”

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