"They do shoddy work (to my untrained eye), have no concern for the quality of work, and generally treat everyone like they’re there to serve at their pleasure."
I would have expected an American to be more able to see understand the show part :) The work they do is to an acceptable standard (according to the American government!) and not shoddy to my trained eye ;)

There are some things we do quite different overhere, but i guess that's more cultural. As a European i am shocked by the poor quality of housing anyway. On Orange County Choppers it's the same: All houses are built of wood! Cheap to built, but expensive to maintain.

"How did the bio clean-up people afford to cut their estimate (which they swore they couldn’t do it for less then $18,000) by 25%?"
Sorry to ask, but how naive are you? You simplye believe a contractor that swears they con't do it for less? i don't know how holy the American contractors are, but if a contractor swears that he can't do it for less that makes me more motivated to get a lower price :)
And i'm sure there's a good showelement to it, so the price was probably agreed to before the recording of the episode (you might try to visit a studio. You'll be shocked about the way TV-shows are not completely showing the truth :) ) and 'negotiated' just for the sake of the show.

25% should be no problem for a normal company. That's what they normally need as profit. So it might have helped that they get worldwide exposure to make a better price too :)

May be i should get my own camerateam too, might save me a lot of money in the longrun ;)

I have a tradingcompany too, and choose not to be the cheapest. Yeah maybe i'm lazy, but i'd rather take a bigger profit on an item and sell 100 than sell 1000 for less profit per item and ending up earning the same. At least i have the time to give some aftersale-service to my customers. Better yet, i end up earning money the easy way by complaining customers from outlets and 'guaranteed lowest price'-shops because they aren't able to provide service.

So if you ask me if i can take of 25% of my prices in most cases i actually can without any problem. If i choose to do it is another question :)

As a foreign constructor and real-estate investor i'm stunned to see that in America most houses seem to be built very poorly. All wood (cheap to buy, cheap to flip :) ), shingles on the roof, nothing is really built to last.

Some people are complaining about the lack of quality Armando is delivering, but i've seen several episodes in which his work is inspected with government officials, so he must comply to the standards. So if there's any concern about the lack of quality you should go to the government. It's exactly the same overhere :)

I've seen the episode recently, and i would have done it exactly the same. I'm sorry Sean obviously isn't able to see the 'show'-part of the episode.

What you call 'skimp-out' is just a way to do business. When i need to get something done, i always get more contractors to make an offer and in most cases the cheapest one gets the contract. Simple, plain business. We mostly take offers on email or letter, and sometimes the differences are shocking. We once had two offers on the same project to replace some windows. The most expensive and the cheapest both offered the same windows, same brand, same type, same guarantee, same … everything. The most expensive one calculated 24.000,- while the cheapest one calculated only 8.000,-!

We have the same with cleaning up. All companies need to apply to the same rules, controlled by the government, so the only issue to select a company that remains is the price. And here there are also big differences. When we get the most expensive for a small container we pay about 750,-, while the cheapest one needs to apply the same rules and only charges 325,-

The house was a real horror. I can imagine that Armando tried to keep the walls. We try to do the same overhere. The less you need to get out of a building the cheapest it is to rebuild … in most cases. We don't have wooden houses, so we don't have as many bug-problems too … luckely.

"And apparently the brothers don’t even talk now. Over… one house. Okay, that makes PERFECT sense."
As i recall the episode there was a bit more to it than just one house, and at the end of the episode Armando went over to talk it out with his brother. His brother decided to go into another direction and Armando accepted that, but what we saw overhere they made up :)

"Yes… it’s called “kiting” loans and it’s about as dangerous as can be if you have no clue what you’re doing."
LOL, that is the case for anything you do and have no clue what you're doing. How many bungeejumpers died because they did things they shouldn't have done? We had a case overhere of a guy who took a bungeecord without knowing what he was taking, probably thinking they are all the same, jumped and at the end realised for a very short time that his cord was way too long …

Loaning money when you have no clue what you are doing with it ALWAYS stupid! Not just in this case. I'm willing to take it even a step further. Loaning is always stupid! It's better to save money and buy what you want on the moment you have enough savings!