Newsletter - June 2009

Beware of the Parking Lot Body Repairers

Not Quite Bernie Madoff, But a Scam None the Less

Over the last few months we have seen evidence of a scam that has likely been making the rounds regarding auto body repair. A person will approach a car owner in a parking lot and ask that person if they would like their body damage repaired for a price of somewhere between $100 and $500. Then they take the car and do a shoddy repair. I don’t know why anyone would let someone take their car, but we have seen three cars lately that have been through this.

One was a 2006 Honda Accord. The repairer knew enough about body repair to mix the filler and spread it on the doors and fender in a very unprofessional way. Then it appeared he painted it with a can of spray paint. The fender and doors which originally could have been repaired if done correctly now needed to be replaced.

Collision repair is a highly skilled profession that requires thousands of dollars of specialty tools. It also requires a paint booth which nobody has at home. A few years ago a garage with two cars in it burned down in Denver because some guys were painting cars there.

Another was a 1997 Lexus. It had a 2 foot by 1foot dent in the quarter panel that wasn’t very deep and wouldn’t have been too hard to repair, but the parking lot “repair person” didn’t know a thing about collision and he took a hammer and started banging on the inside of the quarter panel, stretching the heck out of the metal and making the eventual correct repair much harder and more expensive.