Today I managed to scrape my lovely new car on a metal girder in a car park, which has caused several scratches over the wheel arch and slightly further along.
I took it to the Audi Garage who advised that they would need to try and match the paint, and then blend it and the door panel in, they'd then re-apply the "autoglym" polish. Fair enough I thought, makes sense.
I've just received the quote however and it's for £1400 !!
Now, I'll try and upload some photos and put up a link, but these scratches are not big, and whilst I realise that applying primer, and paint, and then blending in will take time this does seem totally excessive to me!
So I was wondering the following:
1) do any of you recommend Chips Away or the such like?
2) If I was to use a non-Audi workshop would this invalidate my paint or bodywork warranty (car is less than 3 years old)?
3) could I get Autoglym out to reapply their polish after an independent place had done the work?
thanks in advance for any tips/advice you have.
Edited by Pugugly on 07/12/2009 at 16:55
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... If I was to use a non-Audi workshop would this invalidate my paint or bodywork warranty (car is less than 3 years old)?...
Yes, but in a worst-case scenario, only on the area that's been repaired.
So I would disregard the warranty for the purposes of deciding how to repair the damage.
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1/ show us the damage and we will tell you if chips away can do it, or call them - the quote is free,
2/ your bodywork warranty is not worth the paper its printed on, and the paint warranty will be ok on the unafected bits.
3/ You can do that yourself
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OK I'll try to take a photo of it tomorrow when it's light again :)
It honestly doesn't look that deep the scratches, could it be because the car is silver that the quote is so high? (I've heard before that re painting silver cars is time consuming?).
I have the Auto Glym polish/wax kit, I had maybe foolishly assumed that the stuff they do at the Garage was a different polish/coating?!
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Hi Chewy,
A couple of moths ago I managed to scrape my silver ford focus on a brick gate post scratching the front bumper in several places and also grazing the wheel arch. I got the bumper blended in and repainted and also had the graze on the wheel arch repaired along with two dents on the wheel arch that were present on the car when i bought it-cost was appox £110 and the damaged areas are as good as new (repaired by a body shop). Without having seen the damage its hard to say how much yours would cost but if the scratches are as light as you say then its hard to see why your quote was £1400. The bodyshop did not comment on silver paint being particularly hard to paint either. Also when I went to pick the car up I got talking to the owner of the body shop and he was saying that he had another Focus in for repair and that the owner had been to Ford to get a quote and that quote was approx 2.5 times more than the bodyshop quote. So beware of dealerships huge markups. Also it may be worth getting an indy body shop quote-may be cheaper than you think.
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tell us which part of the country you are in we may be able to suggest a good place to go
in several of the large cities i have lived all the big main dealers all subcontracted their bodyshop work to one or two bodyshops anyways, always cheaper to go to the bodyshops direct, its the same job just without the markup
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Few main dealers will do body repairs - they'll just sub it out.
When both my wife's Picasso and my Merc were damaged (exactly the same damage on each car caused by the neighbour's horse), we got various quotes for the neighbour's insurance company. Can't remember the exact figures, but it went something like this:
CITROEN "authorised bodyshop". Took the guy to see the damage on the car. Guy entered all of the information into a computer and after about 30 minutes of tapping I received a detailed breakdown of every single step in the process including removing all fittings on bonnet to the nearest microsecond - £1200 + VAT
MERC Main Dealer. Guy strolls out to car and phones up his mate who works at the local Merc authorised bodyshop, gets answer in 30 seconds, no need to see the car - £600 + VAT
We ended up taking both cars to a mate of a mate. Both cars done extremely professionally, plus some other scratches attended to at the same time for under £300 + VAT (total)
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Few main dealers will do body repairs - they'll just sub it out.
Correct. I had the bumper of my M3 repaired by an independent bodyshop after someone managed to leave a scratch along the entire width in a car park. Perfect job, absolutely not noticeable to the naked eye. There were a number of virtually new BMWs parked there because, the owner told me, they do all the bodyshop work for the local BMW dealer.
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