I had a small accident this morning on the way to the office. I bumped another car from behind, damaging my grill, bumper, hood, etc. Nobody hurt, just some scuffed bumpers and stuff.
Here’s the situation. I got three estimates from local body shops (that’s a panel beater, for those of you in the UK) The hood on my Pontiac Montana minivan doesn’t close completely tight now. Two of the shops said the point at which the latch grabs the hood is slightly bent, but can be straightened. The third shop said that the glue joints (where the frame of the hood fastens to the outer skin) have broken, and the hood should be replaced. This means painting the new hood, hoping it matches, more time for the van to be in the shop, and an additional $500-600 more over the other two estimates. It’s covered by insurance, but I don’t want to take the high estimate for fear it would make my rates go up.
Any body men out there want to tell me if shop #3 is gouging, or if #1 & #2 are trying to slip a shoddy job past me so they can get my money?
hey, that year in Body Shop delivery will come in handy!
I’d think the first two are being more honest with you. It could be as simple as a bend hood latch, which is very easy to fix (or should be).
Now, I’m not sure if the third shop is exactly lying to ya, but maybe seeing something that the other two don’t. It’s not an exact science. You can check yourself, ya know. Just examine the hood when it comes down and see if it’s latching right. *
*no, I’m not experienced, just watched a few done. Your milage may vary. The above statements do not imply expertise in the advertised area, blah blah blah
This is a kinda hard one without looking at the car itself. But logic would simply tell me that 1 and 2 are the decent ones, after all, they did tell you that the same thing was wrong. Its like going to three doctors and two tell you one thing, and another tells you something else. Who are you going to listen too?
Usually, car repair places don’t try to pull one over on you if insurance is paying for it. Because if they do try and rake you, and the insurance company ever found out, they would be calling their top lawyers within a second.
QuantumGrid, I see your point. I don’t really think that any of these places are really out to rip me off. The most expensive quote came from a shop that has a reputation of doing top-notch work, at at top-notch price. I’m wondering if this is a case of “Let’s replace it to make it perfect, rather than fix it, even though it’ll be perfectly serviceable and workable”. See what I mean? This is not a show car, this is just my daily driver. I want to keep it for a few more years, but I don’t know if a couple of broken glue joints are worth a tinker’s damn in the greater scheme of things, or if I’ll have to jimmy the hood just to check the oil.
Saint Zero, thanks for your help, too! It’s latching right, as far as I can tell, but the hood sits a bit higher than it used to, like maybe the impact pulled the latch point down and back a bit. Imagine that the latch point was pulled about 1/2 inch away from the skin of the hood, and you’ll see what I mean.
I would go with the 3rd estimate. The extra money won’t make any difference in your insurance rate. You having an accident is really all it will be based on. You would have to have had a significantly worse accident for the cost to make a difference … like totaling it.
Get the hood replaced now, so you don’t have to deal with it again in 6 months when it really works itself loose.
Well, hell, handy, how old the car is is easy to figure out. Pontiac’s minivan was called the Trans Sport until about 1997, when it was changed to the “Montana” like the OP said. The Montana has not, IIRC, had a major redesign since then (anybody? anybody?) so it’s a pretty moot point.
I talked to the insurance agent, and gave her the estimates. We decided to go with the high one, and have the hood replaced. That body shop was on their “preferred” list, since they’ve done great work before for them. The van is a 2000 Montana, and has just over 10K miles on the clock, so it’s worthwhile getting the repairs done well. Besides, she (the agent) said that one of the other shops repaired another car for a customer, and had to come back and get authorization for work that was not originally detected when they did the estimate. In other words, they missed it then, and maybe they missed this, and would need to do it any way. Adding that to their estimate would bring the total up to about what the shop we selected will charge.
Thanks for the responses and the help, gang! Next road trip, I’m driving!
My insurance agent came out once with his laptop, looked at it, inputted it all into his trusty dusty laptop & came out with his own estimate, which was like right on. As a matter of fact we did that right in front of a body shop.
We must have a much better agent if they do it themselves.
