So it was raining this morning, and as often happens, a car slid during breaking and a low speed accident ensued. Let’s just say for argument’s sake that this was my car… my fucking ten year old piece of shit car with a failing drive train, suspension, and steering system that I’ve been trying to trade up from for a couple years but can’t afford to thanks to the high value of a technical education and the low prices we all get from outsourcing our industrial sector.
And my luck being what it is, the subsequent bangup, though minor and injuring nobody, involved the cracking of the other person’s plastic bumper and some crumpling to their rear quarter panel. The crumpling I can handle, that’s just a hammer and paint job. But the POS “five mile an hour” (MY ASS!) bumper will have to be replaced and repainted, because those darn metal ones everyone used to have were depriving body shops owners of Porsches. Luckily, my car decided it was enough of a trick to just get a few nicks in the paint to go along with all the other ones I’m ignoring till I get ready to sell her. Which needless to say just got pushed back a few more years.
Bottom line: I just spent four months of pocket money on someone else’s car. At least. I don’t even get to find out how screwed I am for a few days because she’ll have to take it by on her off day.
I’d cash in the insurance I trade a major organ for every year, but with the increased premiums I’d have to pay it back in about 30 minutes and keep paying the rest of my life, so I’m trying to avoid that if at all possible.
Plastic bumpers may be leading to a decline in panel beating, but they sure keep the auto companies happy. My friend was in a slow-speed accident last February, when a car slid into him and pushed him into the car in front. Only damage? Cracked both bumpers. Cost to insurance company? (Thank god for him) - $4,000. Which for a car that, recently brand new, cost about $20,000, seemed like a lot to me.
The lesson being that apparently your bumpers alone are 20% the cost of your car, hence the existance of chop-shops.
That blows. If you’re paying this bill out of your own pocket, make sure you’re getting good body shop quotes. Last thing in the world you want is for her to take it by the dealership or something.
Good quotes are important, though you kind of lose leverage if you’re not going through your insurance co. They have their own adjusters to review the damage and estimates.
I think you’re wrong about the Porsche thing though. The body guys I know (like my dad) are much more of the muscle car type than the Porsche type. Though maybe he’d go for a classic Porsche…
$4,000 for 2 bumpers? I was thinking that was pretty excessive, until I thought of my own car’s accident. New bumper, fender, hood and headlight assembly was about $4000, and I drive a Civic.
Even though this is sort of a rant about the auto body repair industry, the whole insurance thing gets my goat. Here’s someone who would rather pay out of pocket for a repair than tell his insurance company about it. The guy who paid for my repairs did the same thing. WTF is that all about? The insurance guys have to be cleaning up with everyone paying them premiums and afraid to ask for a settlement. The only ones who ask them for money nowadays are the insurance fraud people.
I think there’s really two separate rants here. The first one is about auto body repair and how ridiculous prices are. Hopefully someone who does this for a living will come along and clarify exactly why it costs thousands to fix what appears to be minor problems.
The second rant is about insurance companies and deserves its own thread. I don’t care if you are the president and CEO of BigWig Insurance Company, you cannot say anything to me that will justify the fleecing of Americans that insurance companies are so good at.
Last time I had a fender bender I went to my insurance company (who, incidentally does NOT act like any “Good Neighbor” I ever had…) for an estimate and a list of body shops I could go to. My deductible was $500 at the time. The repair estimates ran about $502. If I tried to get an estimate from a body shop not on their list… my insurance company wouldn’t cover it.
The agent had the brass balls to say to me, “You should go ahead and get the repairs and file the claim. We owe you that money.” You want me to give up my car for weeks to fix a barely noticeable dent so I can file a claim for $2?
I still drive around with that same dent, lo these four or five years later. That, my friend, is why people don’t file claims on their car insurance. I believe its all a scam – the insurance company calls the body shop while you’re on you way over to tell them what your deductible is. That way the body shop knows to quote a few bucks over deductible for your repairs.
My dad’s been in the auto body business for nearly 40 years now, maybe I can answer a few questions. First, what you mention about the company requiring work from specific carriers, that may not be legal, depending on your location. My father’s shop (in NY, YMMV) has a sign stating very clearly that your Ins Co cannot require repairs be done at any particular shop. They may not accept estimates from other shops, but you don’t have to get it repaired there, feel free to get other estimates for your own peace of mind. I’d also like to point out that those shops generally have to provide lower estimates in order to get on the “list”. My father has avoided becoming an affiliated shop for just that reason, he’s got enough business without it, and would just lose money by providing lower cost service.
A small dent in a panel can generally be repaired without replacing the panel, so that is just a fix and repaint kind of job, $500 is not an unreasonable estimate and it can go higher. Let’s talk about the steps necessary to fix a small dent like that (going from old memory here):
[ul]
[li]wash car[/li][li]grind off all the paint in the area[/li][li]pull the dent with a specialized dent pulling tool or flatten with hammer/dolly[/li][li]shrink the metal that has been stretched (torch and hammer)[/li][li]fill rough spots with plastic filler[/li][li]sand filler[/li][li]reapply filler[/li][li]sand filler[/li][li]spend extra time here making sure the area is perfectly smooth[/li][li]wash car[/li][li]prep the area for painting[/li][li]mask area to be painted[/li][li]mix primer[/li][li]apply first coat of primer[/li][li]let dry[/li][li]sand[/li][li]apply second coat of primer[/li][li]wash paint gun[/li][li]dry[/li][li]sand[/li][li]pull the code for and mix the exact color paint for your car[/li][li]first coat of paint[/li][li]dry[/li][li]second coat of paint[/li][li]wash paint gun[/li][li]dry[/li][li]sand[/li][li]apply clear coat[/li][li]dry[/li][li]second coat of clear coat[/li][li]wash paint gun[/li][li]dry[/li][li]remove masking from car[/li][li]polish[/li][li]wash car[/li][/ul]There is an awful lot of work here just to fix one little ding, and it’s still cheaper than buying a new panel! And Og forbid you do one of these steps wrong, the high gloss paint on a car is a beacon for mistakes. Any particle of dust or tiny ridge left unsanded is easily visible and makes for very unhappy customers. Not to mention all of the specialized tools, paint booths, drying lamps and expensive supplies (paint itself is VERY pricey) that go into the repair. A good shop will make your car look like it’s never been in an accident, you don’t get that look if you cut corners and do a shoddy job. A good job takes a skilled hand and time.
$4000 for 2 bumpers is way over priced. It’s got to be more than just the bumper (the hood, I can understand costing much more, it’s heavy and made out of metal).
I recently had to get my front bumper (only) replaced. Total cost to the other guy’s insurance company…$1100 CAN (about $700 US not including rentals). The price breaks down to $250 for the plastic bumper (not all that expensive), $100 for various clips and “bumper fillers” (little pastic things that fill in some holes around my fog lights). The rest was labour (paint being pretty cheap).
Well, as an engineer I’m somewhat in this field, and I can make it pretty simple. For plastic parts that get broken (as opposed to just needing repainting) the only option is to replace them. This, of course, means going to the car company to get the part at monopoly prices, as well as repainting costs for an entire panel. A plastic bumper, on average, will run somewhere between $50-100 to make and ship, but since you can only get it from one source, it’s going to end up costing several hundred dollars. Hence my complaint about plastic bumpers, as opposed to the old metal variety that could actually be repaired. Still not cheap due to labor, but much cheaper than labor and new parts.
I couldn’t agree more, although I think they go together nicely. The reason that car companies get away with their pricing schemes is because people have to carry insurance. Thus they know they can charge more than anyone can reasonably afford. It’s the same reason getting a broken leg set can cost well into the five figure range in the medical arena, because they’re able to force a much larger group to cover the payments.
What REALLY cheeses me off is that my premiums are supposedly based on me having an average risk of car damage/theft for my area. But when a perfectly normal fender bender occurs (in this case, I hit the girl about a hundred yards down from the site of another read-ender in the rain), I have to pay out of pocket because any actual damage or theft is used as an excuse to jack up my premiums. So in fact I’m paying exorbitant rates on the condition that I will never derive any benefit from them.
