chillzatl

Just thought I'd share the story of my horrible experience with a local, atlanta area body shop after my parked TT was backed into. The rear bumper, bumper cover and hatch had to be replaced, along with several smaller interior pieces. Seemed like a pretty minor thing to me. To make a VERY long story short, I got the car back after 26 days. This past weekend I decided to go wash and wax the car. After washing it and pulling into the garage bay to dry and prep for waxing I saw the horror. My poor car looked like it had been driven through a briar patch. Not only was the paint one big swirl mark from the orbital buffer, there were hundreds of tiny scratches all over the paint. Upon closer inspection I found several small buff burns on the hood of the car, all the way through the clearcoat. I decided it was time to check the car with a fine tooth comb, er eye. I found no less then 4 more buff burns on the car. Several of these were silver dollar size. In fact, the entire area around the top anteanna was ruined. I also found an assortment of spots with painted over dirt and tiny bubbles that were only visable when seen in direct light. oh, and then there were the fingerprints. I found a few half visable finger prints in the paint. Sounds fun eh? OH WAIT, not only that, but upon a trip to the dealership saturday, I noticed that, for some odd reason, my car didn't match the other raven black TT on the lot. It seems they took the liberty to totally repaint my car a different, yet similar metallic black paint.

That is my horror story. I still get stomach cramps when I think about it too much, so I'm trying not too. I've already left a message with the shop to see what they are going to do about this. I'm not going to name the shop yet. They have several shops around the atlanta area and could have more around the country. If they own up to it and repaint my car without any hassles, all will be forgotten. Thankfully one of the service guys there came out and told me that " the normal guy" who does the detailing wasn't there so one of the "other guys" took to my car with the buffer. Just a note for everyone out there, be careful where you take your car!!! If they don't offer suitable service on this, i'll let all you atlanta folks know who did this.

economisTT

ouch -- hope you get satisfaction from them

Rennen

I'm wondering if there is any way to avoid this kind of situation. I guess the only way to minimize the risk of this is to ask for references and look closely at some of their work before using them. Of course, this doesn't help a whole lot because they will certainly show you their best work. Perhaps the only relatively reliable way is to talk with people you know and trust to find the best body shop you can. IT really is a crap-shoot. Good luck getting this resolved.

chillzatl

Dealer recommended them. Said they always send their cars there and get great results.

Rennen

Perhaps fire your dealer too

Bahookie

....instead of the gold flake in Raven Black.

DavidR

I had a similar problem. My car was keyed at the dealership. They said they had a paint guy that they use who would take care of it. He painted over the door twice. Neither time did he match the paint well.

After the second time, I went to a rival dealership's body shop. They said that it would cost $800 to $1000 to fix. I probably will have to have half of the car painted in order to match the paint. At least I know they will do it right. I checked out their shop. All they work on are high end Merecedes, Porsches and Audis. I figure they must know what they are doing if they handle that type of clientelle.

The dealer's paint person recommended that I take the car back to the dealership and have their body shop fix the work. But I don't trust those guys anymore. I think they will probably try to skimp on the work, like they did last time.

As for your damage, they scuffs and micro-scratches arent a big deal. Those can be fixed fairly cheaply. A good detailer will be able to take those out pretty easily. The dealer that screwed up my paint also left microscratches on my car. I am going to get those taken care of after I repaint the door. But with respect to the paint work that was done, that could be expensive. In your situation, you might want to get some legal advice.