OK so this saga started about a month ago when some moron scraped the side of my 67 skylark with his piece of crap white plastic car. It would have not been too bad if he didnt hit my front wheel and wrecked the front suspension too. So I decided to claim on my AAA insurance and get it fixed up properly. Not realyl knowing any good mechanics/body shops etc. I tried a few places but most would not touch an old car including AAA's places. In the end I decided it would be less grief to take it back to the garage that sold me the car. So it gets towed there and a couple of weeks later I get the car back. The car was in perfect condition before the accident After the accident it had some scrape marks down the drivers side, a wrecked front wheel and suspension damage. So before I go to collect the car they say 'hey what do you want to do about the dent in the drivers door'. Well I tell them that there was no dent. They say well it was here when we got it. I tell them that the insurance guy has photos showing it to be fine and they agree and fix the dent... Then they phone up and say 'what do yo want to do with the key scratch on the passenger side wing'. I say 'there was no key mark there before!!!' WTF! I phone the insurance guy and he says, 'no key scratch when I was there' . I pick up the car anyway (I still have to battle with them about the key scratch). I check it over briefly, the body, suspension etc. When I get home however I find a whole bunch of new things. a screw hanging out of the door, the electrics have been messed up so no lights work (I did not notice this in the day when I left), bits of paint on the chrome, and the rear quarter panel sounds like they took it off but didnt reattach it properly, it rattles terribly! One might expect the car to be in better condition after it leaves the shop but not in this case. I dont know the best way of proving all this stuff to them and getting them to fix it. Apart fom getting the Better business bureau involved what can i do. I have some crappy photos the insurance guy took of the car body but not the interior.. how about that rattling body panel (it wasnt even a damaged panel!!) help!
Collission shops are butchers.........the guys today who call themselves bodymen can only paint good, but when a real car comes their way unless it's made out of plastic and $1,000 parts they can just order up and get they don't know what to do with it. I went through that about 25 years ago with my Riv......even then a car that was more than 5 years old they'd rather not bother with. It's all about making money as fast as they can. :spank:
its a shame because the paint job they did was excellent. They matched the metallic burgundy colour exactly. I dont know if you can get that paint still or something but its impossible to see that it has been re-sprayed... I just dont understand how they wrecked the rest of the car!
yeah,most shops won't touch classics. i took a 68 electra i had to my local gm stealership,they would not talk to me. but the owner of the stealership had a 68 toronado,and they did it. i guess i did not know the 3 w's of success: what to kiss,who's to kiss,and when to kiss it!! i go to maaco,they will paint any car,do quality work,at fair prices.
You should point it out to your insurance guy. Since they're the ones paying for it, they might be interested in a "oops, another problem has shown up" kind of shop.
It's not a Buick story, but a crappy shop story: My oldest son has a 1999 Audi Quattro. He rear ended an Explorer going about 15MPH. The car had a fair amount of front end damage ($6K). The shop it went to was recommended by my <a href="http://get-faster.com?go=insurance" onmouseover="window.status = 'goto: insurance';return 1" onmouseout="window.status=''">insurance</a> company, so I figured that it would be done properly....WRONG. The morons at the shop tried to start the car before checking for engine damage. The front timing cover was broken, and pieces of the cover went under the timing belt. When they went to start it, the timing belt slipped, and since it is a zero interference engine, all the valves bent.....the engine was a total loss. I was forced to take legal action, as no one wanted to claim responsibility. The <a href="http://get-certified.net?go=insurance" onmouseover="window.status = 'goto: insurance';return 1" onmouseout="window.status=''">insurance</a> company had to fork over $14K for a new engine. The collision work and the new engine was more than the value of the car. So, you don't have to have a Buick to get crappy service!
admin edit... Jim.. take a deep breath, and then make a constructive and intelligent post about how your shop does the work. Calling people names, and telling them where to go doesn't prove anything.. I don't want to see a post like this, ever again. No problem.....its James.....not Jim Y'all have a good one, I'm out I will say that I agree that the statement above is too general in nature, while some collision body shops are nightmares, we can't paint them all with the same brush. JW
the guys at most body shops around here really dont care. they do it for the money and dont really put alot of pride into their work. as for the paint matching perfectly, look carefully they more than likely blended it in. i was once working on a brand new lincon for a girl. she asked if i was going to be able to match the paint good. i said i didn't know if it would be perfect, but it would be better than the last person who touched it up. she told me that her car had never been touched. when i pointed out where the paint had been blended in before she ended up getting so upset that she sold the car. sorry for getting a little off topic, but most average body shops do not put as much pride as they should in their work, and if you want it done right you have to do some research. i dont mean to offend anyone, i was in the business myself for many years but got out of it because you are rushed too much and they dont care if you do a good shop (i am still speaking about your average collision shop)
well thanks for the support.. its so hard when youre starting out with an old car. I have had help from some buick guys from over on buickstreet. Because there was both body damage and suspension damage I wasnt sure if I could take it to a body shop and have them organise the suspension too. Thats why I just took it back to the place I bought if from (who specialise in old cars). I just cant see how they could wreck it so badly. I wouldnt even mind if they just came clean. I mean its so stupid, I have photographic prrof from the insurance company of how it looked. All they have to do is say sorry we screwed up but we will fix it.. I mean they have to fix it anyway so why try and con me.. its not like I am not going to notice a big dent in the door and a scratch down the side (the side that had been fine before!) I dont know whether to cut my losses and go elsewhere or take it back to them to fix. Its so inconvenient too just before christmas. Should I try and get them to loan me a car in the meantime, a car being essential for survival here in LA or am I just being stupid thinking they coul dbe that helpful. Why is is that cars and builders attract so many cheapskate con artists. Before you cry foul, I know that there are many excellent craftsmen in both fields, its a shame there so many dodgy guys that blacken your name. Its not like I was even hassling timewise, it took them a good few weeks to screw up my car! oh well live and learn
Any dealing I have ever had with a body shop has been a bad one. The clearcoat washed off my daughters car one month after being repaired by a local body shop here, who claims to be the "best" ..........and my old Riv was not properly repaired by one years ago........they didn't even bother weld the quarter panel properly and I had to re-do it myself. It had a stack of shims 3/4" thick under the hood hinge with a longer bolt in order to close b/c the "body man" didn't know how to fix the car right. I'll spare you the other details. I have friends who worked in body shops, one good friend of mine owns one. I also worked in a building next to one many years ago. After seeing and hearing what really goes on in these places, I would never bring anything I could do myself into one. I feel your pain, brother! :beer
I think a few people have had good experiences as well as bad ones w/ body shops and such. When some guy took a door off of my grandpa's mustang with his bronco we took it to a local body shop, and they did a wonderful job...here it is about a year later and the repainted door and front fender does not match the rest of the car as far as paint goes, although it's hard to see unless you look at it real closely in the sun-that's a bad experience. A good one-he had a ford taurus before the mustang and had a key scratch on it and took it to jim baiers ford dealership and they matched it up real well with the car and if you seen the car you'd never know it had been scrathed.
Gabriel, you should tell the entire story to your insurance guy and then tell him/her that you want a different shop to take care of what the first shop screwed up.
well suprisingly or maybe not the insurance loss adjuster has been super helpful. Shame his photography skills are 0 but he is being really supportive. I think that I shall give em a chance to correct this scratch and then call it a day. I can see already that some of the paint just by the fender seems to be cracking and bare to the metal away indicating that they did not take the fenders off to re-spray, however i cant really be 100% on this as I dont have photos of that level of detail before the accident. I think it goes to show its worth getting a digital camera and taking pictures of ones car from every angle of every detail inside and out and make sure that they are time stamped too.. maybe helpful in the future... I bought a car cover so that hopefully the next time some idiot does the same thing perhaps the damage may not be quite so bad.. should help keep some of the la smog at bay too.. i have to wash the car about every 3 days which is crazy...
Rather than continue the pi$$ing match here, at the request of the moderator I deleted wu's quote in my above post and had the class to send him a private message. I was not referring to any particular person when I called body shops butchers, I meant body shops in general. This comment was based on my past experiences.......I know what goes on in some of these places. It's sad that some bad apples spoil it for the rest of the bunch. Around here in the Northeast, rust problems compel some body shops to avoid working on cars more than 6 or 8 years old. Bondo plastered over rust seems to be the accepted way of doing things. My neighbor had his car touched up to the tune of $2,000 and it began bubbling out 2 months later. There certainly are a few good ones out there......perhaps we could use a dedicated forum here on the board that lists them? :bglasses:
You know what would be a really fantastic service on this page would be some kind of listing directory of mechanics, body shops, parts suppliers. I dont know how it would work exactly to stop people from promoting themselves whether they are any good or not. However anything would be better than nothing I think You could have shops listed by state and skills. Maybe members could both contribute references and maybe even some kind of score or something, plus add comments... that would be really great for dunces like me and first time buick buyers. They dont even have to necessarily be buick specialists but just people that are good with older cars. This should not be done as a forum I think but more as some kind of organised listings.. what does anyone else think?
