Another Body Shop Nightmare

Circa40

Circa40

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These pictures are for our insurance company, but I thought I would share.

This is a "Preferred" body shop that works with Farmers Insurance and apparently our local MBZ dealer sends their work to this dealer.

Someone backed into my mom's 2011 Mercedes C300 a few weeks ago and we got the car back this past Friday. Unfortunately it was kinda dark and I couldn't inspect the car better.

Even though the damage was on the drivers side door, this body shop worked under the hood. While driving home from delivery I noticed that the "low coolant" warning light turned on. When I we got home I took a look under the hood and saw this....


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Whatever they were doing they forgot to reattach the coolant hose to the hose guides and it was scraping against the radiator fan.


When we received the car they made us wait another hour before it was pulled out because they were "detailing" the car.
Note that this shop is about 10mins away from home...it magically got this dirty.

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Scuffs on all 4 sides of the car. I cleaned off one of the scuffs with P21S paint cleaner but our insurance company called my mom on Saturday and told us not to touch it so I left the rest alone. The scuffs on the edges turned out to be compound/glaze residue (phew!!!!). I seriously thought there were some burnt edges.

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A-pillar/tweeter housing
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And of course swirls and holograms on the fresh paint.

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]

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I guess what makes me feel a little better is that the paintwork can be corrected pretty easily but what really bugged me was the careless work around the engine. The funny thing is that when we picked it up they said not to wax/polish it until 30 days later and they will give us a free complimentary detail...the wait is only an hour! LOL!

I guess we'll have to bring the car back tomorrow to have them look at the hose. I'll post what they say.
 
"Free detail". And worth every penny.
 
That's what happens when you pay someone $9 todo detail work!
 
As I sit in front of the Enterprise Rent A Car now to take my Pathy to the body shop for some minor PDR I feel your pain. My guys problem is he's either not at the shop (shop mysteriously dark and closed all day) or an overnight repair turns into 5 days. The quality of the work has always been good, but I don't know if he has a drug smuggling business on the side or similar.
 
Preferred doesn't mean best, insurance companies settle on cheapest repair cost to them, my guess is the dealer is the same way.
The real question would be, why was anything in the engine compartment touched if it was a door repair? They'll probably deny it was them.

An hour wait for a free detail??
Good luck.
 
cartman57 said:
Preferred doesn't mean best, insurance companies settle on cheapest repair cost to them, my guess is the dealer is the same way.
The real question would be, why was anything in the engine compartment touched if it was a door repair? They'll probably deny it was them.

An hour wait for a free detail??
Good luck.
Click to expand...

Heres the invoice. I will have to question them on why the bumper and the headlamp was "removed/installed".
 
Maybe they removed it to blend the fender?

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2
 
Maybe, to 'blend in' so the color would match the rest of the vehicle?
Easier to take the headlamp assembly out than to mask it off.
It'll be interesting to see how it gets taken care of for you.
 
Sucks man. I was really nervous when I got my car fixed. But shockingly, my body shop left me with an autogeek quality finish. No polishing on my part required.

Some are just hit or miss I guess.
 
cartman57 said:
Preferred doesn't mean best, insurance companies settle on cheapest repair cost to them, my guess is the dealer is the same way.
The real question would be, why was anything in the engine compartment touched if it was a door repair? They'll probably deny it was them.

An hour wait for a free detail??
Good luck.
Click to expand...

It's impossible to remove/reskin the door without removing the fender on many cars.

Blending the door/fender I'd want them to remove the headlight & bumper cover lest they end up painting the darned things. :rolleyes: Therein is where they were under the hood. Probably pulled a lot of things out removing the fender and bumper cover.

It's a shame that a MB repair shop is so shoddy. If I'm driving a hi-line car you bet your a$$ that it's going to a hi-line repair facility. Here we have one that the insurance companies HATE because he's not just expensive (which they'll pay btw) but he's usually backed up for weeks, to months. The repair must be done in the timeframe that the allow and if not you'll end up paying for a rental over and above that time. I've known Sports and Imports to take 6 weeks just to get a car in the shop and if you don't have it sitting on their lot the entire time, waiting for it's spot, you don't get in! That's fine and good if you have an extra car around the house, but many don't.

OTOH their work has always been light years ahead of your typical body shop, and better than 9 of 10 dealership shops. :D Perhaps why they are THE shop in Atlanta for all three MB dealerships, Rolls/Bentley, Aston, Ferrari, Jag, Land Rover you name it.

What can be done when looking for a body shop is ask them about their certifications. Are the ICAR for instance? What about their references? What different brands do they service? Anybody out there will tell you you'll get a guarantee but that's not worth diddly if their work is crap. Just a few ideas.....
 
I just picked up the car and they replaced the hose and poured in MBZ coolant (they showed me the bottle). When I dropped off the car this the associate seemed very sorry about the whole situation. He assured me that the residue was in face residue and not burn thru.

Cardaddy, yes he explained to me that you have to remove the fender in this car to properly/safely remove the door. Im not totally sure about their credentials but they seemed to have a lot of awards and certificates on waiting room walls. I did noticed when I was there that they are a certified repair facility for MBZ, Acura/Honda, and Lexus.
 
thats the best thing of having a son who is a body man and painter too its done rite 1st time
 
Update...

Today I went out to give the car a polish and remove the holograms that this Bodyshop added.

When drying the car I noticed that the "wax residue" (pics above) is in fact burn throughs. :( It's actually primer.

I tried to wipe off what I thought was simply wax residue but none of it came out even with IPA.

The Bodyshop requested that I wait at least 30 days before waxing or polishing the paint, so just to be sure i told my mom not to drive not it much until I get to polish/wax it. After I used my wax stripping wash (cg cw+g 4oz/3gal), I discovered that in addition to the holograms, there are some strange defects on the paint...some parts appeared to be wet sanded but were not even close to being polished out.

I will have to bring my brinkmann to show the Bodyshop.

I took a lot of pics for our insurance company but I'm having some computer issues so I can't post pics at the moment.
 
Burn throughs on the left side of the edge

The rear part of the front drivers side door
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The rear part of the drivers side fender
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The front door opened
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reassembly damage
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rush reassembly
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Not sure what these defects are. But I couldn't get them off with IPA or P21S paint cleaner.
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