Actual costs of body repair?

[HireWoes]

I recently hired a car and managed to slightly scrape a wall. I'm worried the hire company is trying it on with the costs of the repair, though.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the damage, but here it is:
- the plastic backing of the mirror is missing a 1x2 cm piece of plastic ("gauged out" according to the hire company)
- 2 or 3 thin scratches in the paintwork of the mirror, no longer than 7 cm
- 4 or so longer scratches in the paintwork above the wheel, in an area no bigger than 10 by 50 cm

They claim the wing mirror will have to be replaced (due to the small piece of plastic missing) and the paintwork above the wheel will take six hours to fix. For these repairs, they want £571.
They kept the £200 deposit and wanted me to pay the remaining £371 on the spot. Of course I refused to pay before the work is done.

Also, they got the £571 price tag through a phone call - no one related to repairing the car had actually seen it. I'm worried that I'm being scammed.

Is £571 a normal price for these things? And can I do anything apart from inspecting the car before paying up, to see if it's actually been fixed?

[HireWoes]

Thanks for the replies - it looks like I'll definitely be paying their price. Lesson learned, I guess!

[HireWoes]

Squiggs, are you sure they don't even have to fix the damage in order to charge me for it? I was thinking of "inspecting" the car before paying, but if they can just charge me without actually doing anything that's pretty futile.

Vette said:

You also need to pay the excess indemnity otherwise you'll still get clobbered witha bill of £200!

Next time I rent a car I am taking out *all* of the insurance!