Is this an acceptable repair?
Discussion
Collected my car yesterday after having been repaired. Aside from everything being covered in white dust both inside and out, I began to notice what I feel is some very poor workmanship.
Bear in mind the vehicle 5 years old and has done 130k so has the odd stone chip etc. Overall though I would have put it as being in excellent condition prior to the accident.
Looking at the pictures of the repair would anyone say I am too fussy?
Some kind of burn mark.
Door trim
Vinyl trim betwwen windows misaligned
Overspray
Poor paint finish
Internal trim with a large gap
Door handles in matt silver instead of gloss
Previously black suspension component now white along with half the underneath of the car including the exhaust
Cheers
Simon
Bear in mind the vehicle 5 years old and has done 130k so has the odd stone chip etc. Overall though I would have put it as being in excellent condition prior to the accident.
Looking at the pictures of the repair would anyone say I am too fussy?
Some kind of burn mark.
Door trim
Vinyl trim betwwen windows misaligned
Overspray
Poor paint finish
Internal trim with a large gap
Door handles in matt silver instead of gloss
Previously black suspension component now white along with half the underneath of the car including the exhaust
Cheers
Simon
y2blade said:
who did the "repair" job?
The insurance companies "approved" repairer 
The burn mark is at the rear of the roof bar, as the rear quarter panel has had to be replaced I am guessing that it is from when it was welded back on.
I have spoken to the insurance company who first off insisted that I take it back to the body shop for remedial work. As I have no faith that they will do any better job than they have already, I have refused to do this. This is not normal procedure so they will have to escalate the issues! I can see this becoming very costly as they have also resprayed the whole side of the car in orange peel white
Simon_m said:
y2blade said:
who did the "repair" job?
The insurance companies "approved" repairer The burn mark is at the rear of the roof bar, as the rear quarter panel has had to be replaced I am guessing that it is from when it was welded back on.
I have spoken to the insurance company who first off insisted that I take it back to the body shop for remedial work. As I have no faith that they will do any better job than they have already, I have refused to do this. This is not normal procedure so they will have to escalate the issues! I can see this becoming very costly as they have also resprayed the whole side of the car in orange peel white
I refused to accept the car and rung the insurance immediately to escalate the matter. By law i believe you have to give them the opportunity to rectify the work they have carried out and if you are not happy with the work then you can specify your own garage. Although you could have specified garage in the first instance.
I would ring the insurance and drop the car back to said garage ASAP and insist on a courtesy car if it wasn't your fault until the work is complete. This will help them move quicker as the courtesy car will be coming out of the garages pocket if the they are at fault.
I now have my focus back with a brand new intercooler and i even got the garage to leave the bumper off so i could check the work before they put it all back together again.
The repairer dosent happen to have the same name as a certain building society does it?
I had the same trouble. The repair was bad. The paint finish poor. The bumper didn't attach to the body work correctly oh and they forgot to refit the number plate lights. It was dark when I collected. Went back the following day and they took a look at it and made it worse
It was booked back in and then they had it for a week longer than they should - their loss as I was doing a 1000 mile a week in their car. When I collected it it was again dark. It was parked right up the far end of the car park where there was no street lights
Couldn't believe what I saw the following morning. It must have spent weeks in the workshop with the windows down. The paint dust inside was unbelievable and the repair was still s
t. It still had the wax crayon on the window. It clearly hadn't been cleaned and was worse than your pics.
I ended up meeting the shop and area manager with an 'independent' assessor (that was on first name terms with both managers and clearly knew them) at a main dealer of my choice (I insisted to the insurance company). We stood in the workshop while the maindealer stripped the badly repaired panels of the car listing all the faults and bad bodges
The main dealer then had the car to do the repair properly. Much to the dislike of the two managers as they were paying and at main dealer rates too
Out of interest the repairer reskined a door. The main dealer never does that as the complete door was only £20 more than a skin and a reskin is labour intensive. Makes you wonder what the original repairer paid their workers then.
I had the same trouble. The repair was bad. The paint finish poor. The bumper didn't attach to the body work correctly oh and they forgot to refit the number plate lights. It was dark when I collected. Went back the following day and they took a look at it and made it worse
It was booked back in and then they had it for a week longer than they should - their loss as I was doing a 1000 mile a week in their car. When I collected it it was again dark. It was parked right up the far end of the car park where there was no street lights
Couldn't believe what I saw the following morning. It must have spent weeks in the workshop with the windows down. The paint dust inside was unbelievable and the repair was still s
t. It still had the wax crayon on the window. It clearly hadn't been cleaned and was worse than your pics. I ended up meeting the shop and area manager with an 'independent' assessor (that was on first name terms with both managers and clearly knew them) at a main dealer of my choice (I insisted to the insurance company). We stood in the workshop while the maindealer stripped the badly repaired panels of the car listing all the faults and bad bodges
The main dealer then had the car to do the repair properly. Much to the dislike of the two managers as they were paying and at main dealer rates too
Out of interest the repairer reskined a door. The main dealer never does that as the complete door was only £20 more than a skin and a reskin is labour intensive. Makes you wonder what the original repairer paid their workers then.
No it won't be a write off. The original repairer is now liable to correct their work at their cost
Froomee is right youre supposed to give them a chance to sort it out. My car had 200k on it and was 5 years old. Be prepared for a long battle. Months of phone calls and chasing around. I'm sure they hope u give up and go away
Froomee is right youre supposed to give them a chance to sort it out. My car had 200k on it and was 5 years old. Be prepared for a long battle. Months of phone calls and chasing around. I'm sure they hope u give up and go away
Edited by Gixer on Thursday 18th August 15:24
Simon_m said:
The insurance companies "approved" repairer
The burn mark is at the rear of the roof bar, as the rear quarter panel has had to be replaced I am guessing that it is from when it was welded back on.
I have spoken to the insurance company who first off insisted that I take it back to the body shop for remedial work. As I have no faith that they will do any better job than they have already, I have refused to do this. This is not normal procedure so they will have to escalate the issues! I can see this becoming very costly as they have also resprayed the whole side of the car in orange peel white
I had a similar episode and refused to take it back to the insurance repair shop. I found somewhere I trusted and threatened to sue them. In the meantime I got on the back of the place that made a mess of it and made myself a real pain, in the end I got my way but it was far from a simple process. Insurance companies are generally assholes and are not interested once they have your premium. Log EVERY conversation and start recording names and dates, its the only way you will get anywhere. The burn mark is at the rear of the roof bar, as the rear quarter panel has had to be replaced I am guessing that it is from when it was welded back on.
I have spoken to the insurance company who first off insisted that I take it back to the body shop for remedial work. As I have no faith that they will do any better job than they have already, I have refused to do this. This is not normal procedure so they will have to escalate the issues! I can see this becoming very costly as they have also resprayed the whole side of the car in orange peel white
Good luck!
Yeah that's pretty shocking...
Trim not being put back properly isn't uncommon (I used to assess cars before giving them back to customers) but you'd not have complained about just those 2 bits of trim I suspect.
The vinyl sticker has been applied wrongly (or the door has been realigned after application) - either way it needs removing and redoing.
The door handles are just the wrong ones - probably a genuine mistake (probably the part suppliers mistake) - they need removing and the right ones fitting.
The paint overspray on the trim is sloppy but fixable - the overspray underneath is criminal but there's almost nothing they can do about that (you do NOT want them trying to remove it!!)
Problem is that they'll just bodge the repair like they bodged the original - you'll get a lined-up sticker and the right door handles, but everything else will just get polished over/out.
The cig burn is your word against theirs, sadly.
I'd lean on the insurer and say you're HUGELY unhappy with the quality of work done and that you expect it rectified without ANY inconvenience to yourself (e.g. car collected, hire car provided). Basically, just reject the car and let them sort it and if they quibble, start talking about independant inspection and legal action and they'll jump to it.
Trim not being put back properly isn't uncommon (I used to assess cars before giving them back to customers) but you'd not have complained about just those 2 bits of trim I suspect.
The vinyl sticker has been applied wrongly (or the door has been realigned after application) - either way it needs removing and redoing.
The door handles are just the wrong ones - probably a genuine mistake (probably the part suppliers mistake) - they need removing and the right ones fitting.
The paint overspray on the trim is sloppy but fixable - the overspray underneath is criminal but there's almost nothing they can do about that (you do NOT want them trying to remove it!!)
Problem is that they'll just bodge the repair like they bodged the original - you'll get a lined-up sticker and the right door handles, but everything else will just get polished over/out.
The cig burn is your word against theirs, sadly.
I'd lean on the insurer and say you're HUGELY unhappy with the quality of work done and that you expect it rectified without ANY inconvenience to yourself (e.g. car collected, hire car provided). Basically, just reject the car and let them sort it and if they quibble, start talking about independant inspection and legal action and they'll jump to it.
Edited by johnpeat on Thursday 18th August 15:36
Edited by johnpeat on Thursday 18th August 15:37
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