Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
Originally posted by: squirrel dog
Glad you are ok.Get your new car fixed,thats why you pay insurance.Have them appraise it,stipulate you want the dealer to fix it. Get a deer sound maker for under the hood,or bumper.
Are dealers really all that good at bodywork? I bet they subcontract it and just mark it up.
Find a reputable body shop and take it there instead.
Honestly, you'd think someonw would learn about something before posting drivel like.........."I bet they subcontract it". How asinine. Why on earth would a dealer let any moneymaker to be subcontracted out? Dealers MAKE their money on service, mechanical and bodywork.
But, as to where to take the car.....strange as it may seem, maybe consider asking your insurance company unless you have one of those cut-rate companies. Believe it or not, insurance companies would rather have the job done correctly the first time instead of having a shoddy job done that requires repeated come-backs by the customer.
As far as body shops and estimates go, most good ones, if not all, should be very close to one another in their estimates unless they miss parts to be replaced on the estimate. Why? They all use the same parts books and the same time books. Time books are the books that shops use to determine how much they will charge for a particular job. The book gives an hour figure to repair/replace each part and then that time is multiplied times their labor rate.
It's the same as what shops do for mechanical work. You need a timing belt replacement and you go in for an estimate. The shop looks up in their labor hours book for the time "required" for the job. The book says, for example, 6 hours. They multiply that times their labor rate, add the part cost after looking up the retail price on their comupter or in their part book (which is about twice what they pay for the part from the wholesale jobber), add them together and present you a price. It won't take the six hours they charge you in labor to do the job (more like two), but that's what you pay.
Now, the shop makes its money by doing the work faster than what the time book says......."good" mechanics can easily do upwards of 30 hours or more a day in work. Does it take that long to actually do? No, because they shortcut all over the place and familiarity gives speed in their work. For example, Mercedes has a book time of around 8 hours to replace a heater core on several of their cars......you have to completely remove the dashboard and most of the interior forward of the seats to do the job. At the Mercedes/Porsche/Audi dealer in No. VA area (just abosrbed by the Penske chain several months ago), they have a guy who can do the job in a little over an hour. How? Because that's about all he does and is now fast at it......repetition breeds speed.
Back to the body work. Go to the dealer and get an estimate. Ask your ins. co. to recommend a shop and have them give an estimate. If it's substantially lower than the dealer, who is going to use in your case true Honda parts, then your company is cruddy, that shop is suspect, and you need to change insurers. A much lower price indicates they are probably going to use cheaper OE-quality parts (just as good as Honda's parts, just cheaper.........yeah, right!!) instead of true OEM parts. I'd be surprised if you'd find much difference in the labor rates between shops in your area........they'll all be very close to one another. Why would one shop charge vastly lower labor rates than other shops? They don't.....they all gravitate towards one another because they sort of have you over a barrel and it's what the market will bear, and why would they throw away taht profit? Mechanics are paid a flat rate and then a percentage of the labor they do over a certain number of hours. So good mechanics go where the money is, shops that have higher rates and lots of traffic. This, in turn, would leave the cheap shops with the lower tier of mechanics in effect.
There are good dealer body shops and good independent body shops, just like there are bad ones. One of the best around here is a family owned business and has about a one month waiting time for work coming in. Craig, the owner, is completely anal about his finishes and painting hence the influx of business. Also, I've been told that having a body shop certified by State Farm is hard to do (quality of work, comebacks, etc. are looked at) and usually indicates a shop of quality. Maybe something to look into.
Good luck and really sucks aobut hitting that deer..............it's a major problem around here, too. Hunting season and rutting season, which are one and the same, really puts them on the road and the shops are full of deer-hit cars during the winter.
As an aside, I read in
Car and Driver several years ago about an experiment the Univ. of Maryland did with those "deer whistles". They put them on half of the state trooper cars in the state, chosen randomly. In a year, there was no difference in deer hits between those with the whistles and those without.
lol..
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