Guestimate on bodywork cost? (insurance, 2013, auto, truck)
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Hi all! I have a 2012 Toyota PriusC (color is "blue streak") with less than 5000 miles on it. I was driving around D.C. today (something I never do, but part of the metro is closed for the weekend and I needed to be downtown early) and at some point, someone evidently failed at parallel parking and left a license place scratch on my back bumper.
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Mostly you can just see my whale purse reflected (lol), but maybe this will give a sense of where the damage is (and if nothing else you can hopefully appreciate my Firefly license plate holder):
I bought this car in April of 2013 and it's my first car and I'm very fond of it, so I'd love to get it fixed. I've asked some shops for estimates, but I'm a young woman and if getting repairs is anything like trying to buy this car, people are going to try to take crazy advantage of me. I would so appreciate your opinions on what a touch up like this should cost.
Spending a grand on a car I'm not quite done paying off is a bit traumatizing for me, haha. Still, it's good to know ahead of time so I won't walk into a service place and be floored.
Thanks again for your input and I appreciate further estimates and advice!
I won't be able to go around to service places for a few days but in return for all of your helpful input, I will definitely make sure to post how much it does end up costing, in case anyone else comes here with this sort of damage.
Call your local dealerships, the used car departments usually have a mobile guy that does on site body repair/paint work and is usually a lot less money. And they usually do a really good job.
2 hours labor to remove and reinstall at body shop labor rate. Shops around here are 48 dollars an hour. Paint and prep another 1.5 hours. Don't know what they're charging for paint and materials these days, probably at least 50 for primer, paint and clear coat.
Quite frankly, that does not look bad. A few battle scars are just part of driving a car. They won't be perfect and new forever, no matter how hard we try. Within 2 months after we bought our 2013 Equinox LTZ, a $34K vehicle, we had a rock or something hit the hood while parked, and we accidentally closed the garage door when the car was not all the way in and got a nice deep scratch on the back bumper. I used some touch up paint on the scratches so they are the same color as the bumper, but once you get close to it you can see the scratches in the plastic.
Even if you get it fixed, there is no guarantee it won't get damaged again in a week, month, or whenever. I would just buy some scratch remover or polishing compound and buff it out so it is not as noticeable, then use some touch up paint on it. If you do not feel like you can do it, a detail shop can probably work on it. But if you want to have it refinished, I would say it can be done for a few hundred dollars. A friend that works at a body shop quoted me a price of $250 to repair and repaint our bumper, but it would be a bit more for the general public.
Good luck on it!
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