Door Dent Gone Wrong - Sanity Check

[sjepps]

TL;DR: Wife sideswiped car. Shop fixed/painted car. Shop painted entire side with orange peel. Shop wet sanded/buffed out orange peel (mostly). Shop left nice wet sand marks. Paid $2.5k+. Let it go (Buff it myself) or get someone else to fix it?

My wife sideswiped a parked car a few months back (Don't ask how) and ended up denting/removing paint from her back passenger door. I took it to a local bodyshop, that I have used pretty much exclusively for the past four years. They pull the dent and paint the door. They tell me they had to add some time because they had to go back and blend in more. Spidey sense begins to tingle, but only in that I'm going to be looking more diligently.

Wife picks the car up (I'm out of town) and doesn't notice anything. I finally get to look at it and it looks uniform. Not good, uniform though. They painted the entire side to blend in all of the orange peel they have in the clear. Rear bumper to front quarter panel is all orange peel. Shiny orange peel, but orange peel. It looked like the gas cap in the picture below except even more prominent.

Pissed off at this point (They charged me more to blend orange peel with orange peel!!!), I go back to the shop and they offer to sand and buff it. I don't think it will fix it, but they've done me alright in the past, so I let them try. Get the car Friday and parts of the car didn't get touched (Where a rotary wouldn't fit), and other parts didn't get buffed out. There are still sanding marks around every corner.

So the reason I'm posting is I'm not sure what to do. I think I could buff it all out but I'm worried about how much of the clear they took off. It's a new paint job, I want close to maximum level of clear coat so that I can buff it for years to come. I'm also a little worried about buffing some of the edges. I was also originally worried they had burnt the clear, but I believe they just left sanding marks.

Pictures:
1) Orange peel in the clear that is currently there similar to what entire side looked like
2) Front of rear passenger - Wet sand marks at bottom corner, you can see where rotary was used
3) Gap between front and rear passenger - Wet sand marks all the way up



I've painted cars before and what I saw originally reminded me of having gun pressure too low, wrong tip, or the clear coat reduced too much. When it happened to me I wet sanded to base and re-cleared after two weeks. But I'm anal *shrug*

[Rrthomas78]

Are you going through insurance or cash? Insurance company won't let that fly. If cash never pay until your satisfied. Bigger picture is you need a new body shop

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[sjepps]

Thanks for the response,

It's through insurance w/my deductible. I'm thinking I might dispute the deductible charge. Adjuster told me after the initial issue that I could give them another go or go elsewhere, whatever it takes for me to be happy.

I'm just trying to either validate or refute my opinion here. Am I expecting too much? It is reasonable to be concerned with the overall quality of the job given how things have turned out? Seems extremely underhanded to cover orange peel by spraying more orange peel, then telling a customer they spent more time on it to make it look right.

I have a tendency to be a royal pain in the ass when I have someone do something for me. Which is why I do pretty much everything myself. My expectation is good, clean, concise work, that people would be proud of. I've been told that's not reasonable :P

[LSNAutoDetailing]

Agree, if it’s insurance tell them the work is unsatisfactory. Go with the shop the insurance recommends.

As Mike Phillips says, if they didn’t do it right the first time (twice in your case) why trust them to not do it right again.




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