New Member Here

Posted February 27, 2013 · February 27, 2013

Been looking to find a descent PDR forum!

I'm Shawn from Indiana and I own "Performance Dent Repair". I have several dealers and body shop in my area that I do work for and have been in the dent business for 6 years, I love it!

Yesterday, I ran into a little problem...and want to share it with you guys to hear your opinions.

One of my dealers told me they just traded for a 2011 Toyota Tacoma with 8,000 miles that has hail damage. So, I went to check out the damage. Usually, if it's not severe, I'll just shoot them a price of maby $400 if I can get it done in a few hours. Anyhow, this truck was very very very severe so I decided to do an estimate on it.

Well, the hood and roof alone had over 200 quarter size dents along with over 20 over size dents on each panel. According to my dent matrix, it maxed out those 2 panels. The rest of the truck I could fix. I told him if he had a body shop look at it yet because the roof and hood will need to me fixed conventionally. He says in a real cocky tone "I figured you could fix it for $500. I had a body guy look at it and said he could PDR it for $800." (the guy didn't even do a hail estimate on it, there were no signs of any dents that were circles) I say when I do estimates, I use my dent matrix....it's basically a key to tell me how much to charge on a vehicle with this amount of damage.....then told him that the hood and roof are maxed out and they need conventional repair. He says "I dont need to look at any of your charts.....so you can't fix it"? I then said it's not a matter of "if" I can fix it, it's a matter of how many dents are on each panel and the hood and roof are just completely totalled. I said go ahead and have the guy that can fix it for $800 do it, I want to see it when it's done.

The fact is, is that this is an 8,000 mile truck and it needs to look like an 8,000 mile truck. If I went in there trying to push out some of these larger deep dents, it wouldn't look like an 8,000 truck...and my name would be going on it. It's not worth putting my business name on a truck with that severe damage that needs fixed conventionally.

What do you guys think??