Advice on body work

So I was in two accidents in my truck over the past year (the first was my fault, was late for school so I turned left in front of a car and got my rear right bedside panel smashed. The second was me getting rear ended by a speeding Cadillac in the area around my neighborhood). We recently took it to Maaco to have them repair the damages. We had already bought a taillight so we told them not to buy a new one, I would bring it in the next day on my way to work. Well they started on the body work the same day we dropped it off, before I brought in the taillight. Now 3 days later they let me know that they messed up the body work since they didn't have anything to compare it to without the taillight.


So now they say they can fix it but it'll cost more. Why am I paying them to fix their mistake? Was this my fault because I didn't take the taillight there sooner? I'm just not sure what to do here.

 

UH-OH

 

What reputable body shop would try and match a body line to a missing body part? That's their mistake. They should fix it.

 

Unacceptable, if your truck wasn’t like that before why would you accept it any other way?

 

That would mean the bumper won’t line up properly either. Your mistake was taking it to a MAACO.

 

You’re mistake was not taking it to a real body shop

 

Yeah, nothing else is going to line up. Bad idea to go to a MAACO, but it still remains that they need to do the right thing and fix it. And to fix it the right way, not pile 3 inches of body filler on there and call it good.

 

As others have said, you took your truck to the Harbor Freight of collision shops. Not only is the body work bad, but the paint has orange peel to death. That's flat-out awful work. All they're going to do to fix their error is slobber on more filler. Ugh.

PS: Nice overspray in the front wheel well too.

 

Let your insurance deal with them.

Question is, where else did they overlook, cut corners and etc…

 

Daaamn…can’t un-see it now.

 

And they painted right over the rubber filler between the fender flare and body, idiots!!!

 

You got exactly what you paid for.

Not sure if they can add another inch of Bondo over that one though.

 

Was this paid out of pocket or did your insurance pay? If the insurance is covering it, you can take it back and let them know it wasn't fix correctly. If you're paying out of pocket, do not pay the balance until their mistake is fixed.

 

Yeah, I’m so frustrated with them right now. For what they’re charging I could’ve bought a new body panel, gotten it painted professionally, paid for an aftermarket bumper, and still had extra.

My only hope is that they aren’t done with the paint yet since this is an “in progress” picture, never taking anything to another maaco again though.

Insurance didn’t give enough to cover this so it’s out of pocket.

 

That orange peel is a basecoat problem. You don't fix that with subsequent clear coat layers.

 

Why didn't insurance cover all of the repair? You have the right to take it to any body shop to fix the truck. The bodyshop is supposed to work with your insurance adjuster to come to an amount that would fix and repair the vehicle.

 

Well that sucks, I'm at work so I can't call the guy right now and the place is only open until 5:30. Should I shoot an email to maaco's customer service or wait until I can talk to the guy tomorrow?

 

Honestly, at this point, I'd rather talk to someone in person. Customer service will give you the generic run-around.

 

So the full story is that we had a deductible on our insurance so when insurance paid out we barely got anything. That money got spent on other things at the time because I didn’t really mind driving a busted up truck to school and back. Recently my parents got some extra money so as a late birthday gift they decided they wanted to get the truck finally fixed. They decided on maaco and you know what they say about gift horses. But now this feels like one of those horror stories people have about certain companies.

So while I was at work on Thursday my mom gave the guy at maaco a call and got in a yelling match, the guy told my mom we could come in on Friday to look at it so Friday morning we all piled into my mom’s bronco sport and made our way across town to take a look. When we got there the guy said he had actually told my mom he wanted her to wait until he called her for us to come in. It seems he either lied or the message was lost in his storm of “this is what’s wrong with people today” and other rude comments towards my mom. He had us go around back to look at the truck anyway and on the way he let us know that his boss wanted to charge us 10 hours of labor and paint to have the body work corrected but he would only charge us 5 hours to have it corrected. My mom stayed in the car because my dad wanted a go with the guy and after a bit of talking my dad gave up and told me to just look over the truck and we would file a complaint later. The attached pictures are from that day.

The guy said the truck wouldn’t be ready until Monday so the plan now is to just take it on Monday and go through maaco’s official channels to get it fixed or the BBB. I knew maaco wasn’t a good company but the level of immaturity, shoddy workmanship, and lack of responsibility is insane to me.

 

It’s getting ready to cost a whole lot more than had just had it fixed and paid then deductible when it was wrecked initially.