My wife has an Audi A4 wagon that needs some front end body repair as a result of going over a very high driveway, and catching the underside of the front bumper/panel.
The three shops that I’ve used all my life are no longer options - one retiring, one sold to a younger person who didn’t have any interest in spending the time to speak with me and give an estimate (suggested I email in photos and he’d get back with me), and the third recently sold the land to be repurposed as a 5 story apartment building.
Loved the Earl Scheib reference!!! That location (on what is it ~1500 so state) has had SSSOOOO many autobody businesses in there in the last half a century, and some of them have actually been good (according to a few acquaintances). I did take a 1949 Chrysler Highlander into Earl for a repair estimate in about 1972 at that location. It was my first car; cost $50.00, and it had a dent in the front driver side fender, which would have cost $39.00 to have repaired, so I passed.
On a Ute related note, didn’t Earl pay for his name to be mentioned on first downs for many years, or am I remembering another business?
Been using Glen since the mid 70’s. His wife was the only one in the building and she apologized saying the two of them were retiring and weren’t bidding repairs - it was literally my first stop; the end of an era. (… old guy thinks to himself, “Glen could repair this fender, all anyone else can do is order a new one and paint it” )
This was a number of years ago now, but I bought a new car and three weeks later someone rear-ended me - didn’t do any structural damage but messed up the bumper. Schneider pointed out that the plastic bumper didn’t 100% match the body paint from the factory (could mainly see it in the light) and corrected it so it matched exactly. About two months later someone ran into my front bumper and so they fixed and corrected that to be perfect.
I noticed from that time forward all the other cars like mine had the mismatched bumpers, except mine. They were reasonable, finished on time, and both times came slightly under their quote. One of the insurance adjusters confided in me that is where he would take his car if he were to get in an accident.
A follow up post to this thread to provide some early feedback:
We got bids from 5 autobody shops for the repair work on my wife’s Audi. Schneider was the lowest bid, by far, and we decided to go with them as they believed that they could “likely” repair the car without replacing the bumper and painting it, which all the other bids included and which cost between $1500 and $2200.
Schneider said when they got it apart, they “might” find broken brackets on the bumper and have to add the costs to replace it, but believed it very unlikely.
The car is being prepared now, and they did find a single broken bracket on the bumper which will have the effect of the seam between the bumper and drivers front quarter panel not being perfect. However, the bumper panel will be solid with no attachment problems.
The car is a 2007, with 130,000 miles, with minimal normal body wear. We were quite pleased to save that much money on an old car, where the alternative will be barely noticeable.
Literally none of the other shops offered us this even as an option.
Schneider has been awesome to me. A couple of times where they could have taken advantage of me and I’d be none the wiser and they didn’t. Of course it’s been a lot of years since I’ve needed them (knock on wood).
One example is they included in their bid and the insurance agreed that some part was likely damaged in the accident and needed to be replaced and when they got inside found it was fine. The insurance has already agreed to pay for it so they could have either replaced it anyway or not even replaced it and said they did and literally no one would know or could tell. But they didn’t and to me that speaks volumes.
