by designwithenergy@gmail.com | Dec 1, 2021 | Buying a new car with hail damage, Hail Repair
Cars damaged in hailstorms are tempting to buy, as they often come with deep discounts. Plus, hail damage tends to be superficial, affecting only the body panels and glass, leaving the vehicle’s key functions intact. If you just need a way to get to work every day, a dimpled roof, trunk and hood may not matter. Before you seek out hail damaged cars for sale, though, you should take the following risks and drawbacks into account.
Why Dealerships Sell Hail-Damaged Cars
This is a great place to search for a new car. Dealers opt for fixing any damage they can. Fixing the damage helps the car find a new home. Paintless Dent Repair (PDR) specialists often fix hail damage at wholesale rates for dealers. Sometimes the figure to buy a car the salespeople may give you can be exaggeratedly low since they want you to buy the vehicle. This number should tip you off as to how bad the damage really is. Make repairing the car a condition to buying it. This is generally a good idea. Dealers may have a PDR specialist on site to make the repairs but these specialists don’t always have the necessary experience to fix dozens of hail dents.
Does it come with a Warranty
A warranty or money back guarantee should be given. If there is no warranty it may suggest the damage is worse than it looks. Additionally if you get a vehicle with a salvage title be sure that is has a “hail” designation to distinguish it from more severe damage such as floods or accidents.
What’s the Likely Resale Value
Resale value will be impacted if you buy a hail-damaged car. Buying a low cost damaged car initially may cost you the same as buying an undamaged new car. Make sure lenders cover hail-damaged cars if you plan to finance your purchase.
Inspect the car carefully before making a purchase. Taking care to avoid unwanted surprises. Get a background check to look for undisclosed damage as well. Sometimes a car may be already repaired before you see it, hiding the extend of the original damage. Using the vehicle identification number, plug it into Carfax, AutoCheck or similar site.
How Will Affect Your Insurance
Ask your insurance agent if the hail damage puts your comprehensive insurance at risk. If you don’t have the initial damage repaired, you won’t get the future damages covered or your insurance my deduct the damage from any claims. For example, you have a fender bender. It results in a $1000 claim, you might only receive $500 if you have $1500 in unreported damage.
Before Buying, Ask Yourself…
Never drop hard-earned money for a hail-damaged car before asking yourself: Who does this benefit the most, the dealer or you? Once a dealership suffers a hailstorm they have little or no choice but to sell their inventory at deeply reduced rates. Now you’re in a position to haggle more than ever. By the same token, could you sell that damaged car to someone in the future? Try to see through sales techniques to get the real value of the car.
A Good Option for Your First Car
For your first car, a hail-damaged one may be a good option. Basic transportation, students, folks who don’t drive much and tight budgets might benefit from hail sales.
Whats the Actual Cost of Fixing The Car
The average cost to repair hail-damage to a car is $2500. This cost can vary widely from shop to shop. Take the car to an independent shop for an estimate before you purchase. But remember, with every dealership discount there is usually a trade off. And that trade is…dealers are able to get their inventory repaired cheap because they have so many cars to repair. Often times it’s around 1/4 of the actual repair cost. And when you have someone who is repairing cars for 1/4 of the normal repair cost you will get a job that it reflects.
Summary
You can never do to much research when buying a hail-damaged car whether is new or used. If you don’t fix it you’ll probably always be upside down in it. Never sign on the dotted line before you thoroughly inspect it yourself and maybe by another PDR expert. An expert will spot missed dents. Check for “broken paint” along the edges. How they will repair the paint? Will they use a traditional body-shop or a “paint touch up vendor”? The difference is huge. So leave no stone turned. Your due diligence is mandatory.
by Preferred Admin | Aug 14, 2021 | Crease Damage, Crease Removal, Dent Repair
Well, you’ve done it. You managed to put a dent in your vehicle. Not just any dent though, it’s a crease.
You may think you are done for. After all, that will certainly require an extensive repair at the body shop where they might have to replace the whole door shell…right?
That’s what you may think! But the reality is, most minor creases can be removed using PDR!
PDR, or Paintless Dent Repair, is a minimally invasive procedure in which a technician removes dents, dings, and (like in our case) creases using specialized tools and techniques.
Unlike traditional repair, PDR does not require paint fillers (aka Bondo) to fix the damaged areas. It also doesn’t require extensive paintwork and blending afterward.
The process is fairly quick and inexpensive, with many repairs costing less than your insurance deductible and taking just a few hours to repair!
When it comes to creases, you really want to pick an experienced PDR technician to repair them. Crease dents can be tricky; It takes a Master PDR Technician with many years of experience a lot of time and effort to perfectly repair a sharp crease dent, especially in high metallic colors. It takes a lot of patience, cross-checking, and a pair of good eyes to see the small tiny lines and imperfections in a crease and to get your car back to pre-accident condition.
You must take your vehicle to someone that’s certified to perform the repair.
If you take it to an inexperienced technician, you run the risk of the repair being done wrong, and that’s never good. A bad PDR job can permanently damage the body panel the procedure was performed on, leaving you needing expensive traditional body repair to correct the issue; you may even need a whole new body panel!
As long as you have the right person for the job, you can expect the appearance of your vehicle to return to normal after the procedure, all without breaking the bank. Paintless Dent Removal is usually a lot less costly than a traditional body shop repair.
So don’t worry too much. As long as the crease is not very deep, the damage can be repaired with PDR, and you’ll be back up and running in your ride in no time.
If you have questions about the hail damage process, door dings, dents, creases, or damage to your vehicle, please reach out to us at the shop. We would love to help clear anything up and understand how you want to proceed with your car’s repair. We are here to make your repair easy, seamless, and we are here to help. We want to get you back on the road with a car restored to its factory condition. Please give us a call or stop by the shop to estimate the damage. We want to explain the dent removal process to make things seamless and easy and get you back on the road and cruising. Call Us Today at 903-280-8190 or fill out our
contact form here!
by Preferred Admin | Jul 21, 2021 | Hail Repair
How is Hail Damage Assessed?
So your car has hail damage. First, we are so sorry, and we empathize with what pain this process can be.
We are here to fix it, get you back on the road with your car feeling like it NEVER HAPPENED. Let us teach you how we find out how much damage is on your vehicle and how we price this process out.
There is no arbitrary dollar number because we legitimately count dent, every one of them, and then put them into a matrix.
Let’s break it down.
You come in and sign some paperwork so we can look at your car legally. It gives us permission to assess it and give you a proper assessment.
We bring it back, and we need it for a few hours. We put specialized lights on the car that make it possible to see every dent on your vehicle. (Pro-tip, ask to come back and look at a car with the light, you will be SHOCKED to see what we see.)
We count each dent by the panel and size of the dents. We use coins as our size guide. So, there are 15 quarter-sized dents on the right front fender. This is how the insurance has dictated that we write up a vehicle, making it pretty seamless.
After we look at every panel, we calculate the R&I. This is when it will remove and install different parts to access dents and replace any damaged parts in the storm.
We total everything up, every panel of dents counted, the work to get to the dents, any parts needing to be replaced, cost of the scans of the cars’ computers, for your safety and ours, and we send this estimate off to your insurance for approval. After it is approved, we get your car back to its pre-storm condition.
A warning. If a hail company promises you the moon, free iPads, money back, and the idea of repair, and this deal seems too good to be true, it usually is. We believe in honest work for fair pay and get the best techs to fix your damage. Dent Repair Technicians are trained for years, and the BEST ones can make those dents disappear where the human eye can no longer see them.
If you have questions about the hail damage process, door dings, dents, or damage to your vehicle, please reach out to us at the shop. We would love to help clear anything up and understand how you want to proceed with your car’s repair. We are here to make your repair easy, seamless, and we are here to help. We want to get you back on the road with a car restored to its factory condition. Please give us a call or stop by the shop to estimate the damage. We want to explain the dent removal process to make things seamless and easy and get you back on the road and cruising. Call Us Today at 903-280-8190 or fill out our contact form here!
by Preferred Admin | Jul 4, 2021 | Dent Repair, Hail Repair
More and more cars are made of aluminum. We all love our trucks in Texas, and many new trucks, including Ford’s, are made completely of aluminum. Technology is evolving on cars, and so is the repair process for PDR. Preferred Paintless PDR is ready and willing to fix your aluminum dent, ding, or hail damage.
Many vehicles these days have aluminum panels throughout. Although this has many benefits for the manufacturer and the driver, aluminum is more difficult to repair properly.
When cars and trucks are made with Aluminum, it is lighter, than steel and it allows automakers to increase dent resistance—they can make body panels thicker while still lowering weight. And a lower-weight vehicle has better acceleration, better braking, and better handling.
Aluminum doesn’t have a memory like steel, which most vehicles are made of, and it takes a lot of manipulation to repair properly. Our technicians are legitimate artists who have to rebuild curves, body lines, and your car’s shape back to the way it was in the factory. Aluminum is also 7 times harder to repair than steel. It takes a lot more tork, strength, and pushing to get the panel back, equating to a longer repair time. Aluminum is one of the hardest metals to repair, and it takes a skilled and seasoned tech to get this back.
Heat can be a valuable tool in Paintless Dent Removal. Aluminum also reacts differently from steel when heat is applied. Heat is an important part of dent removal, so we don’t crack or hurt the paint and make the metal easier to push. Aluminum not only needs heat for shaping, but it is also tricky in how it reacts to heat.
Too much heat can compromise the integrity of the aluminum and leave it permanently softened. It can also damage the paint and make it bubble, but the heat the necessary to make the aluminum malleable so it can be reshaped.
We are trained and ready to repair your aluminum cars, trucks, and vehicles at Prefered Paintless Services. Hail damage is also one of our specialties. We can fix any aluminum car that has been hit with hail or any other damage that may have occurred. While aluminum is harder to ding and dent, it still happens.
If you have questions about door dings, dents, or damage to your vehicle, please reach out to us at the shop. We would love to help clear anything up and understand how you want to proceed with your car’s repair. We are here to make your repair easy, seamless, and we are here to help. We want to get you back on the road with a car restored to its factory condition. Please give us a call or stop by the shop to estimate the damage. We want to explain the dent removal process to make things seamless and easy and get you back on the road and cruising. Call Us Today at 903-280-8190 or fill out our contact form here!
by designwithenergy@gmail.com | Nov 20, 2018 | Dent Repair
You might be thinking that your traditional Texarkana auto body repair works just fine, and you’d rather not change your preferred dent repair process. While traditional auto body repair methods work well, Paintless dent repair can offer you the same results with faster turnarounds and lower prices. PDR in Texarkana can give you even more than you expected from dent repair, saving you time and money compared to traditional methods.
The Affordable Alternative
But, how? It might seem too good to be true that one dent repair method could be superior to others or that it could save you so much money, but it’s true. Traditional dent repair often involves the use of putty, paint, and sometimes replacement parts. Paintless dent repair eliminates the need for all of the above. PDR technicians work out dents with pressure and tools, meaning no putty, no paint, and no new parts needed. The supplies typically associated with traditional dent repair cost money, and without them, paintless dent repair allows those extra costs to be omitted from your bill.
A Huge Time Saver
The time-saving quality of PDR comes from the streamlined repair process. Traditional dent repair involves many steps, including sanding, putty placement, and painting. Painting especially can take days when you think about paint matching, primers, finishes, and drying time. By not using paint, PDR saves immense amounts of repair time. Some dents can be removed in as little as a few hours depending on their nature. Unfortunately, you just can’t get that option with traditional dent repair.
If you’re looking for auto body repair in Texarkana, try paintless dent repair. It boasts lower costs and wait times compared to traditional dent repair, which can help you if you need quick repairs for low prices. Your transportation is important, but so is your wallet. Save yourself from days without your car by choosing paintless dent repair for your Texarkana auto body repair.
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