Paintless Dent Repair

When you need auto hail damage repair in Denver, getting a fair estimate can be almost as important as the quality of the repairs. Even if the car insurance company is paying for the services, knowing how hail damage is assessed on a car can protect yourself from low-ball estimates. What’s included in a hail damage assessment: Comprehensively when it comes to a hail damage estimate on a car, it is usually comprised of primarily four parts: Paintless dent repair – the labor and time it takes the technician to actually fix the dents. Remove and Install cost (R&I) – labor cost to remove and install parts on the car as needed to gain access to perform the PDR. Part replacements – Sometimes hail damages parts on the car such as the windshield which will need to be replaced or chrome moldings that are ordered from the manufacturer and replaced. Sales Tax – Colorado only includes sales taxes on vehicles, not on labor costs. If there is damage to the paint, you also need to factor in body time, paint time, and paint & material costs. 1. Paintless Dent Repair Cost We assess your paintless dent repair cost (PDR cost) by using what’s called a pricing matrix. The matrix determines repair costs by the number of dents on the panel and the dents’ sizes (width and depth). Try our Hail Damage Car Repair Cost Calculator For example, for a door panel with one to five dents, the size of which is a quarter, the PDR price for that panel is $100.  That price increases dramatically as the dents’ size increases, and the dent count on a particular panel increases.  PDR cost is also a charge per panel. That means that if there is one dent on one panel and one dent on the second panel, and both dents’ size is about a quarter, the PDR cost would be $100 per panel = $200 for the paintless dent repair cost.  2. R&I (Remove & Install) Cost The R&I assessment covers the labor needed to take the car apart to manufacture access to get behind the metal and fix the damage. For example, if there are dents on a fender, a technician would incur the R&I time to remove the headlights to fix the damage.  The R&I time varies based on the year, make, and model of the car. At StormWise, we use what’s called “book time” in order to configure those R&I times. To get the accurate R&I times, we utilize a gigantic database that has every single year, make, and model of every single vehicle that was ever made, and every single part on every single vehicle. We have to update this system every 75 days to account for newer model cars coming out and new parts pricing associated with existing models. Searching by a specific part of a car will provide us a particular R&I book time from the database, and we will then use that value as our R&I time. The insurance companies use book time to determine how much they are willing to pay for R&I. By using the same method the insurance companies use, we make sure your insurance adjuster will fully cover the cost. R&I Cost Examples: Typical R&I time in hail damage would be the R&I for a headliner, as we have to drop the headliner to gain access to fix dents in a roof.  Another very common R&I item would be the headlights and taillights to fix damage on either the fender or quarter panel.  If a panel or a hood is hit pretty badly, we often have to take those panels completely off the car to fix them. For example, we may even have to remove the door if the car got struck down the side of a door and the damage is too severe for us to properly see and fix while it’s still on the car. For pickup trucks, sometimes we need to remove a back glass to manufacture access to the dents on the roof and get those fixed. R&I can vary greatly from car to car in terms of what’s needed, and all comes down to how hard the car is hit and what type of access can we get behind the panel to massage the metal back to pre-storm condition. 3. Part Replacement Costs The parts cost that we put on an estimate is going to be just your retail price of what those parts cost. It will be the same price as if you were to go to the dealership and order the part yourself. A hail storm can damage a variety of parts. One common part replacement for hail damage repair is chrome moldings and belt molding that are on the door right underneath window – we replace them all the time. Other parts that often get damaged include headlights or taillights, which may be cracked by a large hailstone.  Sometimes hailstones are big enough to actually crack a windshield. In those cases, even the roof moldings can get dented, too.  On some year, make, and models of cars, there are moldings called scalp moldings above the car door window and below the roof rail. Those can be damaged in a bad hail storm as well and will require replacement. Therefore, parts pricing is usually included in a hail damage repair estimate. 4. Sales Tax The final piece would be the sales tax charged by the municipals, which varies by cities, counties, and states. 5. Additional charges for paint damage repair If your car needs paint and bodywork, it adds another layer of three additional charges.  When this happens, we have to add conventional repair on top of the paintless dent repair. We would use paintless dent repair to get the dent as close to perfect as possible, and then add body-time, refinish and paint & materials pricing to the estimate with the insurance. Insurance company will pay all of these charges, as the conventional

This information is for people that have never had auto hail damage repair before. Many people may be scared about the process, and that’s why we’ve created a step-by-step guide to give an idea of what you can expect: You are going to contact your insurance provider to file a claim. We CAN do this for you as well, but it’s your call if you’d prefer us to call or you. Important Tip: Call the claims number on the back of your insurance card, do NOT call your agent. And if the rep tries to talk to you into taking your car to a direct repair shop, just know that you aren’t required to do that. If the rep tells you that you MUST, just get your claim number and give us a call and we can handle it. If they give you an appointment with the adjuster, ask if you could have them come to your house, office, or OUR SHOP. We are happy to handle that inspection and the other parts of the repair process, and actually prefer to be involved from the beginning. If they cannot come to you, they may ask you to visit a catastrophe tent (“cat tent”) set up in your area due to the number of claims your insurance company might receive. If you’ve done your research and determined that we are your best option (as most people in Colorado, Click here for proof) just Call StormWise at (720) 439-9533 to have a free professional estimate and schedule an appointment to drop off your vehicle for repairs. We also offer a Virtual Estimate option!  You can come to us or we can pick up your vehicle from your home or office for free with Zero-Touch Process! We’ll have you e-sign a few documents later after the car is at our shop that we will email to you, which means we only will ask you for your e-mail address and are able to respect social distancing rules in today’s climate. Then, if you have rental coverage, we’ll give you a ride to Enterprise or Hertz. If you don’t have rental coverage, don’t worry! StormWise will get you a rental while we repair your car! In the process of repairing the hail damage, we will remove a few parts from your car to gain access to the underside of damage panels. For example, if your front fender has damage, we’ll remove a headlight, or if your roof has damage, we’ll remove your headliner, and so on. Do NOT stress out about the R&I (Remove and Install) process required to do paintless dent repair, even if your car is brand new. Also we give a Lifetime Guarantee on the work we do. Remember, we do this for a living, year round, all day every day. Therefore, we’re VERY good at this! We will repair all the dents using paintless dent repair. We use specialized tools to flex and bend the metal back to its original shape, minimizing the possibility of damage to the original vehicle paint. This technique is the preferred method to fix your hail damage so this that your vehicle isn’t devalued by traditional auto body paint and bodywork. We will replace any necessary parts. The most common parts effected with hail damage are moldings on the door windows, roof drip moldings, pinstriping, headlights, taillights, or other chrome trim pieces. We order only OEM parts directly from the dealership (unless your insurance requires us to do otherwise). We will put the car back together, perform a mini-detail on the exterior and interior of the car, then call you to arrange a pickup or delivery to your home, office or rental facility for free. When you get your vehicle completely repaired, we will go over the repairs we did, you will inspect the car and make sure you absolutely love it. From there, we will go over the StormWise receipt booklet that contains: Your receipt: Did we tell you that we waive up to a $1000 deductible*? This means you likely will pay $0 out of pocket. Final Estimate: this contains everything we repaired on your vehicle and the parts we replaced. Lifetime Warranty Certificate: we warranty all of our workmanship for as long as you own the vehicle. Recommendation Cards: We will hand you a couple of them to give away to your friends/family/neighbors/coworkers to use us for their hail damage repair… you can get $100 cash if they come under your recommendation! Also feel free to leave us a review on Google, Yelp or Facebook to let them know how your experience was. At StormWise we love to help our customers, and we really hope this guide has answered some of your questions. Feel free to visit the FAQs page for more answers, or peruse around the site for other helpful info. Call us anytime for questions, (720) 439-9533, extension 1. *Deductibles $1000 and less can be waived 99.9% of the time. Have a deductible higher than $1000? Contact Us, we may be able to work something out.