Shop Liability Question

[LemonTwisted]

So you take your car to a shop that specializes in muscle cars and Restomods to get the windshield gasket replaced and during the process the cowl area gets gouged by one of the tools they used. Is the shop liable for paying for a repair or is that just the chance you take with having someone else work on your car?

[TonyHuntimer]

Steve,

Accidents happen. For a shop, it's a hard pill to swallow...but I know the good shops I deal with have repaired the accidents that happened while the car was in their shop. I know one that didn't...and it's no longer in business.

If the car is a show car, that's a tough one because it's a lot of work to repair a small area without painting a large section. If it happened to my old '68 daily driver, I'd have them get some brush-on touch up paint and fix it.

I've had a rich jack@-- CEO at a previous employer that got a 1" scratch on a underside floor pan on a new Porsche demand to have the car replaced. That's taking it a bit too far.

Sorry to hear,
Tony Huntimer
TestCarDatabase.com

[DTM Racing]

We had a customer's truck at the local tire & wheel shop we use and one of his guys put a jack handle into one of the headlight bezels. I didn't notice it until I was pulling back into my shop and one of my guys noticed it. We took it back over and the owner of the tire & wheel shop agreed he'd split it with me. I took it to the guy who does some some of our paint work for the repair, he does it for free as a favor. There is a reason I choose to do business with the folks I do. Stand up guys have a habit of sticking around. When the Owner came to pick up his truck, we told him what had happened and that we had repaired it.

[SLO_Z28]

The shop needs to fix it. When I was a dealer tech anything we did we had to fix. That said we had a dent guy that would fix something like that for $40,:and oyr labor rate was $115/hr.

[mikey]

It's the shop's responsibility. It's a risk that you take when you open the doors. Yes it sucks and I hate to eat mistakes like that but if it happens inside my shop and I have a signed r.o. I don't feel like I have a choice. Long as the customer is being reasonable about how it's going to be fixed ie scratch on a door polish if I can if not paint and match the door not the whole car ect.......

[hifi875]

We had a porsche 911 cabrio in the my shop for a nav system and speaker upgrade. my installer always puts green tape on the door openings so we don't scratch anything getting in and out. well when we got done and removed the tape, the pain came off of the lower side skirt that was added to the car. It was our fault because we pulled the paint off, but it was really whomever painted the skirt fault because he didn't prep it properly. Any way I fixed it without hesitation after i told him what happened. Cost me $200 bucks but he spent $2000 and he understood and was happy he didn't have to deal with it and he is still a customer to boot.

[groho]

The first thing you have to do is get the shop to ADMIT they did it! I had one scenario when I bought my new F250 PSD, took it straight from the dealer to an alarm/sound shop for an alarm system. When I picked it up, it had a huge chip in the paint at the door edge where the tech opened the door against his tool chest. "No!! No!! we didn't do that!!!!" Right?! Luckily the dealership took the truck back as warranty work, no questions asked. Yes they are liable, but will they admit it and do something about it is a completely different issue. I've had shops poor mechanical work destroy parts, admit it, heck no! Even though their own shop lead said they did it.

[hifi875]

any shop with any kind of reputation would take care of it.