Over the years car salesmen have gotten a bad rap! Is this justified? Well I can tell you from being in the automotive repair business and seeing what the car sales industry is like, this “rap” is well justified.
For instance, at one Chevy dealer where I provided my service a customer had brought in his Yukon (this was a few years ago so I do not remember the make for certain, the vehicle had double rears doors) to have some work done to it in the service department. The vehicle was having one of the rear windows replaced.
The technician damaged the paint while replacing the window. They asked me to repair the door, meanwhile I did not know that they had not informed the customer that the vehicle’s paint had been damaged and they were repairing it.
This is a particularly bad situation because if the customer wanted the repair flawless then the repair is better off being done inside a sterile body shop. Not in the parking lot behind the service department. The worse part of this is they had not informed the customer of the damage and were not giving the customer the option to decide who he wanted to repair the damage and how it was repaired.
I was not informed either…all I knew was the vehicle was damaged and they asked me to fix it. In fact most of the time they do not tell me any details…I have to pry the information out of them. And I do mean pry! In this case the customer is always going to want a flawless job. He brought his vehicle in for service and the dealer damaged it.
Now to clarify, a good on-site painter knows how to work outside and if he is really good he uses materials and paint that work very well in outside conditions and uses fast drying paints. But the fact is he cannot control his environment. As it turns out the customer found out about all this and to say the least was not happy!
What does this example tell us? The car dealers really do not have any integrity. In fact in the last few years it has gotten even worse!
In any case I am writing this article to help you identify minor paint repair that you would not normally notice or know how to detect if you did not know how to look for them. The Car Fax report is indeed a great tool, and I recommend you never buy a car without one. However, a Car Fax report will not tell you anything about ANY minor paint repair that has been done to the vehicle. In fact it is only going to report damage that was run through and repaired by an insurance company (or paid for by the insurance.)
So how can you tell if the dealer paid to have work done on the car you are looking at? First of all, if the onsite painter they are using is no good it can be fairly obvious. In fact you should let the salesman know and his managers know if you notice bad paint repairs on their lot. This will force these unscrupulous individuals to require better qualified paint repair technicians to the work on their car lots.
Things to look for that are obvious. In fairness to the dealers they may have vehicles on their lot that have had previous work done to them prior to them purchasing it. However, if the vehicle is only 1-2 years old I can almost guarantee the dealer that is selling the car has had work done to it that they approved and paid for.
Most of the work I provide is on vehicles only a few months old that the dealer has bought from the car auction. In fact many of those vehicles are bought after car rental agencies have sold them to the car auctions. That being said, you really need to look the paint job over carefully.
The first thing I would do is look at the color on the car. Check the panels. Do the doors match the panels etc? Also, does the car look shiny in an even fashion? Are some areas shinier than others? Check the bumpers; do they match the factory color? However, when looking at bumpers keep in mind they will more often than not need to be painted even if only a few months old. This is very common. Also it is not uncommon for the bumpers not to match the paint color on the rest of the car. Especially with certain colors, like white pearls and some beige metallics.
This is partially because those parts may have been painted in a different part of the assembly process and from a different batch of paint. Honda and Toyota have had real problems with this in the past.
What you want to look for is poor quality work. Too much texture in the paint will make it dull. Poor color matches will make paint repair stand out like a soar thumb. The best way to look for and find paint work is this:
Look the entire vehicle over…walk around it looking for inconsistencies in color and texture (shine). If you notice anything, particularly if you notice one area is not as shiny as the rest, now you can look at the area at an angle and look for small specks on the surface of the paint.
Anything that stands out, sometimes it can be very minor, and if it is minor look for multiple small minor imperfections. If you notice an area that doesn’t look right you can lightly rub the area with the inside of your hand and try to see if you feel any imperfections in the paint.
Now it is not necessarily a bad thing if the vehicle has had paint repair done to it, most likely it needed it, what you want to look for is poor quality workmanship. If you are buying a “new” used car the dealers spend a lot of money to recondition them, so make the dealer get what they pay for and pay for what they should be getting!
The dealers are notorious for haggling a cheaper price from their reconditioning vendors. This is the absolute worst thing for you the consumer. Here’s why! First let me give you this example.
One of my Dodge dealers many years ago asked me to refinish a Jeep Grand Cherokee bumper that should never have been Base/Coat-Clear/Coated in the first place. Some makes of the Jeep have a textured molding styled bumper that is either dark gray or another plastic trim color.
Other makes had painted bumpers to match the rest of the paint on the vehicle. This make had the Base/Coat-Clear/Coat but had had the front bumper replaced with a trim molding bumper and had been base/coat-clear/coat painted. The paint was pealing. And I mean PEALING. The problem with these trim molded plastic bumpers…Chrysler did not manufacture these to be Base/Coat-Clear/Coated…and the paint never sticks for very long. (There are some adhesion promoters that help but as a rule this is not the way to repair this bumper.)
In any case I informed the Used Car manager that the paint would not adhere to this bumper…and the fact that it was pealing in the first place was the most compelling evidence. He asked how long it would adhere…I told him my best estimate was 1-2 MONTHS! He exclaimed… “That’s more than enough…just so long as I can get it off my lot!”
These people are crooks! They do not care about you, they do not care if you are happy…unless you spend a ton of money with them each year…and even if you do they are still crooks and they think differently than normally human beings! They think like liars and cheats. They assume you would treat them the same way. Why?
Because this is how their minds work. They would cheat you and lie to you and they cannot imagine anyone who does not function that way. In fact they consider it a weakness if you are honest and trust-worthy…unless of course you work for them…then they want you to be honest with them but do not care if you lie and cheat the customer.
The only thing these people care about is making a sale.
Have you ever heard of a 30 day money back guarantee? Not in the car business you haven’t!!! Ever wonder why? Have you ever tried to return a car to the dealer after you’ve bought it? Night Mare!
By the way…this article is not about just “buy here, pay here” lots this is about main line car dealers…New Car dealers! I have worked for them all, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge Gm GMC Pontiac, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Lincoln and I have worked on 90% of every make and model.
I have had every kind of crooked experience run by me…from a Used car manager asking me for a monthly bribe to work for him…(also know as a Kickback)…to dealers asking me to lie for them to their customers! Dealers asking me to repair damage they caused and not inform the customer.
The dealers will also leverage dishonest unskilled painters against those who do good work…to drive down their prices. The problem with that is this…if you force a skilled reputable painter to compromise his prices (fair prices) for his work it destroys the entire on-site industry…because inexperienced new businesses cannot maintain their businesses at these ridiculous prices.
These people go out of business but the market prices remain low because they were driven low and the market does not catch up to the actual supply and demand cost of real rooted businesses. So what happens is NONE of the dealers get quality repairs.
Why? Because even those repair shops who care about their work cannot work for the prices the dealers want to charge so the work suffers. Many dealers want to pay $75 to paint a bumper. The labor takes at least 3 hours for a proper bumper repair…the repair shop is paying for all materials, plus labor, (skilled labor?) plus gas, drive time, etc…
So learn how to spot poor quality paint repairs and call the car dealer out on it. If enough people do this eventually it will force the dealers to raise the standard of the repairs they expect because they know they cannot get away with it any more.
However, at the very least educating yourself will give you some protection against the shady practices of these unscrupulous car dealers. Remember this, if you are in the market for a used car they will almost always had some reconditioning done to them. Do some research about automotive reconditioning, so you know what to look for.
Common things car dealers pay to recondition:
Paint repair including scratch repair and touch up.
Interior repair
Paintless dent repair
Windshield repair
Wheel repair
Odor removal - (they usually just have an industrial air freshener treatment so the smell comes back later)
I own an automotive paint repair company specializing in spot repairs, custom color matches, color blends, body repairs, touch up and scratch repair. We also run a website where we sell our exclusive headlight restoration kit which we designed and created. We have sold well over 2000 kits from our website and on eBay. We also have over 1900 positive feedback for our headlight restoration kit.
http://www.headlightcare.com
Dana_Lind
Last 10 posts in Repairs
- Buy an Extended Warranty For a Used Car With Instant Coverage For Pennies on the Dollar! - August 21st, 2009
- Best Way to Remove Tires - August 21st, 2009
- How to Use ELM327 OBD-II OBD2 CAN USB Interface Diagnostic Tool - August 21st, 2009
- How to Find Oil Leaks - August 21st, 2009
- Things to Think About Before Working on Your Car For the First Time - August 21st, 2009
- 1997-2001 Toyota Camry P0401 Diagnosis - August 21st, 2009
- A Serious Tire Failure That You Can Prevent - August 20th, 2009
- Once-A-Month Maintenance to Keep Your Car Running For Years - August 20th, 2009
- When Should You Visit a Transmission Repair Specialist? - August 20th, 2009
- How to Fix a Trunk Latch - August 20th, 2009
The Fast and the Furious 2-Movie Collection (DVD)By Paul Walker
First tagged “automotive” by Drina Giebe “Drina” Customer tags: fast cars(2), muscle cars(2), automotive, jordana brewster, vin diesel, racing, car movie, action 
Glue (Sub Dol) (DVD)By Nahuel Perez Biscayart
First tagged “automotive” by Michael Kerjman Customer tags: male full frontal nudity(35), boys(31), male nudity(25), coming of age(20), gay love(17), gay themed(14), gay(11), gay romance(10), dvd(8), drama(6), teen(6)
iPod to GM/ Chevrolet / Cadillac / GMC / Oldsmobile / Pontiac Factory Radio Interface w/ Auxiliary Audio inputBy USA Spec
First tagged “automotive” by R. BOE Customer tags: iphone, automotive, audio, yuconOver the years car salesmen have gotten a bad rap! Is this justified? Well I can tell you from being in the automotive repair business and seeing what the car sales industry is like, this “rap” is well justified.
For instance, at one Chevy dealer where I provided my service a customer had brought in his Yukon (this was a few years ago so I do not remember the make for certain, the vehicle had double rears doors) to have some work done to it in the service department. The vehicle was having one of the rear windows replaced.
The technician damaged the paint while replacing the window. They asked me to repair the door, meanwhile I did not know that they had not informed the customer that the vehicle’s paint had been damaged and they were repairing it.
This is a particularly bad situation because if the customer wanted the repair flawless then the repair is better off being done inside a sterile body shop. Not in the parking lot behind the service department. The worse part of this is they had not informed the customer of the damage and were not giving the customer the option to decide who he wanted to repair the damage and how it was repaired.
I was not informed either…all I knew was the vehicle was damaged and they asked me to fix it. In fact most of the time they do not tell me any details…I have to pry the information out of them. And I do mean pry! In this case the customer is always going to want a flawless job. He brought his vehicle in for service and the dealer damaged it.
Now to clarify, a good on-site painter knows how to work outside and if he is really good he uses materials and paint that work very well in outside conditions and uses fast drying paints. But the fact is he cannot control his environment. As it turns out the customer found out about all this and to say the least was not happy!
What does this example tell us? The car dealers really do not have any integrity. In fact in the last few years it has gotten even worse!
In any case I am writing this article to help you identify minor paint repair that you would not normally notice or know how to detect if you did not know how to look for them. The Car Fax report is indeed a great tool, and I recommend you never buy a car without one. However, a Car Fax report will not tell you anything about ANY minor paint repair that has been done to the vehicle. In fact it is only going to report damage that was run through and repaired by an insurance company (or paid for by the insurance.)
So how can you tell if the dealer paid to have work done on the car you are looking at? First of all, if the onsite painter they are using is no good it can be fairly obvious. In fact you should let the salesman know and his managers know if you notice bad paint repairs on their lot. This will force these unscrupulous individuals to require better qualified paint repair technicians to the work on their car lots.
Things to look for that are obvious. In fairness to the dealers they may have vehicles on their lot that have had previous work done to them prior to them purchasing it. However, if the vehicle is only 1-2 years old I can almost guarantee the dealer that is selling the car has had work done to it that they approved and paid for.
Most of the work I provide is on vehicles only a few months old that the dealer has bought from the car auction. In fact many of those vehicles are bought after car rental agencies have sold them to the car auctions. That being said, you really need to look the paint job over carefully.
The first thing I would do is look at the color on the car. Check the panels. Do the doors match the panels etc? Also, does the car look shiny in an even fashion? Are some areas shinier than others? Check the bumpers; do they match the factory color? However, when looking at bumpers keep in mind they will more often than not need to be painted even if only a few months old. This is very common. Also it is not uncommon for the bumpers not to match the paint color on the rest of the car. Especially with certain colors, like white pearls and some beige metallics.
This is partially because those parts may have been painted in a different part of the assembly process and from a different batch of paint. Honda and Toyota have had real problems with this in the past.
What you want to look for is poor quality work. Too much texture in the paint will make it dull. Poor color matches will make paint repair stand out like a soar thumb. The best way to look for and find paint work is this:
Look the entire vehicle over…walk around it looking for inconsistencies in color and texture (shine). If you notice anything, particularly if you notice one area is not as shiny as the rest, now you can look at the area at an angle and look for small specks on the surface of the paint.
Anything that stands out, sometimes it can be very minor, and if it is minor look for multiple small minor imperfections. If you notice an area that doesn’t look right you can lightly rub the area with the inside of your hand and try to see if you feel any imperfections in the paint.
Now it is not necessarily a bad thing if the vehicle has had paint repair done to it, most likely it needed it, what you want to look for is poor quality workmanship. If you are buying a “new” used car the dealers spend a lot of money to recondition them, so make the dealer get what they pay for and pay for what they should be getting!
The dealers are notorious for haggling a cheaper price from their reconditioning vendors. This is the absolute worst thing for you the consumer. Here’s why! First let me give you this example.
One of my Dodge dealers many years ago asked me to refinish a Jeep Grand Cherokee bumper that should never have been Base/Coat-Clear/Coated in the first place. Some makes of the Jeep have a textured molding styled bumper that is either dark gray or another plastic trim color.
Other makes had painted bumpers to match the rest of the paint on the vehicle. This make had the Base/Coat-Clear/Coat but had had the front bumper replaced with a trim molding bumper and had been base/coat-clear/coat painted. The paint was pealing. And I mean PEALING. The problem with these trim molded plastic bumpers…Chrysler did not manufacture these to be Base/Coat-Clear/Coated…and the paint never sticks for very long. (There are some adhesion promoters that help but as a rule this is not the way to repair this bumper.)
In any case I informed the Used Car manager that the paint would not adhere to this bumper…and the fact that it was pealing in the first place was the most compelling evidence. He asked how long it would adhere…I told him my best estimate was 1-2 MONTHS! He exclaimed… “That’s more than enough…just so long as I can get it off my lot!”
These people are crooks! They do not care about you, they do not care if you are happy…unless you spend a ton of money with them each year…and even if you do they are still crooks and they think differently than normally human beings! They think like liars and cheats. They assume you would treat them the same way. Why?
Because this is how their minds work. They would cheat you and lie to you and they cannot imagine anyone who does not function that way. In fact they consider it a weakness if you are honest and trust-worthy…unless of course you work for them…then they want you to be honest with them but do not care if you lie and cheat the customer.
The only thing these people care about is making a sale.
Have you ever heard of a 30 day money back guarantee? Not in the car business you haven’t!!! Ever wonder why? Have you ever tried to return a car to the dealer after you’ve bought it? Night Mare!
By the way…this article is not about just “buy here, pay here” lots this is about main line car dealers…New Car dealers! I have worked for them all, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge Gm GMC Pontiac, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Lincoln and I have worked on 90% of every make and model.
I have had every kind of crooked experience run by me…from a Used car manager asking me for a monthly bribe to work for him…(also know as a Kickback)…to dealers asking me to lie for them to their customers! Dealers asking me to repair damage they caused and not inform the customer.
The dealers will also leverage dishonest unskilled painters against those who do good work…to drive down their prices. The problem with that is this…if you force a skilled reputable painter to compromise his prices (fair prices) for his work it destroys the entire on-site industry…because inexperienced new businesses cannot maintain their businesses at these ridiculous prices.
These people go out of business but the market prices remain low because they were driven low and the market does not catch up to the actual supply and demand cost of real rooted businesses. So what happens is NONE of the dealers get quality repairs.
Why? Because even those repair shops who care about their work cannot work for the prices the dealers want to charge so the work suffers. Many dealers want to pay $75 to paint a bumper. The labor takes at least 3 hours for a proper bumper repair…the repair shop is paying for all materials, plus labor, (skilled labor?) plus gas, drive time, etc…
So learn how to spot poor quality paint repairs and call the car dealer out on it. If enough people do this eventually it will force the dealers to raise the standard of the repairs they expect because they know they cannot get away with it any more.
However, at the very least educating yourself will give you some protection against the shady practices of these unscrupulous car dealers. Remember this, if you are in the market for a used car they will almost always had some reconditioning done to them. Do some research about automotive reconditioning, so you know what to look for.
Common things car dealers pay to recondition:
Paint repair including scratch repair and touch up.
Interior repair
Paintless dent repair
Windshield repair
Wheel repair
Odor removal - (they usually just have an industrial air freshener treatment so the smell comes back later)
I own an automotive paint repair company specializing in spot repairs, custom color matches, color blends, body repairs, touch up and scratch repair. We also run a website where we sell our exclusive headlight restoration kit which we designed and created. We have sold well over 2000 kits from our website and on eBay. We also have over 1900 positive feedback for our headlight restoration kit.
http://www.headlightcare.com
Dana_Lind
Last 10 posts in Repairs
- Buy an Extended Warranty For a Used Car With Instant Coverage For Pennies on the Dollar! - August 21st, 2009
- Best Way to Remove Tires - August 21st, 2009
- How to Use ELM327 OBD-II OBD2 CAN USB Interface Diagnostic Tool - August 21st, 2009
- How to Find Oil Leaks - August 21st, 2009
- Things to Think About Before Working on Your Car For the First Time - August 21st, 2009
- 1997-2001 Toyota Camry P0401 Diagnosis - August 21st, 2009
- A Serious Tire Failure That You Can Prevent - August 20th, 2009
- Once-A-Month Maintenance to Keep Your Car Running For Years - August 20th, 2009
- When Should You Visit a Transmission Repair Specialist? - August 20th, 2009
- How to Fix a Trunk Latch - August 20th, 2009
The Fast and the Furious 2-Movie Collection (DVD)By Paul Walker
First tagged “automotive” by Drina Giebe “Drina” Customer tags: fast cars(2), muscle cars(2), automotive, jordana brewster, vin diesel, racing, car movie, action Glue (Sub Dol) (DVD)By Nahuel Perez Biscayart
First tagged “automotive” by Michael Kerjman Customer tags: male full frontal nudity(35), boys(31), male nudity(25), coming of age(20), gay love(17), gay themed(14), gay(11), gay romance(10), dvd(8), drama(6), teen(6)iPod to GM/ Chevrolet / Cadillac / GMC / Oldsmobile / Pontiac Factory Radio Interface w/ Auxiliary Audio inputBy USA Spec
First tagged “automotive” by R. BOE Customer tags: iphone, automotive, audio, yuconNo related posts.