So last week I'm holding a $2000 cinema camera on top of my Macbook as I'm pulling them out of the BMW. The camera starts to slip and then as adjust myself to bring it back, the laptop starts to slip the opposite direction. I have a split second to decide which one to save. Needless to say, I dropped both.
Lucky for me the camera was fine. The plastic lens hood took the hit as well as some empty water bottles that cushioned it's fall. The Macbook is also fine, surprising considering the 5 foot drop. It's in an old plastic case that took all the pain.
So great! Lesson learned. Stop trying to combine trips to and from the car and just bring one item down at a time. I wipe my brow and return to life. The next morning I go out to the car to grab something and see this:
Of all the places the laptop hits it hits on a body line. My impression of pointless dent repair is they can't do anything with a body line. What makes this extra frustrating is that there is no damage to the paint, no scratch, no mark, nothing.
So I go to the body shop that repaired the bumper last year when an old man forced me to have an encounter with a traffic cone. The guy comes out, looks at it and says he'll write it up. 5 minutes later he comes out with a $1000 estimate and a laundry list of stuff. He needs to remove the tail light, the rocker covers, the roof rails, the rear bumper cover, etc. They're going to pop it out, sand it, paint it, clear it, blend it in to the entire panel and all that jazz. I'm not enticed. There's literally no paint damage. I can't fathom painting a 1/4 of the car for this let alone paying $1000 to have it done and being without it for a week but what choice do I have? I'm not going to drive it like this.
So I call a paintless dent repair guy that has stellar reviews on Yelp. Nobody has stellar reviews on Yelp. The internet loves to hate people so when you have someone that literally everyone likes, that's probably a good person to deal with. He takes a look at it and tells me he thinks he can do it. He's not sure the paint is going to hold but thinks if he can work it slowly he can get it done. He asks me for an hour to give it a crack.
I take that time to jam a footlong sub down my gullet and some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from the BMW waiting room. Seriously, freshly baked cookies at a car dealer? WTF. An hour later he calls me and tells me he's bringing it around and this is what he came up with:
You literally can't tell anything was there. There is an ever so slight depression in the paint that he says I can have polished out if it really bothers me but as far as the metal goes, all is well. I can't even fathom how hard it is to pop a dent out on a body line and then reform it so that there are no ripples. The cost? One hour and $150.
NOW I've learned my lesson.
Lucky for me the camera was fine. The plastic lens hood took the hit as well as some empty water bottles that cushioned it's fall. The Macbook is also fine, surprising considering the 5 foot drop. It's in an old plastic case that took all the pain.
So great! Lesson learned. Stop trying to combine trips to and from the car and just bring one item down at a time. I wipe my brow and return to life. The next morning I go out to the car to grab something and see this:
Of all the places the laptop hits it hits on a body line. My impression of pointless dent repair is they can't do anything with a body line. What makes this extra frustrating is that there is no damage to the paint, no scratch, no mark, nothing.
So I go to the body shop that repaired the bumper last year when an old man forced me to have an encounter with a traffic cone. The guy comes out, looks at it and says he'll write it up. 5 minutes later he comes out with a $1000 estimate and a laundry list of stuff. He needs to remove the tail light, the rocker covers, the roof rails, the rear bumper cover, etc. They're going to pop it out, sand it, paint it, clear it, blend it in to the entire panel and all that jazz. I'm not enticed. There's literally no paint damage. I can't fathom painting a 1/4 of the car for this let alone paying $1000 to have it done and being without it for a week but what choice do I have? I'm not going to drive it like this.
So I call a paintless dent repair guy that has stellar reviews on Yelp. Nobody has stellar reviews on Yelp. The internet loves to hate people so when you have someone that literally everyone likes, that's probably a good person to deal with. He takes a look at it and tells me he thinks he can do it. He's not sure the paint is going to hold but thinks if he can work it slowly he can get it done. He asks me for an hour to give it a crack.
I take that time to jam a footlong sub down my gullet and some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from the BMW waiting room. Seriously, freshly baked cookies at a car dealer? WTF. An hour later he calls me and tells me he's bringing it around and this is what he came up with:
You literally can't tell anything was there. There is an ever so slight depression in the paint that he says I can have polished out if it really bothers me but as far as the metal goes, all is well. I can't even fathom how hard it is to pop a dent out on a body line and then reform it so that there are no ripples. The cost? One hour and $150.
NOW I've learned my lesson.
