That sucks I feel your pain, some lady side swiped mine at 800 miles wiped out both drivers side and passenger side doors. Also don't forget to look into The deminished value of your car. I'm going through ADE for mine

 

This sux, just FYI, your going to want to drive this into the ground once fixed. You will never get a good trade at a dealer now.

 

I wish you could post a pic from directly in front of the vehicle becuz it appears to me that the front bumper brace and the raditor on the frame in pushed in on the drivers side as opposed to the passenger side. If you could measure that corner then the other corner back to the firewall then you would know what they mean by "swayed" as opposed to bent which is the exact same thing. If infact it is damaged it will show up on the carfax "salvaged vehicle" report. Not good for re-sale..

 

you do notice you put 800? i assume you meant 80.

 

OP here.....I think he did mean 800....on the odom. Because in my first message I said I only had about 500 miles on the Fit when it was wrecked. So he was just saying his was new too when he got hit.

 

lol, okay now i feel stupid. i was like 800 miles per hour is pretty fast...

 

**UPDATE**

after 5 weeks and 7k total in dmgs we got the fit back today.

OMG we are soooo unhappy with the work.

alot of overspray on the entire car.. basically the whole thing needs to be repainted. sand all in the hood. some parts of the hood not even painted (rear edge) several huge paint drips on hood and door. very very bad primer overspray on the rear passenger door.. u can actually see the line where it was tapped off to paint the front door.. then it looks like they tried to buff it out and that just scratched it all up.. looks horrible.gappy trim around windshield. molding on front driver small window sticks out.hood fitment is bad. they even left the car outside with the hood off and parts got rusted.. they tried to say oh that's steel that is normal. we said after a few weeks they said yeap. i call bs. what do yall think about the rusted part in the engine bay.. see pic below

we picked the car up like 30 min before they closed on friday... they are not open weekends so will not be able to do anything about this until monday. but we have a vacation to florida next friday.. already postponed 3 weeks due to the accident to begin with... so what are we supposed to do now.. take the car back and let them have it for another week and say this has to be fixed by friday so we can go to florida or should we wait and go back when we get back from our trip. will delaying this for 2 weeks make any differance. we really hate to be driving around with a messed up looking car.

these are a few pics of the bad things... is the rusted thing normal or because of the body shops negligence of leaving the car outside after it was tore down...

 

Dude sorry bout the wreck. First off you should check with at least three body shops for estimates on damage/cost of repairs. How ins. companies gauge "totaled" is if the amount required to fix the vehicle exceeds what it is worth. If it is not totaled get at least 3 estimates from different body shops. Also do not let the caravans ins. company bully you to use aftermarket parts, especially if you purchased the fit new. Be firm you want genuine Honda parts for warranty purposes etc. Also if and when it gets repaired request a check for loss of depriciation value due to the wreck from the caravan peoples ins co. or see if your insurance co. can assist you with that process. If they deem your fit totaled they will not give you back your car, but you can purchase it back at a much reduced price if you want to keep it. Lastly be sure to check for damage to your a/c condenser and radiator if any front support beams got bent. It dosent take much to puncture them. Good luck with all this

 

wow that is a crap job for sure. i've had accidents in the past and i have to say that the local body shop here is awesome. but if you don't have a great body shop nearby, you are kinda stuck -- take it back, tell them you are reporting them to the better business bureau and then rent a car for your trip -- screw postponing it -- tell them you expect them to pay for the rental (you probably won't get it but it can't hurt threatening with that).

i have to say that my insurance company just upped my rate again (this is the second time since i leased the car in may) and they say its because the fit has a higher than normal claim experience for bodily injury and structural damage ... its just crap because when i got the car they said my insurance would go up $18 and now its gone from $42 to $76 -- so yeah .. not happy ....

 

Yeah crap job. Take it back for sure. Call them and leave message telling them its coming back to them and why. Shops do this hoping people wont complain. Call your insurance agent and BITCH alot. Demand it to be fixed. Explain this is why you pay them, and if they did not total the car they MUST fix it back to original. DO NOT accept imperfection. They will fix it even if it takes a million returns.

 

DAMN! That was an awful job. Ask for the the owner and see if he'd accept that as a brand new car (Which yours was).

Complain to your insurance company, send them these photos, then say you are concerned about backlash from the autobody shop that performed the poor work and you want someone else to take a look at it now (to make sure they didn't screw up anything that you can't see) such as the returning the frame to it's original state. If that's what they call quality work for body work, I can't imagine their mechanical inabilities.

~SB

 

yea we are planning on doing all that monday 1st thing. but what do ya think about the rusted part in the engine bay. is that normal wear and tare(remember this car was 13 days old with 600 miles on it) or is that because they tore the car down (took hood and fenders off) and then let it sit outside till parts came in etc etc. and what exactly is that piece that is rusted.. so will be able to use correct name when we complain about it.

and fyi this was the body shop at a big dealership here... so would assume that the quality of work would have been great. especially since they originally said 12 days and it ended up being 5 weeks.

 

Ya Angel that part rusts no matter what.
But the work there is BAD. I can't belive these pix that a body shop mang. would let the owner of a 500 mile car even see this slipshod work.
Where's the address of this shop, the Norfolk Zoo? lol
Big Mike

 

Hey Angel, I started from the latest post and worked my way down to your update. Wow, shocking to learn that this was the work of a Honda dealer's body shop. Well most have been said already from previous posts and I agree. From the photos, looks more like a fly-by-night outfit did this... in someone's backyard... over beer...

Might want to mention "Better Business Bureau" and "Lawyer" in the course of your conversation with the "who's who" in your case/transactions. Good luck!

 

i wont say the exact name here because don't want them to come at us saying we slandered their company etc etc.. but it was on vb blvd just past witchduck rd.

we are going to send in all of these pics via the claims website to our insurance adjuster and print them out at walgreens so that when we go back to dealership monday they cant be like we don't see anything.. tbh we didnt even notice any of it until we got home. we were in such a hurry to get out of there and get the rental back before they closed. but even if we did notice all of this stuff right there in the parking lot its not like they would have rolled it right in to restart the repairs.

we have already delayed our trip fro 3 weeks specifically so we could take the good mpg fit(33city almost 45hwy) and not a 25mpg rental(we drove 1300 miles on the rental in 5 weeks and got 25mpg 2010 chevy cobalt). so more than likely we will get the ball rolling monday morning..as in do all of our complaining about this is wrong etc etc.. but wont actually drop the car back off for another 2.5 weeks until we get back from our trip.

about that part rusting.. is that normal after just a few weeks. anything that could have been done by the body shop(as in leaving it tore down outside)ive looked at a few of the other members pics and we noticed on yours that it is rusted also.. but doesnt look as bad as ours.. and our is now 7 weeks old and yours is a few years old. how long did it take yours to do that?

 

That rusted part you're concerned about took its normal course for a car that sat idle for 5 weeks in the shop and chances are with the hood off. For a car driven regularly, the rust would not form because for one, its under the hood and not exposed to the elements. And with the engine running on a daily basis, the heat generated would keep that part dry more often. I'm not a corrosion expert, just my take. You might mention it to see if they'll replace the part. Or make an issue of it so they will replace the part. Hope all works out for you.

BTW, just a thought. You might be taking a big risk going on a road trip with the car at this point. What if something else not related happens? God forbid, another accident? Another incident might really complicate your case. Just some thoughts...

 

whatever you do, don't take this vehicle on the road.

not for 20 miles, definitely not for a long trip. it's not the worry of it getting into another wreck i would have, it's the fact they fubar'd that reconstruction. i honestly wouldn't trust them to have that car "complete" if they can't even make it appear that they did a good job. as someone else pointed out....was beer involved in the work being done?

it's RIDICULOUS that your "NEW" car is something that no one here in their right mind would go near.

You're much nicer than I am. I'd be at that dealership in the AM to talk to the owner and/or GM and I'd do it in the lobby with my car out front and talking out LOUD about how horrible the work done was. Hell, I'd probably make sure I was overhead in the entrance where everyone pulls up to drop their cars off for oil changes, tire rotations, etc. about the HORRIBLE work that was done on MY car.

b/c that's your car. they took what they said was a fix-able problem and instead took 5 weeks of your life and gave you back a NHBP shit sandwich.

my hat is off to you for your composure. i don't think if it was me i'd be able to speak intelligible words much less compose anything on the boards.

good luck man.

 

why should we not drive the car or take it on a long road trip? everything that is wrong with it is only visual. everything mechanical is fine.

the only things that where not visual related that was fixed was the battery holder was cracked so they replaced that and the battery(replaced battery as safety measure i guess). drivers headlight. alignment (she does drive straight).drivers seat belt and the airbag control module(airbag didn't deploy but caused some error code.. so had to replace the module).

we have driven the car about 20 miles since we picked it up and it is driving perfectly. rides smooth and straight. no engine noise at all etc etc..

tbh i have no clue why it took them sooo long to do this work. i have been very patient with them. im not a "bitchy" person...my bf on the other hand is the exact opposite. when his car was in the shop he was on the phone with them everyday finding out exactly what they did to it that day what was going to be done the next day why it was taking this amount of time etc etc.. and 1 spec of sand in the paint job and he would take it back to be repainted and when the body shop wanted to say its good as is we are not repainting it.. all he said was something about as long as he owns the vehicle the work is supposed to be covered and that he will just call his insurance company...needless to say they changed their tune and repainted/fixed it.

the way he sees it, it should have been 1/2 a day to tear down. 2-3 days parts shipping. 1/2 day to reinstall the parts. possibly 3 days for paint for a good job. maybe another 2 days allowed for complications.. so 9 business days total. their original estimate was for 12 business days not including shipping times for parts. they actually had it for 25 business days (m-f) (closed sat/sun)

 

Make friends with somebody at a body shop so this never happens again. Everybody should have at least one body shop buddy who can highball your own repairs, lowball somebody else's repairs, and just do a good job at cheap price. This is coming from me as an insurance agent. If you don't have a friend, you will get screwed - either by us or the body shop. Heck, maybe we'll both gangbang you at the same time.

The system is not there to serve you. The insurance companies are there to serve its stockholders (or crooked executives for mutual companies) and the body shop is there to serve itself. We all know what happens when three people are in a group. Two will always team up and kill the other. So either you and the insurance company will screw the body shop (uncommon, besides how?) or the body shop and the insurance company will screw you (very common) or you and the body shop will screw the insurance company (sometimes).

Should have gotten the check for repairs then drove it out to my place. I could have done the mechanical repairs with quality salvage yard parts at about $2000-$2500 and my body shop would have painted at around $1000 then we would have spent the rest of the money on hookers and blow.

(I'm highballing the $2500, I would have lied and kept a grand for myself on top of the difference)

Welcome to the dark world of collision repair.

 

Sage advice from Lyons - take heed. It's so much about friends in the right places.

K_C_