Why is body/paint work so expensive these days?

Originally Posted by grampi
Originally Posted by SeaJay
As is usual when rants about high prices being charged by the service companies: Open up your own shop and then lower the price to where you think it ought to be. Give it a year or two and let us know how it has worked out for you.

If you are correct, you will corner the market and be rich beyond anything you can imagine.


I can't tell you how many times I get answers like this. They are worthless...why would anyone do this to find an answer to their question? Just plain dumb...


Before you start tossing around the dumb accusation buddy, what exactly are you looking for with a question that has an obvious answer: If all of the body shops are charging similar prices, then in the land of free enterprise with profit being the only motivation for businesses to operate the answer is the expenses of the business. Economics 101 buddy.
 
My and my parents used the same bodyshop guy for over 20 years. Sure it was expensive, but his work was awesome.

Unfortunately, he died two years ago of brain cancer at age 46
frown.gif


I've seen him work sometimes, that's a LOT of work if you let the guy do all the prep himself. Sure you can cut corners and get it done faster, but as Fantomworks' owner once said : "I'd rather have it right than have it fast".
 
Originally Posted by Carmudgeon
The insurance companies are easier to deal with... and won't renege on a bill

A have no words for this. Please don't comment on topics where you have 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 knowledge.
 
Originally Posted by SeaJay
Originally Posted by grampi
Originally Posted by SeaJay
As is usual when rants about high prices being charged by the service companies: Open up your own shop and then lower the price to where you think it ought to be. Give it a year or two and let us know how it has worked out for you.

If you are correct, you will corner the market and be rich beyond anything you can imagine.


I can't tell you how many times I get answers like this. They are worthless...why would anyone do this to find an answer to their question? Just plain dumb...


Before you start tossing around the dumb accusation buddy, what exactly are you looking for with a question that has an obvious answer: If all of the body shops are charging similar prices, then in the land of free enterprise with profit being the only motivation for businesses to operate the answer is the expenses of the business. Economics 101 buddy.


I call em as I see em. Telling someone to start their own business to find out why prices in that business have gotten so high is stupid. Simple economics doesn't explain why it costs 10 times as much to have a vehicle painted now as compared to say 10 years ago...nothing else has gone up that much over the same time period...
 
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In cali - its insurance, regs, labor, real estate.
There are no more freelncer - everyone has to be an employee

A booth is 150K + install and you need a permit to install.

An AQMD permit is simply not available for sale - like saying you wan tto start a radio station - they are all sold out. You must buy an existing business WITH an active permit.

Even with ALL the permits and money you can only open that business in an area tha allows the pollution - whittling down where you can dit to every expensive real estate.

Building labelling for sire code complliance - regular inspections (always find something wrong)

THEN factor in material costs.
 
The red soul paint on my MAZDA requires three different coats to achieve the brilliance required and this doesn't include the base or primer coat. Many of the newer colors require several different coats, most requiring a drying time between coats. Ed
 
supton said:
Wild guess, but if you want it done right... it'll cost.

OEM's are able to buy in bulk and optimize their floor so as to do it very cheaply. Oh wait... not too many people complain about how cheap cars are today, maybe it's more like, everything is expensive today.
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Go on any Chevrolet truck forum, or Subaru Forum and read about paint that chips off so easily-it's pitiful. These are only two brands that I know of. There is probably more.

Yea-paint with absolute pitiful adhesion quality is expense.............
 
grampi said:
Originally Posted by 4WD
My son got in a tiny fender bender … first she got the ticket but somehow found "witnesses", a lawyer, and chiropractor …
Then they came by and wrote him a ticket …
All 3 had to be bilingual since she was not a US citizen …
This contact was so mild I could do more with my work boot …
End result was all five in her van were paid for medical injuries and stress counseling …
When I complained to insurance … they said this happens everyday … your "profile" would not fare well in court
That vehicle was never repaired so hard to blame the body shops for that fraud …


...and I suppose nothing was done to the illegal for being here illegally?
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Who said she was illegal?
 
Guess I am the outlier here... There is a guy who runs a small shop in Campbell, CA, not far from me. His son and a few others work for him. Alex's prices are very good; more than fair IMO. How good is he? Alex does all the work for local exotic dealers. You will see Aston Martins, big dollar Porsches, Ferraris and the occasional Lambo in his shop. He explains to me the work involved; I have no idea what he is talking about. He has worked on our TSX, GS, my niece's Civic, the old Camry I just fixed up and a friend's TSX that needed a front bumper due to a bad repair before he got the car. I am lucky to have found him. Here's a pic of my friend Alex.

The Great Auto Paint
 
4WD said:
My son got in a tiny fender bender … first she got the ticket but somehow found "witnesses", a lawyer, and chiropractor …
Then they came by and wrote him a ticket …
All 3 had to be bilingual since she was not a US citizen …
This contact was so mild I could do more with my work boot …
End result was all five in her van were paid for medical injuries and stress counseling …
When I complained to insurance … they said this happens everyday … your "profile" would not fare well in court
That vehicle was never repaired so hard to blame the body shops for that fraud …
Click to expand...

I was hit by a woman in a low income area. An SUV was stopped to make a right into her complex and, because she was in the middle of the entrance he waived her on to make a left. There was enough room for me to safely maneuver around the SUV without crossing the yellow line. BAM!!! Instead of looking she just gunned it and hit me.

When I asked if she was OK she said she had just gotten out of the hospital with back issues. Even though the hit was at less than 25 MPH she couldn’t even turn to acknowledge me her neck and back were so bad. No one was around at all so I called the police and got an ambulance for her.

A dozen or so people from her complex were milling about by the time my car was towed away.

She was cited as at fault. Obviously.

A little less than a year later I get a notice from my insurance that I’m being sued by her. My insurance agent eventually settled with her even though she said that the whole thing was essentially a joke. After the hit I made the mistake of moving my car to her side of the road to make room for traffic. Pictures were taken of where I left the car that made it look as if I’d crossed the yellow line while passing the SUV. My agent said it wasn’t worth fighting for the money.

That car never did run the same and, after a year of trying to get it right, I gave up and traded it in for our current FXT. No matter how many times I went back to the original shop to make things right, things just never were made whole. before I could even divulge that I’d been in an accident the appraising trade-in dealer found TONS of dead giveaways. I took a complete bath on the trade in.
 
I was at the body shop supply store yesterday for the usual consumables, paper, primer, DA disc, etc and found the store near bare, even the fillers were in short supply, there is a shortage of materials.
The owner was telling me Yellow and Red paints in the Chroma base are 2-3x the price they were last year, mask are non existent.
I paid $80 for a pint of dark grey metallic chroma and $75 for a pint of polar white chroma, add to that a qt ea of epoxy and Poly primer, blending clear and the other items and almost $500 was gone, if I had to buy clear it would be significantly more.

Jan1 there is going to be a 24% increase on the paint again he told me. Good god just to do a couple of panels and blend them in is costing 3 times what it did just a couple of years ago.
 
madRiver said:
This thread turned awful 😔.
👎
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This thread was two years old when a spammer drug it back up. I’m not certain if you’re complaining about the old posts, which are very stale, or the couple of new ones.

Where, exactly, did it “turn”?
 
aquariuscsm said:
And what's so ironic,is that I've never seen good bodywork. It always looks shoddy and sloppy.
Click to expand...

THIS THIS THIS.....Most body shops do terrible work today no matter the price paid... Horrendous doesnt begin to describe it. Then when you rightly take it back for things to be corrected you usually get big attitude as well.
The industry is full of hacks jack legs and thieves.:mad::poop:
 
IMHO, high schools have done away with auto mechanics and paint & body classes. Kids graduating today have no incentive to want to work on vehicles, unless a family member has been/is a mechanic/tech. So, as current body shop guys get older there is no one to replace them.
 
BlueOvalFitter said:
IMHO, high schools have done away with auto mechanics and paint & body classes. Kids graduating today have no incentive to want to work on vehicles, unless a family member has been/is a mechanic/tech. So, as current body shop guys get older there is no one to replace them.
Click to expand...
This right here is correct. My school took out auto body in the 1990s because of a surprisingly low demand along with carpentry and woodworking and many other programs. They took out auto mechanics for about 5 years because the teacher had passed away and they couldn’t find a replacement until they found the teacher I had. We had welding, automotive, motor sports, building trades, cosmetology and culinary arts and preforming arts and a couple computer classes and a few more. Everyone in my class including me was tied to a mechanic somehow not a single person wasn’t. The other two school districts that border my county offered body work but ours didn’t. That also makes it more expensive because they are having to pay more for the same thing because no one wants to do it anymore and that’s how they get people to do it is pay them more.
 
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