Bad Business

Kevin's VW had several little fender benders over the years.  Unfortunately, two of them happened down in St. George.  We were referred to Dealers Auto Collision in St. George.  They were very accommodating and went out of their way to get the car to the repair shop.  I can't complain too much about the first repair, but it took way too long to get it done!

Last year, Kevin had another little car incident.  We called around for referrals, when it was time to head back to Salt Lake we decided to use Dealers Auto Collision again.  BAD IDEA!

Following is a letter Kevin sent to the collision shop:
...On September 4, 2010, I picked up my car from your shop.  That day I noticed the alignment was bad and contacted Ron Edwards, and was told to bring the car back.  When I picked up the car from Dealer Collision, I was told they had aligned it and was good to go.

The Jetta never drove as smoothly as it did before the wreck and continually got worse.  I thought it was because of the mismatched tire.  I took the car to Les Schwab and was informed that my tires needed to be replaced immediately, because of a bad alignment.  We requested from Dealer Collision Center the alignment spec sheet.  The sheet showed it had been aligned to the wrong model of Jetta.  Les Schwab tried to align it to the correct model.  They found that there was a suspension problem and repairs still not corrected from the accident, and they weren’t able to align it correctly.

We took the car to Chris’ Body & Paint in Midvale, Utah for a third opinion.  Chris’ did a complete evaluation of the car and found an additional $3,058.36 in suspension damage that was missed by Dealer Collision Center.  Geiko Insurance reopened the claim and approved the additional work.

3 of the tires needed to be replaced because of Dealer Collision’s neglect.  Those tires were purchased June 2010 and were in perfect condition prior to the accident.  Dealer Collision put on a mismatched tire claiming my original tire was discontinued, which we found to be false. 

Because the tire damage was due to Dealer Collision failure to address the suspension damage, I am seeking reimbursement for the new tires...


Of course, we didn't get any reply from Dealers Collision.  A few weeks ago, Kevin was hit by another car.  We took it back to Chris' for repairs.  When they pulled apart the car they noticed several of the parts, that were probably repaired by Dealers Auto Collision, were not replaced but appeared to be glued together.  We were not surprised.

We would like to recommend Chris' Body and Paint in Midvale.  Val and her team have never disappointed us.  We have taken our cars to them for over 20 years and we've never experienced any problems.


We would most likely need to pay a hefty attorney fee to go after Dealers Collision.  I'm sad that they will not stand behind their work.  They only recourse we have is to spread the word.  Thank goodness for blogging!