Reader question:
I had a little bump and now there’s a dent in my car. Should I talk to my insurance company and make a claim?
Hugo
Talking to your car insurance company isn’t always necessary.
Some people prefer to file a claim for everything, even the smallest things, and that’s all well and good for them, but having a history of filing claims for every little thing isn’t going to put you in good standing with your car insurance company. It’s true that one claim for something as small as a dent isn’t going to hurt you, but you don’t want to make a habit of it. And besides that, why bother? Dents are easily fixed, and can be taken care of without even bringing your car insurance company into the picture and risking higher rates.
Using a relatively new process called Paintless Dent Removal, dents can be fixed leaving naught a trace behind, and quite easily, so new car owners who think in fear of that first encroachment on the beauty of their car can take a deep breath and chill out. Using special tools and techniques, PDR can get rid of dents even as big as a football on all kinds of vehicles and body types. Even though this process has been around for a decade, most people aren’t even aware that it exists, but it does, and it’s the best option for fixing a dent on your car.
The repair is most effective if the car is 1990 and up, has any size dent, the paint remains unbroken, the dent doesn’t come close to the edge of the panel, and the panel hasn’t been fixed before. Some of the great things about it is that no repaintng or filler is necessary, it’s cheaper than normal dent repair, and there’s no risk that the fix won’t be a different color than the rest of the car. And, as the years go by, PDR is able to handle increasing dent sizes.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.