Such an awful feeling. Was driving along today and noticed a strange reflection on the hood. Stopped to get gas, and sure enough there's a tiny ding along the hood crease. Probably been on the car since I picked it up from the dealership, just didn't notice until the light hit it in just the right way.

It's a tiny dent, nobody else would ever even notice it, but I know it's there. Gonna talk to mazda tomorrow and see if there's any chance they want to take care of it, if not calling a paintless dent removal place. Garage the car, park at the end of the lot, avoid trees like the plague, and you still end up with a ding. Good to get it over with, I guess, since the first is always the worst.

 

that sucks. good luck getting it fixed.

 

I know how that feels man. I had to go to the hospital the other day. My wife was having an ultra-sound. Gonna have my second boy in March!! HAHA Anyway, as happy as I was leaving, knowing I was gonna have another son, I didn't even notice the huge dent in the passenger rear door until the next day. It was a 7 inch long vertical dent. Man God spared the car that did it. I would have slashed the valvestems of the perp, and would have keyed it up with the word ******* or something similar. I was so pissed off. I'm having it fixed, but it still sucks. People have no common sense or courtesy. I'm no angel, but I know I have never dented up somebody else's car with a car door, or shopping cart, or anything.

 

Real mature. Would you like to re-think this before you hit enter the next time? I'm sure you'll make a great role model for your 2 sons

I'm amazed at how proud some of you guys are to actually post stuff like this on public forums

 

He may have been a little extreme but I understand his point. It seems that, especially when you live in a big city, you just can't have anything nice.

I have never owned a car that has not been seriously dented or dinged fairly quickly. The same goes for my friends. A few weeks ago a buddy of mine had a mysterious HUGE dent on his passenger side...an SUV or something must've really got him good. Poor guy didn't even notice it so really had no idea when or where it happened.

I swear to god sometimes it just seems intentional. When you consider the amount of force it would take to leave some of the dents I see, it's hard to convince me that some jerk didn't do it intentionally. I can't help but notice in any given parking lot, every car, no matter how nice, carries battle scars from some thoughtless a-hole whipping open a door or careening around with a shopping cart.

It's probably diff't in small town America, as I think people overall are more courteous and respectful. And parking lots may be a little more spacious.

You can add me to the list of people who, no matter how crappy of a car I owned, has never once even grazed another vehicle with my door or any item under my control. And this from a guy who owned a 1980 Dodge Diplomat "G-Man" car in the early 90's.

 

I think everybody's lost their temper at one point or another. I'm normally a nice, even-tempered individual, but if you hit my car, your first words had better be pretty close to "I'm sorry, I'll pay for everything." Getting angry may not be the right course of action, but I can certainly understand it.

Got a paintless dent removal guy coming out on Saturday to take a look at it.

 

I wish this were true ... 3 dings less than 4000 miles all fixed using PDR. I sing the praises of PDR each time I walk up to my 8 and see no evidence of it having ever been touched. Amazing!!

Now that the friendly local PDR guy and I know each other on a first name basis, he cuts me quite the discount, citing ... " Oh, I know you'll be back" (Is that him lurking in the shadow with a hammer?!?!?!?!?)

Family_man
Smalltown, America
A.K.A. Little Rock, AR

 

How much does your PDR guy charge?

Before I returned my 8 under buyback I had to take care of some dings- it worked great. The guy charges $80 per panel- no matter how many dents- I only had 2 dent in each panel, so $160 for 2 small dings that took less than 10 mins to fix.


Next time I see him- which I hope will not be soon (with my next 8- ) I will negotiate a better price- hopefully.

 

$50 for the first one.

$0 for the second one (He tinted my windows at the same time and felt sorry for me)

$19 for the third one. With the promise that he would make on site repairs for me if given enough time for no extra charge.
This was especially nice since he is only open during the hours I am normally working.

F_M

 

Excuse my ignorance. Where I live, there is no such service as PDR. How does it work? What technique, equipment do they use?

P.S. Any pics; I am curious to see how it's done.

 

They massage the metal back into the original position using a variety of tools. Usually, they'll go in from under (so as not to damage the paint) and gently roll it out until the dent conforms to the original shape. Tends to be much cheaper than bodywork, and because there's no filler or sanding, there's no need to apply more paint (of course this won't work for scratches). Here's a sample pic from google image search:

 

That's why I was so mad...it had to be intentional...the dent was huge and deep. Anyway, if I offended anybody I'm sorry. I am not a violent man. I'm more of a laid back kind of guy. But I love my car, and I worked hard and sacraficed a lot to get it. So I take it a little hard.

 

It all boils down to respect for other folks property. Some have it, some don't. I know how you feel though, seems like manners don't count in the parking lot, huh?

 

Hey I perfectly understand your anger when some stupid careless ******* dings your car! It happened to me on a second day of ownership on my insurance agent's parking lot!!! A ding on the passenger door! Big one! Thankfully easily removed by pdr for $20. But then again is it worth all your emotions? It's just a car...

 

i cannot agree more with the things that take place in parking lots i would want to kill someone who did that.

i did once hit a car with my door, it wasnt really my fault though it was a windy day and when i opened the door the wind took hold of it and opened it faster than i could react to stop it.

i sat and waited for an hour for the person to come back to the car so i could tell them what happened but no one showed up, so i took a piece of paper and wrote a note on it, left my name and number and stuck it under thier wiper, wraped it around too as to make sure it wouldnt fly away. 2 hours later the guy called my phone and i explained what happened.

he said when he first noticed it he was pissed but the fact that i left my name and # so i could explain what happened helped. I was going to have my insurance cover the damage but he said not to worry.

i am glad too because it was a porche, a few years old but still very nice.

 

You are a saint. Why couldn't it have been you that dented up my door? HAHA :D

 

On my first RX-7, both doors got dented by parking next to pickup trucks. Their front bumpers would hit the doors as they would back out. One was so bad that it popped the window. Both were hit and runs of course. Now I park at the end of lots and away from tall vehicles.

 

My PDR experience.

 

I got my first ding over the Christmas break :P Someone in my own freaking apartment complex scratched the passenger door a couple of months after I got the car, but it is a small scratch and only noticable if you look for it, so I was disappointed but not too much to be done since nobody owned up.

But this dent ticked me off a LOT. Parked in a strip mall down in south Georgia (just outside St. Simon's Island). Go into the bookstore and spend probably 1.5-2 hours in there. I come out, and up on the passenger side near the back is this ding, complete with surrounding white paint. Someone obviously just slung an SUV door open and ground it into the car, because the white paint was spread over the small area, not just a single contact fleck.

So looking closely, you can see fingermarks where what appears to be a woman has run her fingers over the white paint a few times to see if it would come off. No note, no apology, and the ******** who did it obvously either moved their car or drove off. It is bad to accidently do something like this without realizing. But when you do it, KNOW you did it and just leave... I hope there is a special place in hell for people with that attitude in life.

 

I had my first ding just before Christmas. It got dinged in the front fender just in front of the driver's door. I have a buddy who runs a car lot. He has a guy who comes out and does paintless dent removal for all his cars. I was over there one day when he stopped by and he took the dent out for $20. Excellent work too. Made me a very happy camper once again! They usually have volume discounts or charge by the panel if you have lots of dings.

 

Gyro,
I should credit you with really being the first to introduce me to this process. In my naivete (sp) I didn't know anything about this and just did a search for dent repair and ran across your acorn story. Thanks for a very informative and useful post.

F_m

 

Thanks Gyro for the informative thread. And thanks to winter too for your quick response.

 

Maturity and setting an example for the kiddos aside, yep I'd cut the valve stems and pee in their gas tank for that one. Sorry it happened. Hope the PDR works okay for ya!!!

 

Ive become one of those people who park about a mile away in parking lots just to avoid getting dents. I learned from my old car which had all sorts of crap happen to it in parking lots.
The other thing I do is if I have to park near other cars I try to park next to new cars because the other owner is probably just as concerned about keeping thier new car nice as I am. So far the theory has worked. =)

 

Does anyone remember the old cartoon from the 80's called "The Cars of Tomorrow"? The wife's car had giant chrome fenders wrapping around the car. The scene ended with the car all wrecked yet the fenders were still perfect. Classic!