JoshuaM's Midnight Blue NB8B

[joshuam]

I was finally booked back in for the insurance repairs on Wednesday. Very concerningly, it was ready for pickup on Friday.



Well..... they were absolute cowboys -.-

My car was fully detailed inside and out only a few days before I dropped it off, and I come back to:











When I opened the passenger door I noticed that under all of the edges that you can't see from the outside the white residue (polish?) has just been left (including the back of the door where I couldn't possibly clean it properly). It is like this the whole way around:



and THEN I found tape marks on my paint..... BLOODY TAPE MARKS ON MYYYYY PAINT!
Bonnet:

Rear quarter:


The colour match is very good. But it looks like they made no effort of matching the textures down the bottom. Its not even a feel thing, you can see the difference from a couple of metres away, which is a big issue for me because it is a big giveaway that the car has now had panel work done which isn't good enough.





The paint job on the wheel also wasn't great, they lost my front number plate protector and I also opened the boot when I get home to find my spare wheel loose with the jack-arm wedged under it and the wood battery cover sitting over the wheel not the battery.

[Magpie]

You should not have accepted delivery rather called the insurance company and lodged a complaint.

[ManiacLachy]

The white wheels look good. Shame and the chips by the tyre shop. And that's just shocking by the repair shop!

[Trackphotos]

Insurance work always seems to be crap. Years ago I had a commodore that was getting repaired under insurance. Front end was bent in, so it had new guards, bonnet and front bar etc put on. The paint wasn't matched very well, but as I was picking it up around 5pm in winter, it was too dark to see until the next day.

More annoyingly, the bonnet release didn't work and the guards were misaligned so the antenna wouldn't raise through the hole. I called them and they said to bring it to them the next day for them to fix. That night, go to take off from a set of lights and the engine dies. Can't get it started, can't open the bonnet. Was only up the road from home, so dad towed me back. Next day they sent a tow truck to get it back to the workshop, where they find the maf pipe had come loose. I hadn't touched it, and they denied ever touching it during the repairs. Regardless, their halfassed repairs meant I couldn't open the bonnet and fix it, so they got stuck with the time/labour/tow truck cost to fix it. Weren't happy, even though it was entirely because of their incompetence.

[joshuam]

'Accepting Delivery' is a very loose term at this place.... they give you the keys and tell you to go and find the car on the lot somewhere and they'll call to check if you're happy on Tuesday.

I called up when I got home and documented it all and I'm going back in on Monday.

[speed]

Sorry to read about the so called repairs. I believe that there should be a clause stating that paint is matched properly to that of the cars.

[joshuam]

So I took it back on Monday and the guy who did 'quality control' was a joke. In hindsight, I shouldn't have let him near my car at all but I guess I was just in shock so I didn't stop him. The marks in the paint were rubbed out with the inside of his t-shirt (without any cleaning or lubrication), he vacuumed the drivers footwell and kind-of cleaned that door (just a wipe with a wet rag I think), and he refused to do anything about the overspray residue inside the door because 'look mate, it just rubs off with my hand... nothing wrong here'.

On top of this, he also thought the repairs were fine and refused to book in any corrections unless they were forced to by the insurance company.

I missed the call from the insurance on Friday, but the car will be going into an independent assessment centre this week to have the repairs reviewed.

I got a call on Friday about the wheels too, they were finally back (conveniently after calling and asking questions on Wednesday.... its been a couple of weeks). However, they were pricks and said they couldn't find time to bolt them on the car until next week sometime, but I could come and pick them up and do it myself today. The shop was virtually empty when I got there - I have never seen a tire shop so quiet.

But they are on!!!



There were more marks on them now - I think the powdercoating must have been very soft.



I wish I took my proper camera with me - I just went out for a random drive - I wasn't expecting to end up somewhere good for taking photos

I also installed my automotive plus number plate bracket that I got for $15 delivered to my house from a local forum member a couple of weeks ago.

Before:





After:



No more screws sticking back into the bumper.... I already have a dent and horizontal depression from somebody hitting the number plate back into the bumper at some point. The new one is mounted from the bottom instead. Also, since I have a slimline number plate it lowers it a fair bit and shows off the nose of the car more - I like it



Also showing off my new number plate frame, since the repair centre lost my last one. Insurance should be picking up the bill, and I get a bonus rear one since they only sell sets! (I only had an outside frame on the rear before).

[joshuam]

I forgot to say in my last post that my Robbins canvas soft top arrived late this week.

[Box pic removed by me because I didn't cover up any of my address or personal details, whoops ]

I just pulled the end of it out of the box this afternoon to check out the colour....... I like it





I've been completely out of action for the past 1-2 weeks with the flu, and this is my final semester of Engineering at uni so I am going to be crazy busy for a couple of months catching back up and finishing everything off, so I may be running outside with the rolls of sticky tape every time it rains for a little while yet, until I can put a weekend aside for the install.

[bootz]

Did you get the top locally or did you have to go to America?

[joshuam]

Did you get the top locally or did you have to go to America?

I bought from America...... but I did so using the eBay Global Shipping Program. I just asked an eBay seller who normally sells the cheap tops to custom order me a navy blue cloth top with glass and demister and they put the listing up for it. It ended up being $570 USD + $75 USD shipping (the exchange rate wasn't SOO bad at the time.... still would've been nicer a year ago), which is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than getting a basic black vinyl Robbins top in Australia!!!

[Roadrunner]

But they are on!!!

Dark blue car with white rims! Love it
Just needs to be a tad lower Looking good though

[joshuam]

Dark blue car with white rims! Love it
Just needs to be a tad lower Looking good though

Thanks

Yeah, this is lowest legal height in QLD and I've needed to have it set here during all of the insurance process so there aren't any complications. The car is booked in for reassessment of my complaints this Thursday, so hopefully it isn't too long before the car is fixed properly and I can lower it back down again! (Won't go quite as low as it was originally though... I was scraping way too much )

Biggest compliment this morning - mum saw the car and said 'oh yeah, those white wheels don't look too bad. I wasn't too sure about it when you told me.' Parental approval on mods, aww yeah

I'm still thinking about doing white side stripes eventually too, which should tie the colour in.

I also just realised the other night that apart from the one night shot with my friend's MX5 I haven't actually taken any photos of it with my proper SLR. I have always been taking quick and dirty ones since there has always been a visual mod I was about to do or the body damage. Hopefully I can find time to do a proper shoot soon.

[joshuam]

GOOD NEWS!

Faith in my insurance restored. I went to the Repairlink today to have my repairs assessed. They were very pleasant to deal with, and within seconds of looking at it the assessor agreed that it wasn't even close to a match.

This image probably gives you a better idea than the ones I originally posted;



The assessor wasn't impressed by the texture and when considering repairs he was worried about how high their cutoff line is.

I showed him the photos that I posted up here showing the general condition of the car when I picked it up and told him that I REALLY did not want my car going back to a SMART repair centre. He jumped in straight away and asked if I had a place in mind - no questions asked. I didn't have somewhere off the top of my head, so he recommended a place in Moorooka (BCM Body Repairs) that has contracts with Mazda Australia and they send all their tricky Mazda repairs there. He said if anybody was going to make it right it was them, and they gave 'fair and reasonable' quotes which was good enough for AAMI.

I also told him about them losing my number plate protectors and he just shook his head. He happily took my receipt and bank details and said I should be reimbursed in the next couple of days. I also said that I was a bit worried because I did not have hire car coverage - the initial repairs you can pay for your own hire car and lodge a claim with the insurance of the person who hit you directly, but I obviously couldn't do that now. He swithered for a second before saying he would organise a hire car free of charge when my car was ready to go in for the repairs!

He emailed me the details of the shop and I headed straight over for a quote. They were also pretty nice. It was a pretty experienced guy doing the quote - he also agreed that it was a poor job and that on top of what we noticed, it looked like a lot of the under guard plastics had clips going into nothing underneath (i.e. they put broken stuff back, just for show) and that he suspected they also damaged my IL Motorsport side markers and glued it in to hide it. He said that since the last job was blended into the door (just before the mirror, from my spying on the initial quote at SMART) they have already filled a lot of the dimples of the stone guard on the door. If we just fixed the guard and did the same thing the act of blending it into the door again would level out the stone guard to almost nothing and make the problem worse. So now instead of a simple quarter panel replacement the entire stone guard on that side of the car has to be stripped off and replaced. There are two upsides of this for me though; firstly I will have guaranteed consistency of the stone guard on that side of the car. Also, for about $100-200 extra out of pocket I can get that whole side of the car repainted which will mean no ugly blend marks in a few years when things start to fade and it will also get rid of the couple of door dings and the petrol drip mark on that side.

So after 3 trips to one repair centre, 1 to the assessment centre and another trip to an independent repairer we are finally getting somewhere!

I am pretty happy now that I am going to get a quality repair, with minimized additional disruption to my life. Perseverance is key.



PSA: SMART Repair Centres (Suncorp / AAMI Customers)
Everybody I have ever spoken to has had bad things to say about these centres, and you can obviously see the absolute carelessness they displayed towards my property (and me!) in their treatment of it and the quality of repairs. The body shop I went to this afternoon spends a lot of its time just fixing SMART repairs (as I walked in he said, 'ah, another typical SMART repair'). Upon investigating my vehicle and noting the many flaws in the repair he also remarked that this was one of the best SMART repairs that he has seen (that wasn't sarcastic). He pointed to a 12 month old Mazda 3 hatch behind us that had a door and guard replaced by a SMART centre and he was now carrying out $10k of repairs to make it right again.

But what can you do? I knew all of this before I went in for repairs but I wasn't given a choice. I investigated my PDS at the time and it basically said that you can get your own quotes and wait weeks for external assessment but they will still go to their cheap dodgy place for one too and take the cheapest quote. My assessor basically said that although it will seem like the world is stacked against you, and the people on the phone will try and make you go to SMART over and over again, it is still your choice. He said that no reasonable assessor that worked there would deny a 'fair and reasonable' quote from external shops. You may not get the exact one you want, but avoiding SMART and going to a reputable repairer was always an option if you pushed hard enough.

The other option of course is to get a decent insurance policy with clearly defined choice of repairers. This is easy for most people, but for a 21 year old like myself options can be limited. That said, I'm shopping around!

[Apu]

I have had a couple of claims with AAMI and despite the higher premiums (they really aren't much higher - I have a couple of cars with Youi to try them out) their service has been excellent.

I sent my car back once because it was dirty when I got it back, door handle was broken, etc...they tried to argue that it was already broken but in the end accepted liability without too much pressure.

I think I'll go back to AAMI again as the overall cost (premium plus excess) is about the same as Youi...probably cheaper...but they are so hassle free.

[joshuam]

I have had a couple of claims with AAMI and despite the higher premiums (they really aren't much higher - I have a couple of cars with Youi to try them out) their service has been excellent.

I sent my car back once because it was dirty when I got it back, door handle was broken, etc...they tried to argue that it was already broken but in the end accepted liability without too much pressure.

I think I'll go back to AAMI again as the overall cost (premium plus excess) is about the same as Youi...probably cheaper...but they are so hassle free.

All of my troubles have been with AAMI. They are VERY much a budget insurer. I think their general logic is that they just do cheap, lazy repairs for everybody and pay proper money to fix the ones that people complain about.

I will say that the service has always been excellent from the administration and receptionist side of things..... just the repairers themselves were careless, lazy and rude. Also, they weren't very good at fixing cars Seems to be very common through the SMART network. If your car has to be towed away (i.e. too serious for the drive-in SMART repair centres) or you just get lucky to be sent to a different group of repairers than you probably have better odds.