We had some pretty bad hail in the easton area in columbus this past wednesday and there is quite a bit of damage to the car. My front windshield is cracked, my hood has about 55 good sized dents and my roof even more(~65), my trunk has a bout 17 dents and the driver side has a few but the passenger side has more about 5-10(up to 15 on my rear pass quarter) per each panel. The drip moldings on both sides are dented as well. I got a quote at a reputed body shop and they said about over $5100(this was with PDR) worth of damage. Now before when I've been in accidents my insurace company(State Farm) has just gone with my old body shop and just wrote a check out to me for the damage quoted but I heard that for hail you need to get the damage appraised by state farm? Is that true? I'm getting worried that they'll cheat me on the damage and i'll end up having to cover the rest of it. I've got a hundred dollar deductible for hail so any advice? should I take the estimate to the appraiser or take the estimate which I got to the appraiser? Has anyone had experience with state farm on this type of situation before?

 

You should take your car to a Body Shop that State Farm approves of and have them repair and tell them to give State Farm the bill. They are required to fix it for whatever they normally charge, and State farm has to pay all of it, minus your deductible.

Also, if you leave your car out in the sun, the dents will "pop" back into place sometimes, so get it taken care of ASAP!

Tj

 

Any comprehensive damage usually has to be examined by the insurance appraiser. He/She will write the check to you/body shop most likely for PDR. The shop will do the work, and if they think that you will need more work done they will call State Farm and have a supplement appraisal done. In the end you should only owe the body shop $100 for your deductible.

Now for some personal experience. I had exactly the same damage you have minus the cracked windshield. My hood had about as many dents and the PDR guy said "no way I can fix it, order a new hood". The top rails of my doors had dents that damaged the paint when pulled. The shop repainted both top rails of the doors and both rear 1/4 panels. They pulled all the trunk, door, and hood dents with no problem.

My original estimate was $1900 and after a supplement it was just over $3K. If you want any custom work done to your car, you might want to consider it now cause I'm pretty sure you'll have some painting done to fix spots they couldn't PDR.