4 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) Company

Choosing a company to repair your vehicle’s hail damage can be a bit challenging, and there are many factors to consider. After all, you want to preserve the value of your vehicle and want to trust your service provider to bring it back to its original condition. You want to make an informed decision and to help guide decision making, we’ve put together the 4 most important questions to ask before selecting a paintless dent removal company.

Question 1 – How does PDR work?
Paintless dent removal, or PDR for short, is an environmentally friendly dent repair method that restores a vehicle’s body to factory-like condition in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost of other dent repair methods. There are four primary steps:

1. Evaluate the damage on the vehicle
2. Gain entry to the dent, i.e. access the underside of the hail damaged panels
3. Pinpoint exactly where the dents are
4. Use specialized tools to carefully massage the panels back to the original position

To learn more about our PDR process, click here.

Question 2 – Are the technicians at this shop properly trained?
This is an important question to ask because there is no official PDR licensing or certification that can be attained through PDR coursework or training. The typical PDR training programs offer 1 to 4 weeks of training and schooling, and students leave with fundamental “step-by-step” guidelines and some on-the-job training. Many shops also hire apprentice technicians as a way to get cheap labor, and the quality of work is reflected in the end product. While coursework and apprenticeship programs are a good place for a technician to start, you want to make sure the company you partner with has technicians with significantly more experience.

Question 3 – How long have those technicians been working as PDR technicians?
You want your technician to have significant years of on-the-job experience and hands-on training. PDR technicians use very specialized dent repair tools, and each repair is different since dent sizes can have much variance. Your PDR technician must have experience in dealing with many different severities and sizes of dents, otherwise you might end up with a repair job that decreases the value of your vehicle.

Question 4 – What type of treatment or customer service should I expect?
Customer service is the first thing to look at when you choose your body shop. If you were referred to the body shop, ask the person who referred you how the customer service was, and check online reviews to understand the average feedback. While body shops can’t always please everyone, a shop must do its best to operate with extremely high standards of service. One bad review, or one good review, is not enough basis to decide on who will service your vehicle, however, if you observe a recurring criticism then this is a red flag. Be more wary of insurance recommended PDR shops. These shops can tend to work for the insurance company more than the customer, as their business is provided by that specific insurance company, and these shops meet the demands of the insurance company through cutting corners in order to work at discounted rates.

Here are some questions that you can use to assess the body shop’s customer service:

• Will you manage the claim with my insurance?
• Will you be provided a free rental car?
• Does the shop know how long the repairs will take, and are they generally accurate?
• Does the shop provide a comprehensive warranty for quality repair?

To schedule your free evaluation and get your car or truck repaired, contact us today by submitting the form or call us at 303.732.6161