Dents. Prangs.
Scrapes. Bashes.

If you have just had a bump

Before anything else, the bits the law actually asks of you:

• Stop. Even for something minor.
• Give your name and address, your vehicle's registration, and the owner's name and address if the car is not yours, to anyone with reasonable grounds to ask.
• If you did not give your details at the scene, report it to the police. The often-quoted "24 hours" is the longstop, not an allowance — the duty is to report as soon as reasonably practicable.
• Tell your insurer, even if you are not claiming. Most policies require it, and a claim made against you later is much harder to deal with if they are hearing about it for the first time.
• Photograph it while you are there — the damage to both vehicles, the position they ended up in, the wider scene, and the other car's registration.

Those photographs are also the quickest way to get a repair quote out of us, so take a couple more of your own damage while you have your phone out.

Repaired or replaced?

It is the first thing people ask and the answer is genuinely "it depends" — on what the panel is made of and what the impact did to it.

A shallow dent in a steel panel with the paint intact can often be worked out from behind and left alone. Once the metal is creased or stretched, or the crease runs across a body line, it stops being a dent and starts being a panel. Plastic bumpers take a lot of punishment and can often be repaired rather than replaced, which is usually the cheaper answer. Aluminium panels, which more cars use than people realise, behave differently again and are less forgiving.

What matters as much as the panel is what is behind it. A bumper skin that looks like a scuff can be hiding a broken bracket, a cracked mounting or a damaged sensor, and anything structural is replaced rather than repaired. We will tell you which of those we are looking at before quoting.

Why matching paint is not just the code

Every car has a paint code, usually on a sticker in the driver's door shut, sometimes under the bonnet or in the boot. It gives the factory formula, and that is where matching starts rather than where it ends.

Paint moves. Ultraviolet light fades it over years, and it fades differently on a roof and a bonnet than on a door that spends its life in shade. Metallics and pearls are worse again: the same formula sprayed with a different gun, pressure or technique lays the flake down differently and reads as a different colour in daylight. Mix strictly to the code on a ten-year-old car and the new panel can be perfectly correct and still obviously newer.

That is why colour is checked against your car rather than against the paperwork, and why the repair is usually blended into the panels either side instead of stopping hard at the edge.

Going through insurance

We handle insurance work. Tell us at the quote stage and we will deal with your insurer from there.

Two things worth knowing before you decide. Many policies let you use a repairer of your own choosing rather than the one the insurer puts forward — check your policy wording or ask them, because it is not automatic and the terms vary. And a claim usually costs you your excess and can affect your no-claims discount and next year's premium.

Which is why it is worth getting the repair quoted first, whatever you decide. With a real number in front of you, the comparison against your excess is arithmetic rather than guesswork. Send us a photo and we will give you that number.