Some utter twunt keyed the car on Christmas eve whilst parked on the street. It’s long scratch all the way from the rear light cluster, along both doors and finishing up on the front wing (standard stw issue Octavia estate btw).
To my untrained eye, it looks shallow enough to just need prep and paint. I don’t think there’s any depression to the metal work.
Any idea as to how much this might cost? I’m just trying to work out whether to bother getting quotes or if it’s going to be an insurance job anyway so may as well not bother wasting my time.

It may mop out, so get it down the body shop for a look see

Time saver post

1) It will buff out
2) It’s only a car, man. Just a mode of transport, leave it.

Will any of the scratches polish out? I don’t mean with a bit of t-cut – but with a polishing machine and cutting compound?

Do the scratches cross any bends in the panels? If the scratch is all on one ‘face’ of a panel, it will be a simpler job than if multiple faces need paint.

Full respray on 4 panels is £1,500 – 2,000. But you will probably get dent repair companies who will quote £500 using their ‘system’. I’d avoid these like the plague for such a potentially large area.

Chips Away … have served me well the 3 or 4 times I’ve used them.

Love the fact they’ll do the work on your drive/place of work/where ever rather than the faff of taking it and leaving it somewhere.

Good luck

edit after the above post …. Not really fussed about cars in general but haven’t been able to tell the difference between an original panel and where they’ve touched up

IME shedloads unfortunately.

to blend it in they’ll have to paint pretty much the whole side of the car, and unless it’s a very light scratch it won’t mop out properly.

If it’s your own car and not a lease, I’d be tempted to MOP it to reduce the appearance and leave it there. I did with mine, I was quoted £700 to paint a scratch that was only the length of the drivers door (3dr focus)

It won’t buff out if it is down to the metal.

If you can feel the scratch with your thumbnail, it won’t buff out and will need paint.

As tallpaul says, get it done properly on such a large area. ChipsAway (or similar) are fine for little scuffs etc, but not for actual repairs to full panels.

Do you have a standing desk?

Cheers peeps. It’s all the way along the car, and I’m certain it will need paint. I’ve seen good results from the quick repair guys for small marks before, but this is all the way along the entire car so I think I’ll just get the insurance company to fix this and get it done properly.

Chipsaway did a great job on my car, including a crack to the front bumper when someone ran into it overnight without stopping to leave any notes or apologies. It already had a couple of scuffs to the rear drivers side door. Total price came to less than my excess so was well worth doing

Be careful about having the entire side of the car painted it can raise questions when you come to sell i.e keyed or t-boned

Be careful about having the entire side of the car painted it can raise questions when you come to sell i.e keyed or t-boned

I presume the op will get it done the same colour as the rest of the car 🙂

I’m planning on keeping the car for a few more years (until I can afford / justify a fully electric one), so it’ll have a low value by the time I come to sell it. I guess I may as well get a chipsaway quote. It might save me a load of cash and be “good enough”. I’m not really fussed about it being in concourse condition, it’s covered in crap most of the time anyway!

I had a dent in my rear door caused by a dustbin lid flying across the garden in high winds.

I got 3 quotes and all said the whole side of the card would need resprayed so it blended in – average price £280 – 300, this include the dent knocking out & filling

Where are you? Local body shop should sort for a lot less than 1500. It depends a little on where on the door and which section of the door will need spraying.

My mate has a bodyshop and charges me ‘insurance co’ rate which is £90/panel.
So if you get anywhere close to £500 you’re doing well. Paint matching is very good now unless your car is old so they need to spray less.

AS an update, my local chips away chap has a workshop for bigger jobs like this (rather than just tidying up stonechips on your driveway). It came to ~£650 for the 4 panels. Looks great, I can’t tell it’s been painted.

there’s a Ford Focus often parked on my road – someone has keyed a four letter word starting with C into the bonnet. The owner clearly doesn’t care enough to get it removed. Makes me chuckle every time I see it 😆

Must be part of the branding, a mate of mine had a Focus with “Dick” carved into the rear quarter. I don’t think he even knows anyone called Richard.

there’s a Ford Focus often parked on my road – someone has keyed a four letter word starting with C into the bonnet. The owner clearly doesn’t care enough to get it removed. Makes me chuckle every time I see it

We used to live next door to some absolute scumbags who had an elderly Mitsubishi Shogun. They were always fighting and one night they had a huge one and he threw her out.
The following morning she came back and scratched the ‘C’ word in his bonnet and ‘Paedo’ down the drivers door.

Within a week she’d moved back in and for the following year (until we moved) they were quite happy driving round in this car with the ‘modifications’ still intact.

I’m pretty sure ‘keying’ is an urban myth. I mean who does that? Whenever I see a photo of someone who’s been ‘keyed’ it just looks like somebody scraped the car by accident as they’ve squeezed past.

I mean who does that?

Scumbags jealous of nice cars. “If I can’t have something nice, nor can you.”

I assure you it’s not a myth. Curious as to how you think someone gets “Dick” or worse etched into their paintwork by accident.

Oh yeah ‘dick’ etc fair enough 🙂 I’m talking about the faint single line down the side of the car.

The nicest car I ever owned (to date) was a Mitsubishi Galant V6 Sport estate. Lovely car, got it when it was 5 years old.
Within 3 months of owning it some arsehole had keyed it. I know because it was a wavy line the length of one side. There was no way someone just “brushed” along the side of it with a bag.
Another time about 6 cars had a red spray paint line added to them one night. Fortunately it came off reasonably easily with a bit of paintwork restorer and polish.
So jambourgie, I can assue you, its not an urban myth, its arseholes.

My Mk1 Golf got keyed, definitely, outside the pub I worked in. It had only just a had a full restoration paint job. One long line from front corner to back corner then 6 diagonal stripes down the door/rear quarter panel 👿

“I stand corrected”

– Said the man in the orthopaedic shoes.

Though if any of you were parked on the pavement you so deserved it 😛 *

*except for the MK1 Golf. You can park that on my drive if you like.

Chipsaway did mine when I got keyed* . I forget now. Something like £50 or £100 max.

* – nimby resident(s) near work when company had run out of parking spaces on site so people parked on the street with bucket loads of space during the day, non restricted parking. A certain twunt had his own drive, didn’t park outside his house but was obsessed about it, illegally putting cones outside. One day all the cars from work parked down that street (not blocking anything), all keyed. Reported to cops but crap all done about it of course.

When I lived in Newcastle in about 2006-7, a neighbour had the word “WRONG” keyed in to every panel of their Porsche Cayenne.
Also spotted a handful of other Range Rovers and BMW X5s with similar decorations around town.
I guess somebody didn’t like 4x4s in the city.

Mine had 6 different penis’s drawn into the mud on it on boxing day – all on different panels and each one scratched the paintwork in an oh so amusing way!
Luckily I know who did as he was still cackling half pissed at his handwork when I arrived….
It was my sodding brother in law!

Re:my story above about Newcastle, I just had a quick search and found this from 2013.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/local-news/newcastle-university-prof-arrested-graffiti-1370262
Maybe he was a copycat or repeat offender as this is a few years after I left.

I’m pretty sure ‘keying’ is an urban myth. I mean who does that? Whenever I see a photo of someone who’s been ‘keyed’ it just looks like somebody scraped the car by accident as they’ve squeezed past.

I’m sure that happens a lot, shopping trolleys and bags, hedges on narrow country lanes, etc, but it does happen, it happened to a work colleague years ago. He’d parked his Celica coupé outside a takeaway while he and a mate went inside, leaving their other halves in the back of the car.
They were sat chatting, and saw this bloke walk past, stop and take something out of his pocket, walk back and run it along the side of the car, and a bunch of others along the road. He didn’t see the girls in the back because of the small tinted windows.
They ran in and got the blokes and drove along the road, and saw him go into a house further along the road, so they got the number and called the police.
Bloke was ‘interviewed’ and charged with criminal damage. Turned out he was a VAT inspector in his 50’s.
I had the back window on my Chevette punched* in for no discernible reason, nothing in it worth stealing, just mindless vandalism.
*There was blood on the broken glass, not enough to indicate the bastard bled to death, sadly.

OP,

Someone reversed into my car causing a rather massive dent just above the front right light (light not damage) and massive scratch down to the bumper, my repair bill was £300 here in NE. Repair dent and repaint.

Yours would probably cost around £300 to £600 or more but to get a proper quote you need to show your car.

Was it parked on the pavement? I watched a lady with a buggy, a load of shopping and a screaming toddler come across a brand new A7 blocking the pavement struggle to get past without going into the road.

I don’t know what they make pushchairs out of but it’s definitely tougher than whatever Audi use to paint their cars…

Happens all the time. People are jealous. That Aston Martin owner had dash cam footage of a guy keying his car, the guy had his baby in the buggy with him and just wanted to damsge someone else’s property.

theres a bloke a couple of doors down from me who parks blocking literally 1/2 of the pavement, then moans about ‘arseholes’ keying his car… makes me chuckle every time 😉

Came home to this one day – not my car I hasten to add! 🙂[url=https://flic.kr/p/QRtwu9]IMG_1908[/url] by Paul Tarrant, on Flickr
Obviously upset a keen golfer judging by the bat embedded in the windscreen. Bit of T-Cut & all that 😆