How to avoid a dent repair during winter

The last thing on your Christmas list this year is a dent in you vehicle that needs repairing.

We always receive a high number of enquiries for dent repairs during the month of December, so we decided to investigate some of the potential causes.

We now have an estimated 35 million cars on the road in the U.K, that’s a huge 42.5% rise over the last 25 years and worse still those cars are much wider than they’ve ever been. In 1970 a VW Golf was 1.7 metres wide whilst the same vehicle today is 2.027 metres wide and in that same time our parking spaces haven’t grown at all, at an average of 2.5 metres wide. According to the AA one in five insurance claims are for damage caused in car parks totalling a massive £1.4 billion annually.

Even with the growth in online shopping the first weekend of December signifies the last pay-day before Christmas and there’s sure to be a rush to grab those last few items and consequently the supermarkets, shopping centres and retail parks will be full to bursting.

Every day our customers tell us that they have returned to their vehicle in a car park only to find it’s been damaged with no note from the person who caused the damage. Even though section 170 of the road traffic act states that if an accident occurs by which damage is caused to another vehicle the driver must stop and give their name, address and registration number and failure to do so is committing an offence, with the rising costs of car body repairs unfortunately it’s an all too often occurrence that people don’t leave their details and the statistics tell us that only 9% of all car park accidents are reported.

On a positive note, with the advances in technology, dash cams with parking mode are more affordable than they’ve ever been and if you haven’t got one of those yet there are often CCTV cameras covering the car parks of modern shopping areas and sometimes, they can help find out what happened. If this isn’t the case and there aren’t any witnesses to the incident you’re left with two choices, either claim on your own insurance or pay for the damage out of your own pocket.

Either way it can be extremely frustrating to have to cover the costs of a repair that you’re not responsible for. If the damage is extensive there’s often little choice other than to go through your insurance and deal with all of the stress of courtesy cars and insurance excess payments and premium rises, however if what you have is a dent from the car parked next to you having its door carelessly opened onto yours or a crease from a bumper rubbing against your car as another car enters of exits the next space next to yours we can potentially help reduce the costs and the stress by providing a paintless dent repair at a time and location to suit your needs.

We also get a lot of dent repair enquires during December because people often store Christmas decorations and kids presents in the garage, either stacked in boxes or on shelves and instead of getting cold and wet pulling the car out first they just work around the car to reach for the Christmas boxes, this seems like a great idea until they drop a box or the bottom splits and unleashes its contents onto the car. Regardless of what caused the dent, the age of it or whose fault it was we can often have the vehicle looking its best again before there’s another Slade song on the radio, so you won’t miss out on a kiss under the mistletoe.

To conclude.

• We have many more cars on our roads
• Our cars are wider than ever before
• Our parking spaces are no wider to accommodate those wider cars
• Retail parking is at its busiest period of the year
• People aren’t reporting minor car park accidents as much any more
• Maybe put a dash cam on your Christmas list
• Makes sure you’re nice and not on the naughty list
• If you’re storing stuff in the garage pull the car out before you try to reach it.

Merry Christmas one and all. from the team at Dent Devils and hopefully you don't need a dent repair quote from us during the festive period.