Finding a good body shop is hard in this day and age. Most of them are in bed with the insurance companies. Thankfully consumers have business owners like Leif Hansen, who stand up to the insurance companies. Recently I found myself with a wrecked Jeep and I knew immediately where I was going to have it fixed at, Leifs. Some times, it’s just the petty details that make a huge difference. Recently I had a client who’s Toyota was fixed by another local body shop. The repairs were about six months old and he said he was hearing a lot of noise coming from the rear of the car where the repairs were done. I used my inspection scope to look under the car and immediately noticed that several parts that were fastened by plastic clips had come loose. Why? Because the body shop was so cheap they reused the old plastic clips instead of spending the extra fifty cents and buying a new one. Body shops that practice this “short cut” don’t even give the customer an option to pay the $10.00 extra to make sure it is done right. Leif’s is adamant about using new clips. This keeps your car together, longer.
The majority of people feel the “preferred” shop did a good job because they don’t know any better.
Hansen is a smart businessman too. Where most body shops have a separate shops in Gresham, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Portland, etc., and has to spend money to equip each of these shops, Leif’s has satellite shops. The difference is that if you’re in Gresham and you need your car fixed, you can drop it off with Robbie on Glisan and they’ll trailer the car to their main facility in Tigard. This enables Leifs to equip one location with better equipment, tools and top of the line paint booths.
Going down the road in two tons of metal with cheap untested parts is just plain stupid.
Having your car fixed right is important. Going down the road in two tons of metal with cheap untested parts is just plain stupid. I hear people complain about Leif’s all the time saying their prices are over inflated. The truth is, the so called “preferred body shop” the insurance company wants you to use, is not customer preferred, it’s preferred by the insurance company because they will shortcut and use cheap parts. The majority of people feel the “preferred” shop did a good job because they don’t know any better. Their car runs and the insurance company paid for all of the repairs. Well, of course they did, they got off at pennies on the dollar. Just because you don’t feel like you got taken, doesn’t mean you didn’t. Go ahead and see how much trade in you get out of your car with the “preferred” body shop repairs. You can either fight with the insurance company to spend a few hundred more to fix your car right, or you can loose thousands in repair related diminished value later on trade-in.
