In August 2006, I was in a car accident.
A car flew out of a parking lot, without stopping, and ran into the front/side of my car as I was driving by.
The guy apologized repeatedly, said he didn’t see me, and told me it was all his fault. So far, so good.
His insurance company agreed it was his fault, so they were going to pay for all my repairs.
Most of the damage seemed to be body damage. My driver side fender was crushed in, a headlight knocked out, my hood bent up, and the uni-body was smashed in.
I tried to drive the car normally until I heard something back from the insurance company. My car started to over-heat after a while, and when it started overheating, the air conditioner would shut off.
Many people said the overheating was a very bad thing, as it could ruin the engine. So I called the insurance company to try and get things moving.
It seemed some of the front-end damage pushed stuff into the radiator area, messing with how the fan worked (breaking it) and possibly hurting some other cooling-related stuff.
The insurance company had me take the car to Schaefer Auto Body in Fenton, Missouri.
Schaefer had the car a few days, and then they got it back to me. The body looked OK for the most part, however, there were a few annoying issues.
- The hood wasn’t repaired.
- The hood wouldn’t open.
- There were gaps were the hood and headlights didn’t meet up.
- The dash board had some weird chemical splattered all over it.
- There was black grime/gunk all over the buttons of the radio.
- My adjustable seat was broken.
- The car still was overheating, and the air conditioner still was shutting off!
I’ve had my car back into Schaefer several times. They ended up replacing the radiator fan, but charged me to have the thermostat replaced. I’ve also had to purchase and install another fan to fix the cooling/heating system. I’m out hundreds of dollars now because I had to pay for repairs elsewhere.
They told me the hood is supposed to look like it does. It was bent upwards! I know it isn’t supposed to look like that. They would not fix it. I couldn’t even get the hood open because of how much it was bent upwards. They told me I needed to keep it better lubed to allow it to open!
They told me the issues where the car was overheating and wasn’t cooling were not accident related, even though the issues only happened after another car smashed into mine.
When I called the insurance company, they went along with what Schaefer said. When I called *my* insurance company, they also went along with what Schaefer said.
All Schaefer did so far was try to clean some of the chemical stain off of my dash. I had to clean the grime off the radio and get fixed everything they refused to fix.
I tried bending the hood back into shape myself. It’s a little better, but I was very upset that Schaefer wouldn’t fix it.
My adjustable seat is still broke. When I got my car back from the body shop, the seat was leaning to one side. It would go up and down on one side, but the other side was broken and wouldn’t move! It was fine at the time of the accident, and only became broke after taking it to the body shop. Obviously they are going to tell me it’s not their fault, or even say that it was broke before I ever brought the car to them.
So, because of all the headache, because of them refusing to fix stuff, and because of them calling me a liar by telling me much of the damage wasn’t accident related – I just have to say that Schaefer Auto Body SUCKS.