esiedell

To preface, I am by no means a car expert, so bear with me

About five months ago, I bought a used 2008 ES 350 at Park Place Grapevine here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The car had about 45k miles when I bought it and I have enjoyed both it and the buying/customer support experience.

However, there's a problem. This car, per the dealership, had never been in an accident of any kind. It had a clear carfax, maintenance records, etc. However, when looking at the car one day, the sun hit the bumper just right and I saw the problem: the bumper had obviously been resprayed. I looked more closely, and there is chipping near the parking sensors and a bit of over-spray on the radiator.

I can't believe that I missed this, but is there anything I can do now? Park Place has always been great with any questions I've had, but do you guys think they'll do anything about this? Picture below.

12jimmyjam

Carfax is really just a tool for dealers anymore. There's a ton of stuff that it doesn't pick up that other services do. Sucks.

I'd approach or email the general manager to see if they will fix it if it's poor painting. If they won't work with you, I'd threaten to leave crumby reviews and then follow through if they don't help.

John U

I saw the same thing earlier this week on my friends Lexus. They failed to remove the sensors when painting so the paint peeled away around them like your's show. His estimate to fix is $500.

jagtoes

If the car was in an accident and there was an insurance claim then it will most likely be on carfax. What you have is typical of either a front or rear bumper respray by the dealer to fix nicks and scratches. This is not a reported repair. A few years back we bought a used Audi CPO car with a clean carfax. The rear bumper had typical poor parking nicks and scratches. We told the dealer that it needed to be repaired as part of the deal. They had it resprayed and it never hit car fax . You can try to get the dealer to make it right but my bet is it has been to long and they won't do it. Good luck

xanderES

iTrader: (8)

Actually, accidents are only reported to carfax if a police report is involved as this is the public information they index for the service.
If it is strictly handled through insurance it will not be reported. Nor will paying out of pocket for repairs be reported. As you do not need to publicly disclose these repairs.

As you have had the car for a period of time, they have plausible deniability and are not in any way, shape, or form, required to help.

It may very well of been repaired from the dealer because of too many chips to begin with just to expedite the sale. Maybe not. Who knows.

jagtoes

Not completely true. Any repair or service center besides the dealers can submit a carfax update. Take for instance Midas or some oil change services along with state inspection stations. Even if you pay out of pocket some repair shops will submit a report to carfax. It is up to the discretion of the company. If you have a police report it usually gets reported if it is in your state. Read a few reports and you will see different maintenance services done other then by dealers.

xanderES

iTrader: (8)

Although things like maintenance (oil changes, mileage reports) can be updated, most shops dont spend the extra time since they are not paid for it.

We were talking about bodywork. Other than getting work at a dealership done, I have never seen anything reported voluntarily by a private shop because it would decrease future resale value of the car and waste their precious shop time.

jagtoes

The 2 body shops where I know the owners are part of the carfax program and they report each repair . Not all accidents get police reports. In some no fault accidents where people don't want to put a claim in and will pay for the repairs in cash my bet is you would want it to be documented. Then on the other hand you have used car dealers who wash the titles of swamp cars and sell them to the public and carfax never see it.

CQRT

My wife parks in a large lot for work where vehicles are nose to nose . . .after a few years of that environment, the grocery and the mall, both bumpers on her ES had been through the war--so before we sold the car- which was otherwise in great shape, I had the bumper covers resprayed and the car looked like new and brought top dollar.

In our case, the covers were taken off the car for repair.

Perhaps that was the case with your car and either the past owner- or dealer- may have touched them up for purely cosmetic reasons. If there's no other evidence or record of damage, I'd be inclined to suggest this as a reason- hopefully nothing to worry about.

esiedell

Thanks for the replies everyone. To help out anyone else going through this kind of a situation, here's how I dealt with it. Before I took the car in, I was rear-ended by someone in a parking lot and the rear bumper was down to the paint, though no actual dents in the bumper. I took the car in to park place, they quoted me $1600 for the repair. I asked them why it was so much, and they said because the front bumper needed to be refinished and the back one replaced (apparently they had both been repainted!!!). Anyway, with a bit of negotiation, I was out the door for $700. However, the forgot to paint one of the sensors. Anyway, I'll be back there next week and I'm buying some 3M paint defender to protect the paint for the future. This is all so annoing, but c'est la vie! Moral of the story: don't park next to idiots and always negotiate with the dealer.