Big, deep damage where the metal has been badly pushed in, or awkward damage involving sharp creases, bodylines and several dents close together. It comes back in stages, not in one go.
This is the work that gets quoted most carefully, because from a photograph a severe dent can look better or worse than it really is. Send photos and expect us to ask a couple of questions back.
Price follows the state of the metal. A large soft dent in the middle of a panel can be less work than a small cluster sitting across a bodyline. What pushes a job up is sharpness, how many dents overlap, how far the metal has been stretched, and whether the panel is aluminium, which moves very differently to steel.
Severe damage is a staged repair. Nothing about it is fast, and that is deliberate.
Expect severe and complex work to take the best part of a day, sometimes more. You get a realistic timescale up front, and an honest picture of the final result before you decide to go ahead.
Size on its own rarely rules it out. What rules it out is torn metal, split paint or a panel that has already been filled. We have taken out dents people assumed were a new panel, and turned down small ones that were beyond it.
We tell you before we start, not after. In some cases paintless gets a panel most of the way back and makes a subsequent paint repair far cheaper, and we will explain honestly whether that is worth doing.
Yes. Aluminium has far less memory, so it needs more heat, more patience and a different technique. It is very repairable but it takes longer, and the quote reflects that.
No. Paintless leaves no paint record and no panel replacement, so there is nothing for a paint depth gauge or a trade buyer to find.
Yes. On severe damage we would rather see the car than work purely from photos, and there is no charge or obligation for that.
