Paintless Dent Removal (PDR) - Dealerdents.com

Less than a week after purchasing my VW Tiguan I stopped for lunch in a local strip mall. It’s a place I go often in an affluent town. After picking up my sandwich I was walking to my car. I heard a loud bank like a door opening into a car but was not able to see where it happen since I was on the other side of a big truck.

As I approached my car I noticed a real beater of a vehicle parked next to me. It was an old Oldsmobile with its trunk lid held down by a bungee cord and multiple color panels.   Standing between my car and this beater was a very large woman who was looking at the side of my car. Immediately I saw what she was looking at. A large scuff and dent right on the body contour on my passenger door.

I asked if she did it and with cigarette hanging out of her mouth and a raspy voice she grunted “no” at me.  I knew it wasn’t there before I went into the store since I have a habit of looking at my car especially since it’s so new.  I replied “it sure looks like you did it especially since you were bent over checking it out when I walked up”. She just grunted and walked away.

Having not physically seen her do it and no real way to prove it I called her a variety of inappropriate terms before getting in my car and driving away.  It had me all worked up at how inconsiderate people can be.

On my way home I stopped at a place I know does paintless dent removal and they said they could get it about 80% of the way out but wouldn’t be able to get it perfect. Not satisfied I went to a few more placed and everyone seemed to say the same thing. That being if I wanted to not know it happened I would need to have the door fixed and repainted.

No ready to spend the $700+ to have that done I opted to live with it. On a routine visit to my mechanic I showed him the dent and asked if he had any ideas on who might be able to do the paintless dent removal on it.

He recommended Dana Berger who does work for the same dealership he had previously worked at. I checked out his website dealerdents.com and gave him a call. I shot him a few picture messages of the damage and he said “It won’t be easy but I can fix that” He gave me a quote and told me to call him at the end of the week to make an appointment.

Call I did and we made an appointment for Tuesday. I showed up at the set time in this residential neighborhood. While his bread and butter is the dealership gigs he also does side work in his driveway for people referred to him. Immediately upon seeing my dent he reassured me that he could take care of it. I also showed him the few other small puck marks on my car and said we can take care of all those.

As he worked we talked about how he got into the business and his experiences. I learned that he was trained by Dent Wizard and worked for them for 5 years before deciding to venture out on his own. He has now been removing dents for 12 years and works for many of the big local dealerships as well as working from several local detailing shops on the side. 

Business he said was booming and he had another guy working for him and was training his wife his craft. She was in the garage working on a Honda Civic for a local dealership who bought the car sight unseen only to discover it had been a victim of a hailstorm.

It was very cool to watch as he used a variety of long tools some flat and some pretty menacing looking to slowly work the dent out. With each step you could see the progress being made. Several times he said “don’t worry I know it looks bad now but when I’m done it will be perfect” I wasn’t ever worried because even half fixed it was less terrible then it started.

When he was all done I couldn’t have been more pleased with his work. The dent which doesn’t look like much in the picture was pretty bad and very noticeable. He also removed for a nominal fee the few other small dents that I had. I would strongly recommend his services to anyone in the metro west area who may need a dent fixed. I managed to capture a few pictures while he was working of the progress.