A few weeks ago our local council decided to resurface all the roads on my journey to work. With stone chips. You know where I'm going with this already eh?

I drove my beloved car at the specified 20 mph. I didn't notice anybody else driving particularily fast. No one overtook me. However, the very next time I washed the car I noticed 12 stone chips, in my previously perfect paint. I have chips on the front bumper, driver's side corner. Chips in the doors, bizarrely, both sides??? And on the rear wheel arch drivers side.

I would need to respray pretty much the entire car to return it to how it was.

Has anybody ever tried to get money out of the council for this kind of damage?

Not good mate!! couple of weeks ago they done the white lines were i am and had white dots up one side and my car is black i went mental luckily it came off with t cut after trying clay, the coucil are a bugger to purswade mate a good mate of mine hit a pot hole and cracked his rim he had to take photos for proof of the hole and wheel what time ect 3 weeks down the line they did agree to pay out so could be worth a try??

After a couple of weeks I got this letter

Then I got this letter

And then I got this letter

And then, on the 27th November, or thereabouts, an inspector came and told me that a number of the stone chips were old ones that had been touched in. I had said that 5 panels were damaged, he said that one of them had only old damage. He was a nice bloke, btw, an owner of a number of different BMWs, currently driving X5, and he said he himself would never drive on recently stone chipped roads.

Today Kiely Bros have said that they will pay for the respray that they consider to be their responsibility. This leaves me to pay about £200 to include the fifth panel. This is a brilliant result and I am very very pleased.

Jac, how bad are the panels? Can you get some pics up of the damage?

Daz

These are the ones that the inspector said were old, they are on the off side rear wheel arch

Here are some of the other ones, that he accepted were new.

So he agreed that a respray would be required for both doors, the front bumper and near side quarter panel. I'll have to pay for the offside one.

Happy days and a good result :)

They are worse than I thought. As Dave said, good result after all and kudos for taking action!

Daz

Hello everyone, when I finally could see the results of the re-spray, (I had to wait till the weekend cos of the dark and car covered in dirt again), the work done was very good. When I picked the car up I did have a fault caused by the door sensor not working properly, so the system thought the door was open the whole time. Gav, god love and keep him, helped me sort that out. No fault of the paint shop guys though, it was because of, but not caused by, the work they did.

Once I could survey it, there was some polish and masking stuff left on the car, so I took it back for those to be tidied up, and I also asked them to have a look at three issues I had with the paintwork which had been on the car since I bought it, and they also did those, all of it for no further cost.

All in all, work done - excellent, communication - excellent, service - excellent. Willingness to go the extra mile - yes.

They are Get Smart in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, http://www.getsmarte....uk/contact.htm

Glad you got it sorted out, Jac

Were you AND the vehicle in front doin less than 20mph over the fresh asphalt? :rolleyes:

Well done Jac. Glad its all sorted

Awesome stuff, well done =]

Were you AND the vehicle in front doin less than 20mph over the fresh asphalt? :rolleyes:

Dabsy, I WAS the vehicle in front.

Probs the only time an M3 has been seen going so slowly its causing a tailback????