Stupidly I scratched and scraped the left rear area of the side in back of the rear door. I turns out that nearly all of this is plastic and is part of the rear bumper. the toyota dealer wants a $1000 plus and say they must do things like remove the tail lights. The bumper repair shops say they can repair it on the car for $500. Has anyone had this kind of repair?
I had almost the exact damage and the repair was $400 by a great repair shop in Cumberland RI. They had some delay initially matching the paint but it's now 6 months later and there is absolutely no difference in the paint. They had to feather the paint as they got away from the damaged area. By the way, this repair shop does a lot of custom work. At the time I was there, they were doing a custom lime green paint job on an old hearse and they were painting the coffin to match. The owner said that while my car was there, he got more questions about the Prius then he did about any other job that he has had in many years. The guy that did my car said that it was only $400 because the damage was limited to one panel and was somewhat far from the edge of that panel. He said if they had to deal with 2 panels, the price would be $600 or even $800. Yours looks like it might be affecting 2 panels. So $500 might be too cheap.
It might be the body repair that's raising your estimate. As for the bumper, well I remember asking for a quote on the Camry's bumper (it's still unrepaired ). They said it was cheaper to replace it since there were multiple scratches and dents on it. The total (after parts/paint/labour/taxes) was Cdn$600. Basically, repairs aren't cheap (yikes!) but I would agree that $1000 that Toyota is quoting is overpriced.
