Avoiding a Big Dent in Your Wallet When Paying for Auto Bodywork
Last updated June 2026
Because insurance companies pay for most repairs, for most auto body repair customers, cost is a less important consideration than quality; consumers ordinarily care only that their shops’ prices are acceptable to the insurer paying the bills. But if you’re picking up the tab—say, because there’s only minor damage or you don’t want to risk higher rates or policy termination by making a claim—how much the shop charges is important.
If your vehicle may have suffered serious damage, take it (or tow it) directly to a top body shop of your choice. If repairs will be expensive, you’ll want an insurer to help pay for them, and you need a shop that will advocate—making sure repairs are done well and with the best replacement parts.
But if repairs are minor, and if your vehicle wasn’t involved in an accident, the auto body industry has finally caught up with the rest of the online-oriented world to make it fairly easy to compare costs from multiple shops.
Until recently, it was difficult to compare prices for bodywork. In most cases, shops had to inspect cars in person to provide accurate estimates.
But we found that many shops will provide cost estimates based on pics customers send of their battered buggies. Most use Carwise.com—shops can supply you with a link to a web page on the Carwise site where you can send it your snapshots and other info. Or you can go straight to the Carwise website to upload your pics to get estimates from several local body shops that work with it—an easy way to compare price proposals and identify low-cost help.
If damage is extensive, you’ll still have to take your car to a shop to get a precise price. A shop likely can’t tell by pictures alone, for example, whether it must replace just the cover for a damaged bumper or also have to repair underlying components and mounts.
Carwise also collects and displays ratings for body shops listed on its site. Unfortunately, like many websites claiming to report customer feedback on service providers, almost all of the shops listed by Carwise receive four stars or higher. But our own surveys of consumers indicate that many people are disappointed with body-shop work.
Especially if you’re paying for the work, carefully review estimates line by line before granting approval for the shop to begin work. Our undercover shoppers collected more than 100 estimates from shops for simple repairs and found some added unnecessary costs, such as replacing undamaged parts, charging an hour of labor for a post-repair test drive for a simple trunk lid replacement, and even a car wash.
