For some reason the wrong Gerber's shop is showing above. The Gerber shop my car was at is on East Francis Ave in Spokane.
My car was hit by a hit and run driver in a parking lot. It was towed to Gerber's by my insurance company. Even though the car is 13 years old it only had 72,500 miles on it and was in perfect operating shape. Gerber came back to the insurance company with a ridiculous quote of $4,134.14 which caused the insurance company to total the car. After hiring an attorney, we got the insurance company to raise their offer to us (but that's another story).
After settling with the insurance company we bought the car back as scrap and I did most of the work myself except for a strut and wheel alignment. (Gerber did not have the strut (and some shims) on the original estimate). Here's what they wanted to replace......
Front Bumper cover.. $434.40. (Nothing wrong with it, I reused it.)
LT and RD molding panel.. $96.95. (Again I reused the ones there)
Lower Deflector.. $55.72 (I reused the one that was there)
Front Lamps.. $265.50 (NOTHING wrong with it)
Grille $427.96.. (I did have to do a little jury rigging to the top mounting but nothing that a half a dozen sheet metal screws and 10 minutes of work couldn't fix. The grille itself was not damaged, on a part of plastic under the hood which I fixed myself)
Fender $250.74.. (I bent the small ding back with a pair of pliers. Admittedly it doesn't look like new, but it's barely noticeable.)
Fender liner $54.75.. (This was broken in half. I understand why they would replace it, but I pieced it back together with four pop rivets and a couple pieces of scrap sheet metal.)
Intake Duct $79.04.. (This and the strut were the ONLY parts I had to replace.)
Left Front Wheel and center cap $241.21.. (There was NOTHING wrong with that wheel! This was verified by the front end shop who replaced my strut and did the wheel alignment.)
Gerber's did not catch the fact that the strut was bent and needed to be replaced. We had that done by our own mechanic that we've used for many years.
The car looks ALMOST as it did before, except for one small ding which you really need to look hard to find. I did piece together part of the top grille mounting and the fender liner. Both of those things are out of sight. My cost for parts was $67 plus the strut and alignment which came to another $961.63. The car drives perfectly. It's back to the condition it was before except for that small ding on the fender.
So for just over a thousand dollars I was able to fix it myself. Total labor on my end was probably about 8 hours. Needless to say I was not at all impressed with Gerber's. Beware of these guys! read more