On 1/29/26 I took my car to Caliber Collision on Walbert Ave. in Allentown, PA to have the hood and…read moreright side of my 2020 Lexus RX 350 (which has less than 13,000 miles on it) painted because of vandalism done with a knife. Painting the car doors required taking the doors off and removing the car door handles and then putting the car door back on and the handles back in place. I picked my car up on 2/17/26 (the cost was $4025) and I had difficulty opening the front passenger door, but I was able to open the door after five or six tries. I continued to have problems opening the door and went back to Caliber Collision on 2/23/26, I went back on 3/30/26 after I couldn't open the door even after 1010 attempts to open it, I went back on 4/13/26 and they put a new part in but I could not open the door and they kept the car to work on. They had to cut a hole in the outer shell and they ordered a new bracket and put the new door on but it was still the same issue, so they will have a vendor come to see if it is an electrical issue. On 4/24/26, one hour before closing, I got a call at 4:30 that the car was ready and I went in; I was able to open the door. Afterwards, I saw that the trim at the top of the door of the front passenger side sits higher on the door frame than the rear door and that there was a crimp and nine dents in the front door belt molding and a dent in the front door window frame molding as well as that the weather-stripping wasn't completely attached because it was missing some screws. I notified Caliber Collision of their mistakes and corrective work I would have done, at which time he took pictures of the damage they had caused. Because I didn't trust Caliber Collision to fix the work they had done, I went to a different auto body shop to have the moldings dented by Caliber Collision and the unattached weatherstripping replaced at a cost of $566.45, and they pointed out to me that the reason that Caliber Collision had difficulty putting the moldings on, which dented them, was because they put the skin on wrong. I asked Caliber Collision to be reimbursed for the costs of fixing their mistakes because of not trusting their work and the lifetime guarantee I was given and that the dents resulted from the skin not having been put on properly, but they refused to do so.
During these times that I went back to Caliber Collision, I was told that the problem might be the wire, it was probably the seal which can stick because it's new and that it needs a couple of days of warm weather, it is probably the latch and a connecting rod, there might be a short in the system not recognizing the fob, maybe there's a short there where it thinks it's locked or unlocked. I was also told I shouldn't be afraid to force it, there must have been was previous damage to the door handle, I should have called on 2/20/26 rather than wait until 2/23/26, she checked it before I picked it up and was able to open it, the problem is the latch wire because it's not catching where it's supposed to catch and hold it, the latch is difficult to get in place when the door is shut, there was a problem with the original one, and Lexus should do a different design on the latch. On 4/24/26 when I asked what had been wrong, Nicole said "everything" and they had been sent a faulty lock rod and a faulty latch and they had to break the old trim panel. The technician said there had been a problem with the rod and hadn't been enough tension because the rod didn't want to go catch in order to release the latch.
