Left corner of front bumper cover was apparently scraped on the rack in the shop. No dent or crease, just a straight line of paint removed from back to front as if someone may have cut the corner just a tad too much backing out of the bay.

At first the dealer was nice about it and said to take it to their body shop in two days so the service manager could talk to them about it in advance. The body shop proposed an on-the-vehicle spot repair of the section.

Now the service manager is upset that I took the vehicle to their body shop and that I should have let him take it back; i.e., he didn't want me to have any direct contact with the body shop. The service manager says the repair “I want” will cost $180. I didn’t propose the type of repair, the body shop manager did. In addition, the service manager now says that the damage wasn't their fault but he will "help" me with the $180 repair. As an alternative he suggested I just apply touch up paint to the damaged area myself for free.

Now feeling suspicious, I checked with an independent body shop that has done good work for me before. Their opinion is that a spot repair on the vehicle will leave over-spray in undesired areas, and more importantly will only last about a year. They feel the proper repair would be to remove the bumper cover and color/clear the entire thing at a cost of $350.

What would you do?

BTW, this incident did NOT happen at the dealer listed in my garage, and was to our 10-month old 2011 Sienna.

I was sort of in the same situation. Dealer dented truck, dealer body shop wanted to spot blend for $300. Took truck to independent shop, quoted me $1k to repaint whole panel. They said fix it the right way or don't fix at all, as I would run into issues later on.

Well my only choice was dealer body shop... So I had it spot blended, 3 years later still holding up.

If you can re paint whole bumper, it would be way better. Up to you if you want to cough up the extra cash I guess.


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the newer your car, the easier to do spot blended. Car got old , paint would get sun bleach and you never can match the color even with right color code. And never never to the touch up pen $5 bucks from dealer.

Take it to a few independent body shops and a different Toyota dealership and have them give you quotes with details of the work they would do. Then have the dealership in question do the same thing, without telling them of the other quotes you got. Compare them all and then go to the dealership in question and show them the independent body shops quotes with details of work done. When they tell you it isn't necessary to do all that then show them the other Toyota dealerships quote with details which will probably be in line or probably more than the other body shops.

Basically what it comes down to is they're looking for the cheap way out. If you were just some guy coming in off the street to have some work done you can bet they'd be in line with the other quotes and not just a quick fix.

John