Cheap Car paint repair door-to-door Scam

Early this afternoon, my son called me and said that someone is at our driveway asking if I am selling any of my Volkswagens. When I stepped outside, there was this fast talking guy who said, “Any of these cars you need to sell? I just want to make money. Do you want to sell them?”.

I was not comfortable with the way he talked to me and so I told him that none of my cars are for sale. Once he heard that, he just ignored me and went to talk to my neighbor who was standing next to his wife’s car.

The guy told my neighbor that he could fix the small paint damage on the bumper of his wife’s 2011 Nissan car for only $90.

I am familiar with this type of cheap “Quick-fix, Quick-money” scam. I made eye contact with my neighbor and gently shook my head sending him a signal not to fall for this scam. My neighbor dismissed my concern and gave the guy permission to work on his wife’s car.

The guy borrowed a cutting blade from me and started to scrap parts of the paint off the bumper. I decided not to watch because I know it is a scam. The guy spray painted the area on the bumper with white paint and covered it with thick layer of car wax. My neighbor paid the guy the $90 and said that he will be back after a few minutes because the wax needs to set.

I checked on the workmanship of the guy and it looked like a paint touchup job done by a 5-year old kid. It was totally horrible. The wax hid the bad job!

Two and a half hours later after the guy who did the paint job left, I told my neighbor that I don’t think the guy will be coming back. I showed him the “disaster paint job” that was done on the bumper of his wife’s car. The guy just did a quick spray of paint and the paint runoffs were all over the “repaired” area. My neighbor said that the guy left him a cell phone number and decided to call the phone. A minute later, my neighbor told me, “Guess what?”. I answered him, “The phone you called is disconnected, right?”. My neighbor said, “How did you know that?!”. I replied, “I have been trying to tell you that the whole thing was a scam! Why didn’t you believe me?!”

I explained to my neighbor that the way these scam artist works is they sweet talk you into saving you a huge amount of money on paint repair by offering you a quick-fix at very affordable rates. They will say things like, “I will repair the damage on your car and make it look like factor paint”. Once you give them permission to repair your car, they will use a razor to chip the paint off and use a paint from a spray can to quickly paint the area that needs to be repair.

If you know a little about car painting, you know that you don’t use a razor to take off the paint. You use different grades of sanding paper from 300 grit up to 1200+ grit. The higher the number of grit, the finer the grain on the sand paper.

The reason why the scammer applies a thick layer of wax on the area that was worked on, he just wants to cover the bad job that was done. He will then say that he will just buy something at the store and be back in 30 minutes to finish the job. Actually, what he is doing is he wants to do a quick escape and you will never see him again EVER.

I felt sorry for my neighbor and promised him that I will try my best to fix his wife’s bumper. I told him that I am not good in painting cars but I could at least try in repairing the botched repair that that scammer did on his car. I promised him that I will do it totally for free.

My neighbor is one of my very best friends and he is always generous. To make him feel better, I told him to just "charge the whole unfortunate incident to experience". Then he asked me, "Man, I don't know how I am going to break this bad news to my wife". Then I said, "Oh boy, that is a problem".