Hi all,
I bought a brand new 2004 Sentra 2.5S two weeks ago. After my brief affair with having a shiny, unblemished car, I woke up sunday to find about 10 nickel sized minor dents in my hood - it kind of looks like someone dropped a small bag of heavy marbles on a 20 by 10 inch area of my hood. The paint looks unchipped at first glance. (It was street parked in a small town in NJ, and didn't rain/hail that day, so I'm assuming someone just flopped their drunken behind on the hood or maybe some kids threw their hockey sticks on it. Or maybe someone is really envious of new cars and happened to be carrying a mallet.) With my 1000$ comp insurance deductable, I'm fairly sure it's not worth filing a claim (Not only is there less than 1000$ in damage, but I also have awful, awful rates already due to age and locationy, so I don't want to start building a bad history of filing claims). I have a few questions.
I've heard good things about paintless dent removal. Anyone have any experiences with places in northern NJ - I'm in Parsippany, around the junction of routes 80 and 287? Price experiences, things to look out for?
As much as this sucks, I'm expecting to do my fair share of occasional New York City street parking, longish drives, etc, so I can't really expect the car to remain in excellent comestic condition for long. (This just seemed *really* soon!) It would suck even more to shell out a few hundred on repairs only to have more dents three months from now. With that in mind, I'm leaning towards just ignoring it - it will probably bother me for about a week more and then I'll get over it. However, my only concern with this is that damage like this might be best fixed immediately. Anotherwords, I'd pay twice as much to get the dents removed if I do it years from now (say, before I look to sell it, or as part of a larger bunch of repairs). Or even that it'd be impossible to get done correctly if I wait and decide to fix it later. Any info about this?
Any good ideas how much something like this would bring down the resale value if I sell/trade in the car in a few years?
The car is financed (3 years) so I don't have to worry about a lease inpsection. However, do I have anything else to worry about - for instance, I take it in for a warranty repair later, and the dealer notices and notifies Nissan Finance? Do they have a right to try and force repairs like this, since they still technically own part of the car? What Nissan doesn't know won't hurt them and I'm not planning on missing my payments.
thanks, Dave