What You'll Pay To Fix Plastic Bumper Damage

We asked 100 body shops what it would cost to repair this bumper scuff.

What You'll Pay To Fix That Scraped Plastic Bumper

So you hit a curb or post at a parking lot, scuffing, maybe even cracking your front bumper. What can you do?

Your options:

Live with it. Wear and tear happen, right?
Fix it yourself. We'll get to this later.
Pay a body shop. You could run your car down to an auto body repair shop and have them sand and repaint the bumper.

Before hiring a shop, let's see on average how much it will cost, and how long it will take.

We emailed image above to 100 repair shops across the United States that showed the damaged back bumper from a 2003 Toyota Sequioa.

Only 14 shops responded. Here's what we learned:

The average estimate was $560.

Lowest quote: $350.
Highest quote: $900.
Average wait: 2 days. A few places claimed that they could get the job done in one day, some would need it for three days, but most said that they would need it for two days (which seems to be the norm for allowing paint and clearcoat can properly dry and cure).

Obviously these were all estimates based on a single image, and not a particularly close one at that.

Most of the responses I received stated that they would need to see it in person to provide accurate figures, which is why some quotes have a wide range: they would need to closely inspect it to determine the depth, and whether the scratch penetrated the clearcoat layer or dug into the actual paint.