After spending $1350 at Ritson Collision I have been very disappointed with the work they did and their customer service skills.
The biggest reason for my bad impression is because a pin-hole sized rust spot appeared in an area they fixed after a period of only three weeks. Even now, 6 weeks later, you can see a brown colour coming up beneath the paint in the same general area. I'm not much of a body work expert, but I wonder just how much rust was carelessly left underneath before they painted for it to come through already. Also, two significant areas of the car were missed altogether. One area they simply didn't bother with, and the other area ended up not even being on the original quote! My wife and I were quite surprised when they called us and said it would cost an extra $300 to repair the unquoted body work. We were both there when we went to get the original quote, and we both remember telling him individually that we wanted that specific area of the car included in the job. I told him that I wanted my car rust-free, that is why I'm spending all this money at once and getting a professional to do it. Later, when we insisted that he was mistaken and we expected that area to be included in the original quote, he said "I know what you're doing. You're trying to get that done for free!" He thought I had schemed the whole thing and was trying to con him out of the extra work. I thought that the more professional way to handle the situation was for him to live by the phrase "The customer is always right".instead, he chose to lose my return business as well as the business of any I relate my bad experience to, all to save himself from doing work worth $300 to keep his customer satisfied.
I will say for them that they did offer to repair what rust has already come through, and they would also fix the smaller area that was missed in the first place (not the $300 spot). However, I chose not to let them do that because my experience was so bad, I was afraid to let them have possession of my car again. Let me explain: One large reason why I wouldn't trust my car in their care again is because of their quality standards. My wife and I were borrowing her parents' 2007 Camry Hybrid while ours was being worked on at Ritson Collision. Her father takes great pride in his vehicles and keeps them in mint condition. Unfortunately, their one side mirror was scraped in a parking lot, and they weren't able to have it repaired for several months. We wanted to fix it for them as a favour, so my wife went in to get a quote for the job (before the work was finished on our car). The owner came out to take a look and said "Why do you want to pay $85 to get that fixed? If I were you I would just put some touch-up paint on it with a brush." He then proceeded to get some previously-mixed leftover silver paint and start brushing it onto the car without even asking while my wife was distracted talking to someone. Before she knew it, he had gone around and applied a mis-matched silver colour paint to several areas of the car. Needless to say it made the affected spots stand out and look pretty bad. I can't help but wonder, shouldn't somebody in his profession be a little more particular and careful than just throwing on some leftover paint with a brush? He clearly does not take much pride in his work.
Finally, both the owner himself and the one employee we talked to both admitted that they were overbooked on two separate weeks. It seems to be a habit of theirs. Perhaps that is part of the reason they seemed to do a rush job on my car.
All in all, I will never return to Ritson Collision again. I would recommend trying to find a more reputable company to entrust such an expensive investment like your vehicle with.
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