My Experience with Tesla's Body Shop: A Three-Month Journey from Fender Bender to Rebuilt Car

It all started on November 16th, when I was involved in a fender bender. The incident left my car badly damaged, but fortunately, the truck driver had comprehensive insurance coverage that covered most of the costs. Over the next three months, I watched as Tesla's body shop worked tirelessly to repair and rebuild my car.

The first thing I noticed after the accident was that the repair process began immediately. On November 16th, just one day after the incident, I received an insurance adjustment notification. The shop had already started working on my car, but they were still awaiting the arrival of parts from Tesla's supplier. It wasn't until January 14th that the inspection report arrived, confirming the extent of the damage. At this point, the repair process was well underway, and the total cost of repairs came out to be just over $49,000.

As the repair work progressed, I began to notice some interesting aspects of the process. One of them was the shop's willingness to go above and beyond what was necessary. When they found that the chipped glass had been damaged in a way that couldn't be fixed with just a simple repair, they decided to buff out the chip entirely. They also repaired the headlights, which were scratched during the accident, and even touched up the paint chips on my hood. These extra details not only showed their commitment to quality but also saved me from having to deal with any lingering issues.

The next milestone in the repair process was when the shop had someone come to inspect the car before disassembling it. This marked an adjustment to the cost, adding $4,449.65 to the total bill. By this point, I was getting anxious to see my car restored to its former glory, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement every time I received updates on the repair status.

As February 4th approached, I started to get bittersweet feelings about my car's return. On one hand, I was thrilled at the prospect of getting back behind the wheel; on the other hand, I knew that this experience had left me with a newfound appreciation for the importance of insurance coverage and having a reliable body shop on your side.

And then, the day finally arrived – February 13th, when I got to pick up my car from the repair shop. I was overjoyed to see that the car looked almost like new again, with all the damaged areas expertly repaired or replaced. The final touch was a winter wheel swap, which I had planned for months in advance.

The last piece of feedback I have is an advice to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation: when searching for a body shop to repair your car, make sure to choose a certified one. Not only will they provide a better experience, but they may also be more likely to have parts on hand that can speed up the repair process. In my case, calling the body shop ahead of time to ask about their inventory helped to expedite the process significantly.

In conclusion, I am thrilled to have my car back in working order and ready for daily use. This experience has taught me a lot, not just about the importance of having reliable insurance coverage but also about the value of choosing a reputable body shop. As I move forward with selling this car, I'll be sure to keep you all updated on any developments.

Follow-up Updates:

As we continue to follow up on this story, it's essential to note that there are significant differences between repairing and selling a used car versus one that has been in an accident. This means that the process of getting your car back will be different from what I experienced, and we'll be exploring those differences as we move forward.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments about my experience with Tesla's body shop, please feel free to share them in the comments section below or reach out to me on Twitter.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyo what is up guys mkbhd here and uh as you can see i'm back in my car it's been about three months and uh you might have remembered that it was already back in november of 2018 last year that i originally got in that accident and didn't have my car for the beginning of it i've been taking notes since then on the entire process my tesla repair process so this is that timeline how it broke down and why it took three months and why it didn't take three days or a whole year so that day of the accident i made that video obviously that you guys saw detailing pretty much what exactly happened number one rule don't stand a truck's blind spot for too long so after that happened i towed my car or got it towed to the tesla service center nearest to me in new jersey now tesla service centers they don't do bodywork they do other types of repairs and technical problems and troubleshooting and things like that but they would hold on to it until i could tell them what body shop to send it to because obviously this needs body work and uh this is usually the part where if you have your insurance your insurance would get a rental car for you to drive accurate you might have seen on twitter uh super nice they've worked with me on the second ever autofocus video they reached out to me before i even had the chance to get the police report so i could give it to the insurance so that i could get a rental car uh so big shout out to them they said hey if you need any wheels while you're getting your car replaced we'll hook you up so that's what i've been doing i was driving an accurate mdx which was then replaced by they had to swap it out with an acura rdx so they're suvs they were fine but a crash or something an incident that happens on the highway in new jersey has to be filed as a police report from state police which since they're much slower than actual local police took uh three weeks so the incident was november 16th the police report came in december 8th so i finally get the police report december 8th the trucker is of course entirely found at fault so the truck driver's insurance will be paying for the repair of this car entirely so that's a good step one so from there the car gets moved to the body shop the body shop is j b body shop it's in new york it's relatively close to the service center so they tow the truck there and that's where they'll complete the initial assessment figure out what sort of repairs they have to do create an estimate for how much it will cost all that will happen there so they completed that primary inspection on december 24th before starting the disassembly uh total value of the repairs were estimated at 39 561 and 94 cents not cheap obviously that's why i'm glad we got the insurance part figured out but i mean it kind of makes sense you guys saw the initial photos like obviously a lot of the car on the entire left side was damaged you're gonna have to replace parts new doors new mirror new rear three quarter panel the whole left side of the car basically so now they've done the insurance paperwork they have the estimate the initial estimate for how much it's going to cost they have their labor costs then they can get started here is i think the best part and where it really hinged on why this took the three months it did and why it didn't take the nine months they could have taken so the body shop jmb body shop they were super legit and i could tell that like as soon as i was walking in to pick up my car like outside they had lamborghinis and mclarens and and porsches and other high-end cars and a bunch of other teslas already sitting there they're clearly very experienced and trusted in performing repairs on high-end cars so i was glad that this was the shop that we chose but the place that this all hinged is the body shop once they completed that initial inspection they were able to determine that they had 100 of the parts needed for the repair in stock already so the doors the side panels all the sort of things that needed to be replaced they had them all in stock but that was no accident so the key here is so tesla has uh what you call a certification program similar to like apple might have a certification program they do and so the key you can take your tesla to like any body shop you want theoretically like you can take your imac to any computer store you want to get repaired but what you'll want to do is take your tesla to a tesla certified body shop for that repair those body shops have the connection to order official parts from tesla they have the tooling and the expertise required to do a complete undetectable repair the way tesla would do it in theory you could go to somewhere else but you wouldn't have that same experience so this body shop jmb they are an aston martin certified body shop and a mclaren certified body shop and you can check out all these other badges they have on their toolbox so they have the tooling and the specialization to handle these including teslas and like i said there were some teslas that were already there along with apollo getting repaired so that was the thing had they not had all the parts in stock even one or two things they would have to submit an order to tesla and then wait for tesla to ship them those official parts which has notoriously taken three six sometimes nine months or even longer for certain parts to get shipped from tesla to body shops to complete repairs so i was super lucky to find this body shop that had all of the the parts needed to do the repair and that minimized that amount of time and they could get right started on the repair they actually had to do so they got right started um by january 3rd all the structural work was done all the suspension and alignment and things like that they were finished with they were texting me to keep me up to date with how they were doing on the car sending me pictures which was cool and then there were the cosmetics so it's a wrapped car obviously you replace it with naked parts you got to wrap those parts too things like that so once you've done the actual structural work and the suspension work then they start the cosmetic work and they even threw in some bonuses like uh buffing out the chipped glass and the headlights and repairing the paint chips in my hood in the front bumper that part i can confirm was definitely them taking care of me they didn't have to do all of that they just had to do the actual repair to the broken piece but anyway on january 14th i got another insurance adjustment notification basically they'd had someone come to inspect the car before they disassembled it this was an adjustment since they'd actually disassembled it and done the integral repair parts so they had an adjustment that added 9449.65 to the cost of the repair after the disassembly so that brought the total to just over 49 000 of damage repaired and that includes labor costs i actually have the bill right here and uh you can see it that is the uh the total estimate amount plus the one supplement amount totals 49 000 of repairs total balance due from customer thanks to the truck drivers insurance cooperating zero dollars so they finished everything by february 4th uh and the funny part was they had re-wrapped the whole left side with all the new parts and then i got a text and a picture from them saying hey look we re-wrapped the left side but now the wrap on the left looks like crisp and fresh and new and the wrap on the right it's a year and a half old so it kind of looks like a little bit faded a little bit warmer in color from being in the sun do you want to just go ahead and re-wrap the whole car so it matches and it looks nice and clean uh and i just said yes because i i'd been waiting so many weeks at that point might as well get it right might as well finish it off so that's what they did so february 13th i went in to go pick it up i actually had a look at the shop and got to meet the people who actually worked on my car saw a bunch of the other cars there but yeah when i drove it off i feel like that car basically looked just like it did the day i got it wrapped initially clean af and then yesterday valentine's day i got uh i did a winter wheel swap also because the last time i drove it i still had the summer tires on it so it's been that long but that's basically the timeline the three months since november 16th it kind of seems like it flew like it just happened but it also kind of took forever while i was waiting for it to come back but three months between the incident all the repairs and getting the car back yesterday i've learned a couple things one is that i really do like the electric car experience more than the gas car experience and this is no offense to gas cars obviously i don't know who'd take offense to that but like at a certain point i was actually getting like disappointed that i would wake up and the car wasn't at 100 refueled overnight like an electric car would be still have to go to a gas station and also i was that guy that like got out of the car and then realized it was still running and had to get back in and turn it off before leaving because obviously with these electric cars you put it in park you get out and it's off you're done you walk away and it locks so just those little things like i really appreciate those things all over again i think my advice that i can offer to people who are in maybe a similar spot that i was if you're looking to decide where to get your car repaired number one definitely pick a certified body shop for the possibility of a better experience number two if you can try to call the body shop or get in touch with them and figure out if they have parts in stock and if they have the parts that you think will be in stock maybe you got a fender bender ask them if they have the front bumper in stock things like that because that made a world of a difference i could probably still be waiting here halfway through that repair process if i'm still waiting for tesla to send parts but yeah that's pretty much it i hope you guys are able to learn from my experience from what i've gone through in the past couple weeks but i am so glad to have this back and to be driving it daily and i'll hang out in the comments and talk with you guys on twitter as i usually do about this sort of follow-ups to the story there's going to be differences now with selling this car and with getting different i mean you don't want to sell a repaired car the same way as just a regular used car so there's all kinds of future updates that will come from this and we'll be in touch about that but until then that's everything i got thanks for watching talk to you guys the next one peaceyo what is up guys mkbhd here and uh as you can see i'm back in my car it's been about three months and uh you might have remembered that it was already back in november of 2018 last year that i originally got in that accident and didn't have my car for the beginning of it i've been taking notes since then on the entire process my tesla repair process so this is that timeline how it broke down and why it took three months and why it didn't take three days or a whole year so that day of the accident i made that video obviously that you guys saw detailing pretty much what exactly happened number one rule don't stand a truck's blind spot for too long so after that happened i towed my car or got it towed to the tesla service center nearest to me in new jersey now tesla service centers they don't do bodywork they do other types of repairs and technical problems and troubleshooting and things like that but they would hold on to it until i could tell them what body shop to send it to because obviously this needs body work and uh this is usually the part where if you have your insurance your insurance would get a rental car for you to drive accurate you might have seen on twitter uh super nice they've worked with me on the second ever autofocus video they reached out to me before i even had the chance to get the police report so i could give it to the insurance so that i could get a rental car uh so big shout out to them they said hey if you need any wheels while you're getting your car replaced we'll hook you up so that's what i've been doing i was driving an accurate mdx which was then replaced by they had to swap it out with an acura rdx so they're suvs they were fine but a crash or something an incident that happens on the highway in new jersey has to be filed as a police report from state police which since they're much slower than actual local police took uh three weeks so the incident was november 16th the police report came in december 8th so i finally get the police report december 8th the trucker is of course entirely found at fault so the truck driver's insurance will be paying for the repair of this car entirely so that's a good step one so from there the car gets moved to the body shop the body shop is j b body shop it's in new york it's relatively close to the service center so they tow the truck there and that's where they'll complete the initial assessment figure out what sort of repairs they have to do create an estimate for how much it will cost all that will happen there so they completed that primary inspection on december 24th before starting the disassembly uh total value of the repairs were estimated at 39 561 and 94 cents not cheap obviously that's why i'm glad we got the insurance part figured out but i mean it kind of makes sense you guys saw the initial photos like obviously a lot of the car on the entire left side was damaged you're gonna have to replace parts new doors new mirror new rear three quarter panel the whole left side of the car basically so now they've done the insurance paperwork they have the estimate the initial estimate for how much it's going to cost they have their labor costs then they can get started here is i think the best part and where it really hinged on why this took the three months it did and why it didn't take the nine months they could have taken so the body shop jmb body shop they were super legit and i could tell that like as soon as i was walking in to pick up my car like outside they had lamborghinis and mclarens and and porsches and other high-end cars and a bunch of other teslas already sitting there they're clearly very experienced and trusted in performing repairs on high-end cars so i was glad that this was the shop that we chose but the place that this all hinged is the body shop once they completed that initial inspection they were able to determine that they had 100 of the parts needed for the repair in stock already so the doors the side panels all the sort of things that needed to be replaced they had them all in stock but that was no accident so the key here is so tesla has uh what you call a certification program similar to like apple might have a certification program they do and so the key you can take your tesla to like any body shop you want theoretically like you can take your imac to any computer store you want to get repaired but what you'll want to do is take your tesla to a tesla certified body shop for that repair those body shops have the connection to order official parts from tesla they have the tooling and the expertise required to do a complete undetectable repair the way tesla would do it in theory you could go to somewhere else but you wouldn't have that same experience so this body shop jmb they are an aston martin certified body shop and a mclaren certified body shop and you can check out all these other badges they have on their toolbox so they have the tooling and the specialization to handle these including teslas and like i said there were some teslas that were already there along with apollo getting repaired so that was the thing had they not had all the parts in stock even one or two things they would have to submit an order to tesla and then wait for tesla to ship them those official parts which has notoriously taken three six sometimes nine months or even longer for certain parts to get shipped from tesla to body shops to complete repairs so i was super lucky to find this body shop that had all of the the parts needed to do the repair and that minimized that amount of time and they could get right started on the repair they actually had to do so they got right started um by january 3rd all the structural work was done all the suspension and alignment and things like that they were finished with they were texting me to keep me up to date with how they were doing on the car sending me pictures which was cool and then there were the cosmetics so it's a wrapped car obviously you replace it with naked parts you got to wrap those parts too things like that so once you've done the actual structural work and the suspension work then they start the cosmetic work and they even threw in some bonuses like uh buffing out the chipped glass and the headlights and repairing the paint chips in my hood in the front bumper that part i can confirm was definitely them taking care of me they didn't have to do all of that they just had to do the actual repair to the broken piece but anyway on january 14th i got another insurance adjustment notification basically they'd had someone come to inspect the car before they disassembled it this was an adjustment since they'd actually disassembled it and done the integral repair parts so they had an adjustment that added 9449.65 to the cost of the repair after the disassembly so that brought the total to just over 49 000 of damage repaired and that includes labor costs i actually have the bill right here and uh you can see it that is the uh the total estimate amount plus the one supplement amount totals 49 000 of repairs total balance due from customer thanks to the truck drivers insurance cooperating zero dollars so they finished everything by february 4th uh and the funny part was they had re-wrapped the whole left side with all the new parts and then i got a text and a picture from them saying hey look we re-wrapped the left side but now the wrap on the left looks like crisp and fresh and new and the wrap on the right it's a year and a half old so it kind of looks like a little bit faded a little bit warmer in color from being in the sun do you want to just go ahead and re-wrap the whole car so it matches and it looks nice and clean uh and i just said yes because i i'd been waiting so many weeks at that point might as well get it right might as well finish it off so that's what they did so february 13th i went in to go pick it up i actually had a look at the shop and got to meet the people who actually worked on my car saw a bunch of the other cars there but yeah when i drove it off i feel like that car basically looked just like it did the day i got it wrapped initially clean af and then yesterday valentine's day i got uh i did a winter wheel swap also because the last time i drove it i still had the summer tires on it so it's been that long but that's basically the timeline the three months since november 16th it kind of seems like it flew like it just happened but it also kind of took forever while i was waiting for it to come back but three months between the incident all the repairs and getting the car back yesterday i've learned a couple things one is that i really do like the electric car experience more than the gas car experience and this is no offense to gas cars obviously i don't know who'd take offense to that but like at a certain point i was actually getting like disappointed that i would wake up and the car wasn't at 100 refueled overnight like an electric car would be still have to go to a gas station and also i was that guy that like got out of the car and then realized it was still running and had to get back in and turn it off before leaving because obviously with these electric cars you put it in park you get out and it's off you're done you walk away and it locks so just those little things like i really appreciate those things all over again i think my advice that i can offer to people who are in maybe a similar spot that i was if you're looking to decide where to get your car repaired number one definitely pick a certified body shop for the possibility of a better experience number two if you can try to call the body shop or get in touch with them and figure out if they have parts in stock and if they have the parts that you think will be in stock maybe you got a fender bender ask them if they have the front bumper in stock things like that because that made a world of a difference i could probably still be waiting here halfway through that repair process if i'm still waiting for tesla to send parts but yeah that's pretty much it i hope you guys are able to learn from my experience from what i've gone through in the past couple weeks but i am so glad to have this back and to be driving it daily and i'll hang out in the comments and talk with you guys on twitter as i usually do about this sort of follow-ups to the story there's going to be differences now with selling this car and with getting different i mean you don't want to sell a repaired car the same way as just a regular used car so there's all kinds of future updates that will come from this and we'll be in touch about that but until then that's everything i got thanks for watching talk to you guys the next one peace\n"