Insurance/body shop help needed

[dementeddigital]

I'm not sure where to post this. I would like to learn from the folks who know about legal issues and body issues, so I figured that I'd just post it in the general forum. Mods, feel free to move it wherever it is most appropriate.

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Hey folks. I need your help.

I"m going to keep names out of this until it is resolved. I'll post them after it is resolved, though.

In November, I was rear-ended in my 03 Z06 while I was stopped at a light. (The Millennium Yellow must be hard to see in the Florida sunlight...) The guy hit me hard enough to push me into the car in front of me, so there was damage on both ends. The front was mostly paint, but the rear had damage to the right tail light and caused a rip in the rear plastic, behind the right tire. There was some new exhaust noise, and apparently the metal bumper (underneath) was damaged, too.

I've got the same insurance carrier as the guy who hit me. I filed the claim under his policy (it saved me my deductible), and at the adjuster's recommendation, I brought the car to the local "preferred" shop. This is at a dealership where I also purchased the car, extended warranty, and I get basically all of my service. (They don't normally do Corvettes, but they are a GM dealer.) I felt like everything would turn out OK.

When I got the car back, I saw that the paint on both the nose and rear of the car didn't quite match the rest of the car, and the rear bumper wasn't as "flush" with the rest of the body as it was previously. The guy at the shop said that it could be the lighting (it was late in the day), so I took it home. The next day, it looked the same, and I also noticed that there is also a slight bump where the rip was repaired on the rear plastic. (You can really see it when the sunlight is coming from the nose-end of the car.)

I took it back to the shop, and they said that paint is hard to match, and my insurance carrier doesn't pay to "blend" new paint into adjacent body panels when it is the "bumper covers" that are repainted. I say that I realize that "technically" these are bumper covers, but essentially they are the entire nose and rear of the car. I called the insurance carrier, and they sent someone out to look at the car. He says that he thinks that the paint would be considered "acceptable" in the industry.

At this point, I think that maybe I"m being the unreasonable one, so I take it to a couple of other body shops and a local body shop paint supply place (they help shops match paint). They ALL say that they would NOT consider it acceptable work, and that it surely reduces the value of the car. The insurance carrier has said that they won't do anything more, and the body shop says the same thing. I've kept working the process and escalating it, and they finally brought in the body shop's paint rep to get his opinion, but I won't hear back until the first week in January.

Slight rant:
I've been with this insurance carrier for better than 14 years, but I've never really had to experience the claim process until now. I've also sent business to the dealership where I bought the car. I had even gone there a couple of months ago to look at newer cars. I've been a great customer to both organizations, and I'm really surprised at the apathy from both of them.



So my questions:

I've been working within the process with the insurance folks and also with the body shop, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. Have any of you been down this path with your 'Vettes before? Is there anything that I can do short of taking legal action? (I'm fully prepared to do that, but I'd rather not.) Have any of you dealt with "diminished value" claims? What do you recommend I do?