When a dealership damages and then repairs your vehicle, it is NOT sufficient for them to simply do so. They owe you "diminished value" compensation. Let me explain.
In the past, the stance of insurance companies and repairers has been that once they repair your vehicle to normal workmanlike standards (that term has legal significance), they have met their obligations to you.
However, if you then try to sell or trade that repaired vehicle to an alert buyer, he or she will detect the repair (trust me, they will if they know what they are doing). They will then offer you less for your vehicle because it has been previosuly damaged. Their justification is that even though the vehicle has been supposedly repaired to "like before the damage", buyers are heitant to buy a repaired vehicle because repairs are NOT always to factory quality, and sometimes hidden damage is not detected and repaired. So, an informed buyer wants to pay a bit less for a repaired vehicle than a never-damaged vehicle, "just in case".
So, some smart insureds actually got class action cases going and have sued the insurance companies, insisitng that any insurance settlement should include a realsitic allowance for "diminished value".
These class action cases are currently being fought out in the courts. I am actually personally a plaintiff in such a class action suit, as an almost new Hinda Civic I owned was damaged in a hailstorm and repaired, and when I traded it later, I got at least $1000 less than "normal" because, the appraiser said, of "diminished value" due to the repair.
Some insuranc companies have seen the writing on the wall and have started to voluntarily pay "diminished value" compensation along with repair costs.
If your dealer damaged and then repaired your SSR, they have "diminished its value". You WILL confirm that when you go to trade it in or sell it. So, they owe you some oney, and you want to determine how much by asking 3 other dealers, NOT them, how much less they would pay, today, for an SSR that has been damaged and repaired versus one that has not.
If yuo r dealer refuses to honor your claim, tell him you will take it to your state attorney general's office AND General Motors, and that you will describe his failure to tell you about the damage until YOU found it as evidence of intent to defraud. State attornies general frown on such practices. That will get his attention.
Remind him also that since it was HIS employee who made the stupid error, it is HIS responsibility to pay the price, not yours.
Don't accept this repair as sufficient compensation. It is NOT.
Jim G
No Recall Or we would know about it!!!
