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DENT BE GONE - PAINTLESS DENT REMOVAL
The Shopping Cart Incident
An accident waiting to happen?
On Wednesday, August 2, 2006, I was parked in the local A&P parking lot. It was around 7:00 pm. A friend of mine works at the A&P and I give her a ride home after work several days a week. I was parked a couple of spaces from a cart corral, where the car to the right is parked in the picture above, except my front end was facing the camera. Yes, this is the actual scene of the mishap! I was expecting my friend out shortly and did not even remove my safety belt while sitting in my car. I park near this specific cart corral to make it easy for her to find me. I soon learned that parking near one of these corrals is not a good idea because, it turns out, people like to "SHOOT BASKETS"! I'm not talking about basketball! There are folks out there, for I've witnessed this behavior several times since then (from a much greater distance), that like to run and push their shopping carts (baskets) into the corral (at high speeds) from the across the way (roughly from where I stood to take the picture). Obviously, this is done to save time and distance.
I'm sure you can see what's coming. I'm sitting in my car, minding my own business, when a young fellow runs and flings a cart from across the way. At first the cart is heading into the corral as intended, but as it travels it begins veering to it's right. The cart ends up hitting the right, outside corner of the corral's green support base and is deflected right into the middle of the passenger side front door of my 2004 Elantra. The fellow realized what was happening and gave chase but could not catch the cart in time. I was strapped into my seat with the engine turned off and could not take any action, evasive or otherwise, in time either. The fellow apologized and gave me his name and phone number. The basket's right angled corner nailed my car door resulting in 2 dents connected by a 12 inch vertical crease.
The Testimonial
Since the paint was not scratched or chipped (fortunately the cart basket was plastic), I was able to get the door repaired by a "Paintless Dent Removal Technician" by the name of Krikor Kupelian. His business card is at the head of this page. The extent of the damage can be seen in the BEFORE pictures below. Basically the damage consisted of: (1.) a large 2 1/2 inch diameter (apprx.) dent impinging on the break-line of the door; (2) a 12 inch long crease from the break-line of the door to the top of the moulding at the bottom where; (3) there was another smaller dent.
Of course, the AFTER pictures show what an EXCELLENT job Krikor did restoring the door to it's original beauty. The beauty of all this is two-fold: (1.) Krikor works on your car on-site and (2.) Paintless dent removal is much less expensive than conventional body work. I HIGHLY recommend Krikor as a master artist of his craft! My supervisor at work had commisioned Krikor to remove several dents and dings on a couple of leased cars that he and his wife were turning in a while back. I remembered how he raved about being amazed with Krikor's work and after doing some research online re: the fine art of "PDR", I gave Krikor a call. My car was damaged on a wednesday evening. Krikor came around noon the following friday and my car was totally restored before the afternoon was over. I was going on vacation the following week and, thanks to Krikor, I could enjoy myself knowing the damages had been undone!
My DENTS are GONE!!!
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