About a year ago a friend of mine took his car to Calgary Coachworks south. The car was side swiped and ended up with about $7000 in repairs. They replaced one door, repaired the other, replaced part of the rocker panel, and the entire quarter panel. I'll break it down like this:
Good
Even paint application, perfect colour match, straight body, including the quarter panel, doors fit perfectly eventually(see bad points).
Bad
Seam sealer visible inside of trunk, around the rear door jam, and worst of all, the front door was "skinned" meaning the outer shell was peeled off and replaced, the rest was used as is. This is fine if done right, but the seam was messy, strings of sealer were all over the door, it stood out to the trained eye at the very least. There was also a visible weld on the rocker panel near the rear wheel well. The factory has a seam here as well, but it is clean and consistent. The weld was ugly and lumpy, not good when it's clearly visible.
There were also problems with how things were re-assembled. Clips were missing on the door scuff guards (plastic protectors at the bottoms of the door jam) and one was sticking up a bit. The window was also missing tint (both rear doors were tinted) even though they promised to tint the glass. When the car was "ready" to be picked up, the drivers door was missing window trim, and the door frames were still in primer. They are supposed to be black. The rear door did not close properly, the latch was way out of adjustment. The bottom of the rocker panel was not done correctly, the very bottom was supposed to be black (like the other side).
The rear glass has a built in radio antenna, after he got the car back the radio had very poor reception. They did remove the rear glass to do the repairs, so I suspected they damaged something in the process. Months later I removed some trim and found the problem, the connector that goes onto the glass was broken off. I used a 40 watt soldering iron and was able to solder a wire onto what was left of the connector and the radio worked fine. There were broken clips on the trim as well that they never bothered to replace, more careless work.
Now I've done body work in the past, so I know a bit of what to look for. No job is perfect, but there were far too many things that were done poorly. This may not be typical of their work (I've actually heard good things about them and my insurance recommends them) but no way in hell I would ever take my car there after seeing the shoddy work they did.
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