Hail repair · South Africa
Hail out.
Paint untouched.
Every dent worked back from behind the panel, factory finish never touched. Send photos tonight and a specialist near you prices the whole car tomorrow.
FreeNo cardAbout a minute
Lines kink over a dent, and run true once it’s outA light board reading a panel — lines kink over a dent, run true once it’s out
After the storm
What you do in the next two days decides how long you wait
A Highveld storm can dent every horizontal panel on a car in four minutes, and it dents the whole suburb at once.
- 1That evening
Photograph it while the light is low
Late afternoon light rakes across a panel and shows every dent. Midday sun flattens them and hides half the damage. Stand at the end of the bonnet and shoot along it, not down at it.
- 2The same night
Send the photos before the queue forms
One storm dents a whole suburb. Repairers fill their week in the first two days, so sending on the night rather than the weekend is often a fortnight of waiting.
- 3Next day
Get the written quote, then decide about insurance
You need a figure before you can work out whether a claim is worth the excess and the premium. A written quote costs nothing and gives you that number either way.
- Repair week
Most cars go back the same day
Light hail across a bonnet, roof and boot is usually a day's work. Severe hail on ten panels runs longer. Either way it is days, not the weeks a paint shop needs for the same car.
What hail costs
Priced per panel, by dent count and size
The same matrix insurers use, so a quote from this site and an assessor's figure speak the same language.
Hail
- Bonnet only, light hailAbout 10 dents the size of a R1 coin
- from R2 010
- Light hail across the carBonnet, roof and boot, about 10 small dents on each
- from R6 325
- Moderate hailSix panels, roughly 25 R5-sized dents on each
- from R18 975
- Severe hailTen panels, golf-ball dents, roughly 60 to a panel
- from R29 100
A quote from photos comes as a range. Once a repairer has the panel under a light board the price is fixed in writing before any work starts.
30-second check
Run a fingernail across it
Hail that has cracked the paint, or gone through to an edge, needs a panel shop. Most of it has not.
Not sure? Send the photos anyway. Being told it isn’t a paintless job costs nothing and saves a wasted trip.
Hail season
Where it does real damage every summer
Questions about hail
How much does paintless dent repair cost in South Africa?
A single trolley ding on the flat of a door starts around R750 including VAT. An R5-sized dent is about R810, and a golf-ball dent on a bonnet about R1,320. Hail is priced per panel by how many dents there are and how big they are, so a bonnet with light hail is roughly R2,000 and a whole car with light hail about R6,300. Those are figures from the default rate book; each repairer prices from their own and shows you the working before anything is agreed.
Can hail damage be repaired without respraying the car?
In most cases, yes. As long as the paint is not cracked or chipped, a technician works the metal back from behind the panel with rods and reads the surface in a reflected light board. Nothing is sanded, filled or sprayed, so the car keeps its factory finish. Where hail has broken the paint, or a panel is too far gone, a repairer will tell you that up front rather than after starting.
How long does it take?
A single dent is usually an hour or two, often while you wait. Light hail across a bonnet, roof and boot is typically a day. Severe hail on ten panels can run to several days. A panel shop doing the same car conventionally would normally book it in for a week or more because of paint and drying time.
Will it affect my car's resale value or service history?
The opposite of a respray. Paint thickness gauges are standard at trade-ins and auctions, and resprayed panels show up on them. Paintless repair leaves the original factory paint and its thickness untouched, so there is nothing on the car to declare and nothing for a buyer's gauge to find.
Should I claim from insurance or pay for hail repair myself?
It depends on your excess and on what a claim does to your premium, so check your policy. Because paintless repair costs a fraction of a conventional respray, plenty of single-panel and light hail jobs come in below or near a typical excess, which makes paying directly worth working out. If you are claiming, repairers on Dentz issue a written quote and a before-and-after photo report your insurer can work from.
Photograph it tonight.
The queue forms in the first forty-eight hours. Free to ask, and no card.
Takes about a minute. No account, no password.
For repairers
Do you fix dents for a living?
Every request on this page has to go somewhere. It goes to the businesses that run their workshop on Dentz. The leads are part of the subscription, not an extra line on the bill.
- Jobs near you, at no extra cost
- A customer's photos and location land in your leads inbox and in your email. You see the damage and the distance before you decide. Accept the ones you want; the rest cost you nothing.
- First to accept gets the customer
- Up to five businesses are offered the same job, nearest first. Whoever takes it gets the contact details and the others are closed out, so nobody burns a morning chasing a customer who already booked elsewhere.
- Your prices, not ours
- Answer five prices you already know by heart and the system fits your whole retail curve and hail matrix from them. No price sheet to upload, and you can change anything afterwards.
- The whole job runs on it
- Quote, schedule, assign a tech, photograph before and after, issue a SARS-ready tax invoice with gapless numbering, take card or EFT, track commission. Built for South African PDR, not adapted from abroad.