Has adding touch up paint been worth it?

M

Mobilejay

Active member
This is for anyone that has added touch up paint as part of their services. I am thinking about doing so and going with Dr. Colorchip system. Not sure if I should or not but I get asked quite a bit if I offer it. I have never been a fan since you can always tell it has been touched up but it seems like the easiest and does a pretty decent job. Let me know your thoughts please. One of my concerns is getting the paint for one vehicle and only using it once and having to buy all different colors for different cars can get damn pricey, not sure if it's going to be that lucrative. Thanks in advance
 
I do touch-ups as needed/requested; usually I either ask the client to buy their own paint from the dealership, or I go to the local PBE jobber and have it custom mixed and charge the customer at cost for the material. Jobber will hook me up with 4 oz. of PPG Omni Acrylic Enamel for $10.
 
MobileJay said:
That's not too bad. Do you get a lot of people asking and do you only charge them for the paint?
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I do seem to get a lot of people asking; I also ask them if they want it done any time I get a vehicle in and notice major rock chips (especially ones down to bare metal since that's a corrosion risk). I charge a flat labor rate of $40/hr. regardless what work I'm doing, so that still applies in addition to the cost of material.
 
Thanks for the reply, I don't know why but I didn't think of asking them if they wanted it done. LOL I will have to think about it more and look more into the Dr. Colochip paint. Thanks again.
 
C. Charles Hahn said:
I do touch-ups as needed/requested; usually I either ask the client to buy their own paint from the dealership, or I go to the local PBE jobber and have it custom mixed and charge the customer at cost for the material. Jobber will hook me up with 4 oz. of PPG Omni Acrylic Enamel for $10.
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This here. If a customer asks if I can, I just have them supply the touch up and I will hit any areas that need it. Granted I will not go crazy on areas that are covered in road rash, but just touch up the large chips that will help make it overall look better. Then generally charge about $10-20 pending how long it took me too do it.
 
Okay so some of you are asking them to just supply the paint itself. I guess it would take a while to make your money back if you supplied the paint since its not like our polishes that can be used on everything. Unless you get a system where you make your own but this is not going to be my whole business and do not want to spend that much.
 
I used to advertise this as a service, but not anymore. Now I will *sometimes* do it if a customer asks, but I just don't like doing it because IMO it;s not a "proper" repair. But a proper repair is big $ so I can see where touchups come into play. I especially don't like doing touch ups on metallic or other hard to match paint because I can't stand not getting a perfect match. I will tell people it probably won't match exactly and they say ok, but then upon delivery alot of the time they will complain that it doesn't match. Solid colors are not so bad, but alot of colors are just impossible to get to look good IMO. So IME, it's not something I would ever want to advertise as a service I offer. So just a couple things to think about. For people who are successful with it, that's awesome, but for me not so much. It's not that I'm no good at it, just had too many headaches with it in the past.
 
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