Whitten Brothers Body Shop
Richmond, VA 23236
Phone: (804) 378-6700
User Reviews for Whitten Brothers Body Shop
02/28/2008 Posted by stillwaitingformycar
My car was wrecked for $10,000 in damage in November. Here it is 110 days later and the car is still being held up!!! The people at the shop are slow. Instead of tearing down the car and finding everything wrong in one week, they would do it a little bit at a time. When a part was on backorder, it would hold up the whole process. I ended up moving across the country while my car was in the shop, and now it has to get shipped to me. They had adequate time to get my car fixed before I moved (55 days), but could not meet that deadline. I bought a $1400 beat up truck in the mean time for means of transportation. On the up side they are waiving my deductible ($500) and the car looks great. They do quality work, but seem to have management problems handling the orders and scheduling maintenance. I could not recommend this body shop to anyone unless they are willing to wait a very long time to get their car completed. I found out from a friend that another body ship in town did $6000 worth of repairs in 10 days.
Pros: Good craftsmanship
Cons: Long time to complete, bad customer interactions
08/17/2007 Posted by kvcobra
My Chrysler was struck squarely on the rear wheel and sustained $3,000 in damage (not much considering the impact). Since there was mechanical damage as well as some minor body damage, I thought taking it to a Chrysler dealership would be the best choice since they have both a repair shop & body shop and should have many parts on hand for a 3-year-old car. Wrong! They had the car for a total of 34 DAYS! Granted, the insurance company was to blame for 6 days since they took almost a week to get an estimate done. That leaves 28 days - four full weeks. Over that time, Whitten's lack of communication was unprofessional at best. It was like pulling teeth to get any information from them, and when I did press hard for an ETA, I got a ton of disclaimers, qualifiers, and a wildly inaccurate date. They had to order every part they put on the vehicle (remember: 3-year-old Chrysler at a Chrysler shop!), they ordered parts 4 different times, each taking 5-7 days. On one order, some of the parts were on back order, yet I was told they had all come in. The one conciliatory action they took was to cover 5 days on my rental car. Even with that, negotiating 5 extra days from my insurance company, and going with a much smaller and cheaper rental than the vehicle it was replacing in order to maximize my rental time, my coverage still ran out 6 days before the repairs were finished. For the most part, the repairs seem to have been done properly. An exception is that the new tailpipe sustained cosmetic damage during installation -- annoying since it was one of the parts subject to a "betterment" charge. Only time will tell if the rest of the work holds up, but it should have been perfect given the time it took. In short, if you have all the time in the world, an extra car sitting around to use while Whitten has your primary vehicle, and don't care about being accurately informed of the work status, they may not be a terrible choice. Otherwise, go elsewhere.
Pros: Most of the work seems to have been done correctly.
Cons: Excruciatingly slow, uncommuncative
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
