Advice needed
 

During last week sometime the wife had been at the gym with the car.

At somepoint the car has been coated in something from the building site next door to the gym car park.

She only discovered this on Tuesday after washing the car and feeling the sandpaper like texture on the car.

She doesn't know if it's paint or something else.

She has since heard of at least one other car with the same problem although I suspect there will be others.

How should I sort this out?

Do we claim from our insurance or pursue Lidl who own the site?

Look forward to your thoughts.

If you go through your insurance, you'll generally have to jump through all the hoops of making a claim and they can treat you like a criminal.

I'd get in touch with Lidl and ask for details of their public liability insurance policy. They may well insist that you pursue the claim through your insurance company as agents, but try and deal with them directly. They're always nicer to you once they've accepted liability.

As with any dealings with insurance companies, try to get as much documentation and/or details as possible. Good luck! +++

Thanks Tony.

What do you mean by documentation?

Have you tried a claybar on it? It could be something innocuous (cement dust maybe?) which will come off easily with a good detailing, in which case its probably not worth the hassle of trying to claim against someone. I'd prefer that to a re-paint in any case :)

Unfortunately I'm mid Atlantic until late Dec and then we are of on holiday so won't have time to look at this until February.

So really need to get an admission of guilt out of Lidl so I can claim if I need to.

Most gyms work on either codes or fingerprints for entry, so they may be able to provide the log showing your missus visited on that day. That would prove the car was at least in the vicinity of the building work.

I agree with the claybar suggestion. I'd assumed it had already gone beyond that but if not, that has a good chance of getting anything off. The danger is of the remnants getting stuck in the bar and marring the undamaged paintwork.

I see. Yes she has a log on the website of when she was there so their can be no dispute about that.

Not sure if this will help Del but I worked on a site that had a few "events" over the years that had consequences for the surrounding environment. We once had the site chimney stack painted in blustery weather resulting in some cars in the car park getting spattered in fine drops of paint. Once it was discovered and the company carrying out the work admitted liability the affected owners claimed the costs back off them, mostly for a wash and polish though, no paintwork required. Some didn't even bother claiming, but as we know, some car owners don't really care.

I'd ask your wife to investigate if others have reported similar experiences and whether there has been any incident report raised on the site and what they're doing, if anything, if they've accepted that there was something that occurred that has impacted on the surrounding environment.

Good luck +++

Del, is your wife in Norwich soon? I could have a look and maybe detail a small section.

There is one other car that my wife is aware of thats got the same thing on it, there has to be others but i suspect most either don't care or haven't noticed it.

I'm in the process of trying to get email details for site manager, phone calls is not really an option for me and I prefer written dialog so there is no back tracking later.

Thats a very kind offer Matt but i couldn't possibly expect you to do that.

I'll see what the site manager says first, if they accept they f'd up then i'll get the wife to take the car to the body shop behind us to see what its going to need to clean up.

Thanks anyway mate. +++

The offer is always open mate. Hope it gets sorted +++

Why do you think his wife needs a small section detailing? I'd take offence at that! :)

Detailing for Girls...
 

Great idea! +++

Will detailing with claybar prevent SWIMBOs addiction to Decleor on QV bloody C? :tuttut: :ROFL:

Could buy a D4! :cool:

Robert

Matt has met the love of my life so he knows the condition of her bodywork, he's also met the wife and knows the condition of hers :ROFL:

As has been suggested, a detailer rather than body shop will be your friend here. We both achieve very similar results at face value, but have significantly differing ways of achieving them.

A detailer will look to decontaminate in the gentlest methods / products possible. A bodyshop *tend to opt for a rotary buffing session which *can remove the contaminates attached to the surface but subsequently introduce new swirls and marring to the paint work. In the immediate it all looks good. Give it 4 weeks and the results are somewhat different once the fillers in their compounds have faded and washed out.

Ive completely decontaminated a white TT that had similar air born contaminates from a building site. It will be possible to remove - given the right person with the right approach.

Drop me a line if you wish any more thoughts or advice. +++