“…on almost every single body panel.”
There’s a special kind of anger that comes from handing over the nicest car you’ve ever owned for repairs and getting it back with even more damage. And the frustration only grows when it takes multiple visits and ultimatums to get the positive service and results that should be a given.
A recent TikTok clip shows a distraught Ford Mustang Mach-E owner who says he had to threaten and pressure body shop and dealership staff to get his car restored to the showroom-new condition he brought it in.
Creator William Sargent (@sargent_5.0) said in a clip that’s been viewed more than 1,000 times, “When the company came out and repaired the windshield, they scratched the roof in two places, which already really pissed me off. Then, when it went to the body shop to get the front bumper painted, they scratched the car on almost every single body panel.”
The damage Sargent points out in the video goes well beyond one bad scratch. It’s clear he’s very emotionally invested in the appearance of the car, and takes every blemish as a kind of personal insult no matter how small or incidental they may seem.
To really sell the damage to viewers, he pulls the Mach-E out of his garage, hoping the fading daylight will better reveal what he says happened while the car was being repaired.
There’s a long scratch across the hood, a couple of nicks on the door, scratches and chips around the trunk, paint chips on the roof, and random scuff marks along the trim.
Some of that damage, Sargent said, came from the company that replaced his cracked windshield. The rest he said appeared after the Mach-E spent about a week at the body shop having its front bumper repaired and painted. This is when he said the parking sensors were mistakenly painted over.
That detail seemed to move at least one skeptical viewer firmly onto his side.
“I was thinking maybe you were just being a Karen until you said they painted over sensors,” one commenter wrote. “That automatically made me believe the rest of the story.”
Sargent replied that confrontation usually isn’t his style, but the condition of this particular car struck a nerve.
“The funny thing is… I hate confrontation. I’m usually the most relaxed, chillest guy,” he wrote. “But this is the nicest car I’ve ever bought and to see it come back in worse condition than I left it pisses me off.”
There was also apparently some documentation working in his favor. When another commenter advised drivers to photograph their vehicles before handing them over for service, Sargent said the dealership had already taken that step.
“Luckily, the dealer took beforehand photos before they sent it to the body shop and they verified the scratches were not there as well,” he wrote.
By then, Sargent said he’d spent roughly an hour and a half arguing his case at the dealership, agreeing to bring the Mach-E back even though his patience had essentially run out.
“They get one day,” he said in the video. “If it comes back and I can notice a scratch, I’m going to be taking this further.”
For all the lawsuit-and-firing talk, however, the story took a much less dramatic turn once the dealership got another chance at the car.
“To my surprise, everything actually turned out pretty good,” Sargent said in a follow-up clip, pointing out the flaws that had been addressed and replaced by shiny new paint.
The paint had been removed from the front sensors. The two-foot hood scratch was gone. The chips and scratches around the trunk had been cleaned up, along with the other blemishes he had complained about.
Sargent wound up specifically praising Autosphere in Buford, Georgia, saying the dealer “went above and beyond to make the customer happy.”
“I’m actually just overall really satisfied,” he said. “They absolutely killed it, and I would definitely buy from them again.”
The drawn-out drama and eventual happy ending for the Mach-E isn’t necessarily an anomaly in the world of body work on newer cars, but it shows the importance of diligence and determination on the part of owners before they hand over the keys.
Consumer Reports advises owners to photograph vehicle damage as soon as possible when a dispute arises and to get problems documented in writing. The longer someone drives the car after discovering damage, the more difficult it becomes to establish responsibility for when and where it occurred.
That makes the dealership’s before-and-after documentation especially useful in this case. Instead of Sargent simply insisting that a collection of scratches and chips wasn’t there before, he says the dealer had its own photographs to compare against the returned Mach-E.
For all the threats and anger it took, in the end, Sargent’s detailed video work wound up offering a kind of how-to for other owners. For anyone handing over a carefully kept car, taking a minute to shoot a walkaround video beforehand could provide some valuable insurance against exactly this kind of situation.
Motor1 reached out to Sargent via direct message and comment on the clip and to Autosphere via phone call and email. We’ll update this if they respond.
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