Is Maaco collision repair decent? (cost, Ford, VW, Merc)

[bjornb17]

I have a few dents in my 1997 ford f-250 that i would like fixed, don't want to spend a ton of money. Is maaco collision repair okay for this kind of work?

[Merc63]

Ask yourself, do you notice bad bodywork and paint on other cars? Do you really care how good a quality you're getting, or how much money you spend? You really get what you pay for when it comes to paint and bodywork. You CAN get good results at Maaco, but you have to spend some time prepping yourself, and even then, the materials they use are cheap and in order to get the price down they also can't pay good labor rates, so they don't usually get the highest quality workers.

If you really want to save money and use Maaco (or the equivalent), a post I made years ago on VW Vortex will help:

How to prep a car for paint job?

[NJGOAT]

Maaco CAN do good work, but you pay for it. The nice thing about something like Maaco is that they are willing to base their quality on how much you want to spend, most independent shops would never do that and want to do it right or not at all. If you are looking for something that can pass the "10 foot rule", than Maaco will probably save you some money and be acceptable.

PS The "10 foot rule" means that the repairs look acceptable from a normal distance, but you can still pick out imperfections and blemishes close up. As Merc also pointed out, you can get good results even from the lowest cost Maaco services by doing good prep work yourself.

[rosecitywanderer]

I've heard horror stories about Maaco and personally, I wouldn't let them paint my closet door. Just my opinion.

Edit: Just curious, how big are the dents? If they're small then I would do a local search for paintless dent repair. It's easy, can be done on-site and within an hour or so and is fairly stress free.