The TRUTH About the REAL Cost of PPF

we hear paint protection film is so expensive i could have my entire car painted for what you guys are charging to wrap it in film i can repaint the whole front of the car two or three times by the time i pay for paint protection film on the front end you guys are crazy expensive it's cheaper everywhere else we're gonna answer that kind of stuff for you today and i'm gonna prove it to you with cold hard facts and numbers right in front of me i've got estimates from a reputable body shop in the pittsburgh area i've got three of them for three different vehicles i'm gonna walk you through these so you can see exactly what it really costs to get rock chips repaired so the elephant in the room and the question we get all the time how much does this stuff cost so if you're gonna do the front end of a car at our shop and it varies across the united states a little bit you'd be looking at right around two thousand dollars to twenty five hundred dollars depending on the car if you're gonna wrap the entire car like a lot of our customers do it's gonna be anywhere from six thousand dollars to eight nine or even ten thousand dollars for a car like a ford gt that requires a lot of extra material so we're talking about a pretty significant amount of money here i can understand why people think that it's expensive but i'll tell you a little story about something that i think is expensive that is cutco knives so there's a guy that works for us named dean and the reason that i know him he was a customer years ago and he used to also sell cutco knives i don't spend any time in a kitchen i don't really cook dean does he's a professional chef he started selling these knives that are not cheap he came to my house and did a demonstration for me and when he told me the price of the knives i almost fell out of my chair i couldn't believe that people would pay that much money for knives the reason i'm telling you that story is because the reason it didn't seem like those knives were reasonable to me is because i don't spend time in a kitchen and i'm not a professional chef if you speak to a professional chef somebody that does this for a living they think that that's completely reasonable or in fact maybe even cheaper than a lot of professional grade knives that they're using in their kitchens so you have to make sure that the people that are receiving the message are the people that might actually be interested in buying the product when it comes to paint protection film the people that are going to be putting this product on their car are not somebody that doesn't care about their car that sees a car as a a way to get from point a to point b only or that drives something that's 10 15 20 years old that's already beat up that they may be paid a couple thousand dollars for and that's not to knock those cars or those people i love older cars i love some cheap older cars i have some of them it's not a car i'd put paint protection film on but if i'm gonna buy a brand new porsche or a lamborghini or a mercedes or even a new camry or forerunner or tundra you're talking about a 30 40 50 60 400 000 investment those are cars that might be worth talking about protecting so that's really who our customer is here if you're somebody commenting on the tick tock video and you're 15 years old and you don't have a car or maybe you're 18 and have a 700 truck like i used to probably not going to be putting this product on your car and everything's going to seem expensive right so that leads to the next big point we've got our film cost 2 000 to 2500 6000 to 10 000 for the full wrap what does it cost if instead of putting film on the car i just want to get it fixed every couple of years or in five years or 10 years the film does come with a 10-year warranty by the way and now before we get into these costs from the body shop i want to explain a couple of things number one i am biased there's no way around it i own a paint protection film shop actually a couple of them i make my living on this of course it is in my best interest to convince you guys that it is super expensive to paint your car and not expensive to do paint protection film on it i get that with that being said what i did here is i called a friend that owns a body shop and it's not a close friend i said hey jack these prices up i didn't do that what i did instead is call him and say hey i want to get your honest price on three different vehicles if you were going to fix rock chips on the front of a car with paintwork so the bumper the front edge of the hood the front edge of the fenders just those common spots that take a beating maybe the car has 50 60 70 000 miles on it and they want to repaint the front of the car to look like new again i did not ask him to do the rocker panels which are always beat up the backsides of the fenders in the inner wheel wells and all that other stuff that paint protection film can protect from i didn't do that this is strictly front end protection i picked three cars we've got a corvette c8 we've got a porsche gt4 my car in particular and we've got a mercedes-benz suv the reason i picked those three they're higher end but they're not ridiculous of course if you're going to paint a bentley with a full new paint job it's probably going to be 10 000 or 20 thousand dollars and you might not even find a shop that's willing to do that i did actually want him to give me a quote on a lamborghini aventador just to show you how crazy it is but the aventador's not even in the body shop software in order to do that it's something that he would really have to look at on a case-by-case basis which means it's going to be custom which means the price is going to be crazy it's just the way it is and we don't really charge more to protect exotics unless we're using more materials so that's something to keep in mind too let's talk body shops before the pricing body shops in general there's some of them that do excellent work there are some of them that don't do excellent work we picked one that does but even so no matter how good the body shop is it's a it's a really difficult thing to do so we like to talk about how difficult paint protection film in window tint is to install perfectly with no specks of debris it's borderline impossible painting a car aftermarket is the same way it's a skill that takes many many years for a good technician to learn you have to be very experienced to put out a good result and even then you're gonna have small mistakes things like running the paint here and there or maybe a speck of debris now a good body shop should be able to handle that basically completely and by the time you pick up the car you should see almost nothing as a regular consumer but a trained eye will probably pick something up a line where they had to blend the paint maybe it's even inside the door jamb or underneath the fender but somebody will be able to tell this car was painted so that's something to keep in mind if you're going with a good shop like this these are the numbers we've got a amg suv and this is just for repairing and refinishing no replacement of parts whatsoever so if you this doesn't even count if you have to buy a bumper from mercedes or something crazy like that which would be thousands on itself this is just refinishing fixing rock chips repainting it blending it a little bit you have to understand about bodywork you're going to need to blend into possibly other panels you're definitely going to have to re-clear coat an entire panel so if you're going to paint the front edge of a fender to fix those rock chips you can't just paint that front edge of the fender and blend it somewhere you're going to see a nasty line it doesn't work that way so you're going to have to blend the color after some sanding and things then you spray the color blend that in then you're gonna have to re-clear that entire panel you may even have to blend the color into adjacent panels so if you're painting a fender and it's next to a door and you panel paint that fender chances are the color is not going to be exactly the same so you're gonna have to blend it a little bit which takes some extra material and extra time but again we're trying to get the car back to a like new state on the mercedes the total for this repair would be four thousand four hundred and eighteen dollars and seventy eight cents on the porsche this is for a 2020 porsche 718 cayman and if i remember correctly i gave him my vin number so this would be a miami blue paint job which is no pearl it's not metallic if you had a pearl color or a tri-stage paint like some of the uh there's a gm camaro that's actually four stages it's a four stage paint job it's crazy it layers it to get a certain effect this car doesn't have any of that this is a one stage basically base coat clear coat the poor show would be 5 381 dollars and 24 cents to repair and the c8 corvette this is probably one of the most popular cars we do if not the most popular and remember guys msrp on this car is only 60 to 70 000 we're not talking about anything crazy uh lots of people have these cars and can afford these cars the front end repair on this is 6437.66 so when you look at just the numbers and i i honestly didn't know what to expect it's it's been a long time since i've gotten a body shop quote on anything and obviously the price of things goes up as time goes on i've painted some cars myself i know it's a ton of work uh but the 2022 numbers 6400 for the c8 5300 right for the porsche amg is 4400 so even the cheapest of the three the amg you're still two times the price of protecting that front end so if we're strictly looking at this as a financial thing it's is it more cost effective to repair the car or is it more cost effective to prevent damage from the car the answer is to prevent it and the answer to prevent is pain protection films so for those of you that have been commenting on stuff saying you can get a whole car painted for twenty five hundred dollars or three thousand dollars it's not true it's impossible you might have a guy down the street that works out of his garage that can do it other than that if you're talking about taking it to a business that's gonna stand behind their work that's going to produce good quality work it ain't happening if you wanted to paint the entire car i didn't get any estimates for that i mean you're you're talking probably four or five times this price because of the amount of labor a paint job nowadays is probably 20 000 to repaint the same color if you're a body shop guy and you disagree with this let us know in the comments i'm curious to hear what you have to say now that the cold hard cash truth is out of the way there's another cost that we haven't really mentioned yet and that is what i like to call the intangible costs of not protecting your car so in order to talk about the intangible costs i have to address a couple things about the type of person again the things that matter to somebody that buys an expensive car and then protects that car might be different than a point a to point b uh kind of user a real car person like myself like a lot of people that work in the shop and almost all of our consumers will refer to them as enthusiasts they really care about their car their car means something to them and some people think that's absolutely crazy just like i might think people that really are into sports it's just strange to me i don't really care that much everybody has their different passions and so if you're somebody that's passionate about your car this is where this is going to make a lot more sense to get something like paint protection film so imagine this you have worked 10 years you've worked very very hard maybe you're a business owner maybe you're not maybe you're in sales whatever it is to save up enough money to purchase your corvette c8 for a hundred thousand dollars the day you go get that car it is a really awesome feeling it's there's a whole lot of things going on you're proud of yourself your accomplishments uh it means something more than just the car similar a lot of people will buy like a rolex for the same reason you spend 30 000 on a watch why is the watch itself does that make any sense it tells time just like the timex does but it stands for something and that's what cars are for a lot of people if you can relate to that the rest of this is going to line up for you as well i am that way the first thing i do is protect my car my entire car wrap it in paint protection film ceramic coated tint the windows do windshield protection on it not because i own a shop but because i care that much about my car it is a horrible horrible feeling when you get a rock chip on your car for the first time or when you drive the car for 10 000 miles and the whole front of the car is sandblasted then you're going to do things like take it to events maybe you're taking it to shows or parties there's a hanger party for the pittsburgh cars and coffee that i love to go to and if your car is sort of being featured or on display there you want it to look its best people are going to see that and yeah okay it doesn't matter what people think of you all of that stuff is true but there's a sense of pride and accomplishment that goes with keeping your stuff nice if you're that kind of person so that is that matters the other thing here is that even if you don't really care that much about your car uh from an emotional standpoint i guess an aftermarket paint job no matter how good the body shop is borderline never i won't say never but as close to never as possible as good as the factory paint job the reason for that is is a variety of things number one in a factory there's robots doing this stuff that are programmed they're getting the same result every single time they've got clean rooms set up to do this when you bring this to a body shop somewhere out in the world aftermarket they have paint booths they have downdraft booths that are going to be keeping the air clean and things like that but it's just never the same as that factory environment plus you have a bare prepped surface from the factory you've got your metal that they dip in you know corrosion resistant stuff and then prime all of that is adhered really well when you start sort of messing with that process then you're sticking primer to other paint or whatever it's just not as good the adhesion of the paint isn't as good the finish is usually close but not as good so we see stuff from body shops a lot and some of it's really great but even the really great ones we're going to find a speck of debris in the paint here and there or like a line where they ended the clear coat somewhere it's just the way it is we've also seen stuff that's not great and there it could be a body shop that might even have a decent reputation but it comes in and it's just it's horrible it's it's fading badly it's a different color than the rest of the car you can see where they tried to blend it but it just didn't work so if you have a brand new porsche or a brand new mercedes a brand new c8 and you do need to get it repainted now you have a lot more to worry about is the body shop going to put it back together correctly are they going to blend the paint correctly is it going to look like the same color is it going to fade at the same rate as the back of the car so besides the financial cost what else are you going to be dealing with what other stress is the car ever going to be the same again i don't know what i do know is that with paint protection film if you need to remove the film and its factory paint underneath it the chances of anything being damaged in the removal process is virtually zero with aftermarket paint sometimes it's different because of that adhesion problem but if you're removing it off of factory paint and you don't have rock chips uh you can take that off have perfect paint underneath put a new piece of film on it and drive another 50 000 miles and never really have a problem so that is why we like film so much and last but not least guys resale value you are i'll tell you right now you're not going to get more money for the car because it has paint protection film on it at least not from the dealership they're they're not going to say we'll give you another 500 because you have paint protection film on it a private purchaser might if i'm going to buy a lamborghini one of the things i'm going to look for is that it has ppf on it if it doesn't chances are the front is going to be beat up but the dealership especially or even the private seller the reason that they're going to beat you up is not because the film doesn't exist but because of the things that do exist because of the lack of the film so the rock chips the scratches all that damage that happens to the car so the dealership their job is to make money they need to make as much of a profit as humanly possible they know pricing current market values all that stuff they also know that they're going to have to fix stuff so when you trade in your car they come out and look at it and they say oh man this is perfect you're going to get top dollar for the car if they come out and look at it and say yeah i mean this thing looks decent but the front end has chipped up now maybe they're not even going to do anything to fix it who knows who cares what matters to them is that manager says i'm gonna have to fix this you're looking at another thousand dollars through my body shop i'm gonna give you less for your trade now he might not say that out loud but that's what's going through his head and that's what's gonna show up on the estimate it's gonna be reflected if you're talking about a ca corvette you might be talking about a couple thousand dollar difference on a trade-in of really great condition to just good condition and maybe the front end or the paint in general talking about front-end specifically but even on a full wrap maybe the paint is a big part of that so the resale value is affected uh to some degree by whether or not the car is damaged by the same token okay i'm not going to take a hit on the resale value because i'm going to repaint the front of the car and fix all this stuff i'm going to pay the 4 400 or the 5300 to fix the front of the car and then i'm gonna trade it in there's a problem with that too those managers are trained to see paint jobs and damage on cars they work around it every day they look at it every day uh they're gonna see it they're gonna know that the car was repainted i would i would say very few exceptions to that unless you have a manager that's just not paying attention so they're gonna see hey what happened here why is it repainted if you tell them there's a couple rock chips they're probably not going to believe you and even if they do they're going to say well that counts as damage as far as we are concerned and they're going to knock money off of your trade so all in all um from a financial perspective i see no reason that paint protection film is not cost effective if you've got a car that it makes any sense on if you have you know a little bit of an investment in a car this is what you do so there you have it guys i hope that i didn't bore you with all of these details but i think it's important to explain where we're coming from when we think the pain protection film does make sense and we have lots of customers thousands of them that would agree with us because they're paying us to do the film on these cars and we're giving them a really high quality result and they're happy they're coming back with their next car and their next car in their next car the technology's come a long way with paint protection film it's not like the days of the past where the film is going to yellow and in a year or two it's going to need to replace because the film has failed you might need to replace the film after tens of thousands of miles because it has taken the damage instead of the paint but when that happens you can rest assured that the paint underneath still looks like the day that you bought the car and that's what's important so thank you guys very much for watching if you haven't already subscribed to our channel please do that give us a thumbs up leave a comment let us know what you think are we crazy maybe we're all just crazy and we're totally obsessed with protecting our paint on our cars it makes no sense i don't know tell us maybe you love this video and think that this was a really good explanation of the cost difference between repairs and preventing damage we will see you guys next time

Channel: Blackout Tinting

Views: 55,198

Keywords: paint protection film cost, how much does paint protection film cost, ppf cost, best ppf, best paint protection film, fixing rock chips, how much does it cost to fix rock chips, paint protection film vs repainting, how much does it cost to paint a car, how much does it cost to paint a bumper, repainting front bumper, rock chip fix, how to fix rock chips, 3m ppf, xpel ppf, lumar ppf, cost of ppf, front end ppf, bumper ppf, ppf installation, how much to paint a car, clearbra

Id: b1KXBBhMQx8

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022