So I got my car back after it going to the body shop twice now. And FINALLY they got my bumpers to match... but they never quite made it sit flush with the rest of the body... How hard can this be? Your a body ship for crying out oud isnt it your job to make it appear like its never been in an acident before? so after getting tired of them not doing it right I did it myself... found three broken and/or loose brackets that hold the back bumper snug in place... I dont know if this will fix the problem, but its something they should have noticed... anyone else out there have this problem before?

Oh and also I noticed where the bumper connects underneath in the back where the plastic kinda bends upwards, my paint is cracking there cuz of the bend... anyone else have this problem either?

No paint should be cracking on the bumper. My car has 20+ coats of properly applied paint and even this extreme thinkness doesnt crack. If it is cracking the paint application is faulty.

Sounds like you took it to a not so good shop.

Take it else where, I work at a body shop and
just so you know its impossible to match the
paint exactly as it was to begin, there will always
be small differences. And as far as paint crack
something was done very wrong if left like that
it will continue to grow and only get worse.

That just sounds like a bad shop all together.

Yeah. Perfect color match on a bumper almost never happens. The simple fact the the cover is plastic and the car is steel can account for a bit of color difference on most colors, the use of flex agents (hope they used these....supposed to be use to help keep the paint from cracking on flexible parts) can also shift the color just slightly. Most plastic bumpers do not exactly match from the factory. The color should be close but not perfect (perfect requires extreme luck as well as skill).

Very True.

Good Luck!

It should look perfect if they blended the paint with the panels around the bumper, but it obvious they didnt do that. I would take it elsewhere

there is no blending involved if its only the bumper
that needs to be painted. Blending would be way
more time consuming and more costly.

If he wants it to look like nothing ever happened and look the same color then he should have it blended. Any good body shop will blend it to the panels around the bumber.

When i got a new rear bumber for my xB, the rear quater panels where painted and so was the hatch and there is no difference in color, atleast to the naked eye.

If there is a difference in color then people will know that something happened which is what this guy doesnt want. If some wants something to look perfect, then they are going to have to pay the extra cost. IMO

No insurance company will pay blend adjacent panels on a bumper repair. The factory bumpers do not match the cars generally so some mismatch is considered acceptable. Cost to blend a 1/4 panel is around $250-500 per each depending on the car.