Brandywine Body Shop

Exactly what I needed. I had a need for some straight forward body work (repair and repaint the quarter panel). BBS provided a reasonable estimate (lower than the other shop I considered); gave me an appointment to start the work for a couple of days later; did a good job and the final bill was exactly as estimated.
My only gripe is that they did take a day or two longer than stated. However, this is minor compared to all of the positives listed above.
I would definitely use them again — hopefully I won’t need to.

In these days of economic distress, it’s foolish to expect any business to go above and beyond what is required. However, I don’t think it’s wrong to expect what is promised.
I inquired at the shop on a Monday. They were helpful and informative, ordered parts immediately, and told me they’d call on Wednesday when/​if the parts were in, and also to verify that I should drop my car off on Thursday evening. Thursday afternoon finally rolls around and I have to call them to make sure I should drop my car off that night. (No Wednesday phone call, whatever).
I was originally promised my car on Monday or Tuesday. It wasn’t ready until late Thursday. I had to be the one to keep calling and asking «is it ready» and half the time the lady on the phone had no idea and said she’d call me back once the guy came back. (Where was the guy?) Finally once the car was ready, they told me «you can’t come get it because your insurance guy hasn’t come yet.» How many days did they have to tell me that he hadn’t called/​come yet? It took only half an hour for me to get him out there, clearly they hadn’t tried.
The work itself looks good, though I’m not sure I’m qualified to say. It looks like nothing bad happened to my car, which is good. The guy made sure to point out a tiny hairline scratch and a thumb-​dent on the other side of where the damage was (therefore not part of the accident) that I had no idea were there. Question: why not just fix it for me? 10 cents worth of putty and 3 minutes of labor would have fixed both and might have made me a repeat customer and/​or recommend the place. Also… why point something like that out so eagerly? Did they do it? Quite frankly, this is a brand new car, and I inspect it meticulously… I already knew about two other random scratches, but I had no idea about these. Seriously, it makes me very suspicious.
Finally, the price they actually charged was a good $ 40 less than what my insurance company cut the check for. And they still charged me the full deductible. Which means they made $ 40 on the deal. In the past I’ve had body shops give that money back to ME.
I wouldn’t return here, but I just hope I never have to go back to a body shop at all, because I wonder if there really is anything better out there.