Why they look identical
Someone clips your car in a car park. You come back to a long mark down the door. From two metres away it reads as a scratch — and most people book a panel quote on the spot.
But in a low-speed contact, the usual outcome isn't your paint being cut. It's their paint being deposited on yours. The mark you're looking at is often material that was added to your car, not removed from it.
The test
Run a fingernail across the mark, perpendicular to its direction.
- Nail glides over it — paint transfer. It's sitting on top of the clear coat and it comes off.
- Nail catches — a real scratch, cut into the paint. Panel shop.
Two more clues that point to transfer: the mark is a different colour to your car (white, blue, red, black), and it's on a high-contact area — door edges, guards, bumper corners, mirror housings.
What we do and don't do
We remove: paint transfer from any panel, any colour, and the surface scuffing that usually comes with it.
We don't touch: scratches through the clear coat, chips down to primer or metal, dents, creases, or cracked and flaking paint. Those need a panel shop, and we'll tell you so instead of taking the booking.
Before you accept a respray quote
Take a clear, well-lit photo of the mark and send it through. We'll tell you honestly whether it's transfer or a scratch. It costs nothing, and if it's a genuine scratch you'll have lost nothing but the time it took to send the message.
If it is transfer: $120, under 30 minutes, and we come to you anywhere in Perth metro.