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Need to fix your vehicle? Here are the best panel beaters in SA most likely to 'fix your car right the first time' - study

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<i>Image: iStock</i>
<i>Image: iStock</i>

Which Panel Beaters provide the best service to their customers in South Africa? And which are most likely to be recommended for fixing the car right the first time, fixing the car on time, who is the most professionalism and who rates best for friendliness?

Fixing your vehicle, especially following a crash, is rarely an enjoyable experience; whether it’s a scratch and dent patch-up, hail damage or a more serious accident your car is undoubtedly one of your biggest assets and having it repaired can place a huge burden on your budget. 

Choosing the correct one

For the past 15 years Lightstone Consumer has been measuring customer satisfaction for the premier motor body repairers in South Africa.

READ: 'This is daylight robbery!' readers share their SA mechanic stories

The organisation said: "We process over 40 000 vehicle repair records every month; that’s 40 000 owners going through a challenging difficult time. It’s the panel beater’s job to get the job done, get it done right the first time and on time. Being professional, courteous and friendly to deliver a satisfied customer.


How do you feel about panel beaters in SA? Email us

"Until recently of the biggest challenges in ranking any product or service is that the data used to construct the ratings can be quite variable in terms of sample sizes.

"One product may only have been reviewed by a handful of customers, where another product may already have thousands of reviews.  Intuitively, as well as statistically, the rating obtained from the sample with the higher number of reviews is more trustworthy than the sample with only a handful of customers."

This problem has been successfully addressed by making use of Bayesian statistical methods and multilevel models and is today used by leading businesses such as Amazon and Google for their product and service review ratings, IMDb for their Top Movie rankings, Microsoft for their TrueSkill video game player rankings and Glicko chess player ratings."

                                                                        Image: iStock

Lightstone Consumer has applied these methods to the data gathered, over many years to more that 700 panel beaters in SA.

This results in ratings and rankings across multiple dimensions that are accurate stable and trustworthy. These ratings and rankings will be updated every three months. So who are the best panel beaters in SA right now?

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