askchapo

In answer to what you asked:

Call around to some body shops and see what their availability is. If you want to get some good recommendations, make small talk at gas stations about it: “say, you wouldn’t know a good body shop around here would you?”

When you interact with the body shop they could be all over the place with pricing for a bunch of reasons. Usually if you say you’re paying out of pocket and you just need it back up and running they’ll quote lower and if you say it’s gonna be paid for out of your insurance or the other drivers insurance they’ll quote higher. They might give you two quotes, one from a cursory inspection and another from actually tearing into it and seeing what’s up. Don’t be surprised if they eyeball it and say some number then actually start working and it comes out higher. Body work is like that because for example if you hit a deer and bust out your headlight and crinkle up your hood they might say “new headlight and hood, just $200” but once they actually look it turns out that the panel the headlight needs to be bolted into needs to be straightened up/welded/replaced and they come out to $400.

So you have to figure out how to trust the shop somehow. Shops know this and they occupy different niches like the good ol boys types who make you come up and talk to em while they’re working all the way to places with air conditioned offices with free drinks and someone whose job it is to explain everything to you. It just depends on what matters to you.

You might also peruse rockauto and youtube and see if you feel comfortable doing it yourself.