I foolishly bought a hardtop that had a shattered rear window due to vandalism thinking that I could fix it up for cheap with my Mazdaspeed parts discount. I was going to replace the rear window and paint it myself but there was hidden damage that I didn't see when purchased and I decided I didn't want to deal with it. So I took it to a shop to have the cracks in the SMC repaired and painted Classic Red. The body shop took forever but they did fix all the cracks. However, they did a crappy job on the paint, choosing to cover the area around the window seal with black texturized paint instead of fixing the little nicks and chips and painting the whole thing body color. They also riveted a couple of the latches on instead of fixing the screw holes that got stripped out either by the previous owner or the shop (it's unclear). To make up for all the delays and sorry excuses they offered to install the window for me for free (I had planned to still do this part myself) and I relented. They threw away the window dam that I spend $25 on resulting in a sloppy job with the adhesive sealant leaving a goopy mess all around the inside window edge. Total cost at body shop $990 ($300 of which was paint). Add to that about $500 in oem parts (rear window glass, seals, chrome covers, etc.) plus $400 for the damaged top in the first place and the total comes to around $2000. Proof that some lessons are learned the expensive way and that you can't always do it better/cheaper yourself. I should've just paid $900 and picked up a top ready to go.
