The terms I work under

Who you are agreeing with

ChipDoc is one person with a van. The person who answers your message is the person who turns up at your car and the person who stands behind the work. There is nobody to escalate to, and there is also nobody to hide behind.

These terms apply to chip repairs and headlight polishing booked directly with me. They are the whole agreement between us unless I have written something different to you about your car, in which case what I wrote to you wins.

What a chip repair includes

One price, one visit, and the assessment happens before any money is owed. I look at the damage at the car, in daylight, and I tell you there and then whether it is a repair or not.

The repair itself takes about forty minutes. The windscreen does not come out of the car, nothing is removed from inside it, and there is no curing time to wait out afterwards. You can drive as soon as I am done.

• Looking at the damage at your car and telling you straight away whether it can be repaired
• The repair of one chip on the windscreen for $100
• A second chip on the same windscreen in the same visit for $40
• Telling you what the repair left behind, and showing it to you before I leave
• Telling you what to ask a replacement shop when the answer is that it needs replacing

What is not included

Most of this list is a decision rather than a gap. I do not replace glass, and that is deliberate, because a replacement needs a second pair of hands, the right glass for your car, adhesive that has to cure and a camera recalibration on modern cars.

• Windscreen replacement, and any part of arranging one
• Rear glass, door windows and quarter glass
• Long cracks, which usually need a new windscreen (send a photo and I'll tell you honestly), and damage through both layers of the glass
• Recalibrating the camera behind your windscreen
• Lodging or managing an insurance claim for you
• Any promise that the mark will disappear
• Wiper blades, trim, seals and anything else on the car that is not the chip

Headlight polishing

Headlight restoration is the second job in the van, about $140 the pair in the same visit. It is not covered by the $100 for the chip.

How a booking works

It starts with a photo, not with a visit. A photo of the chip with a coin flat on the glass beside it answers most of the question before anybody drives anywhere, and it is the fastest way to find out whether this is a job for me.

From there it is four steps and none of them commit you to anything until you have a time.

• You send the photos, where the car is parked during the day, and whether the damage is in front of the driver
• I read it and tell you whether it is a repair, a replacement or a no
• If it is a repair, you get a time and the price is the one published on this site
• You get a message from me when I am on my way

The arrival window

A booking is a one hour arrival window, say between 10 and 11am. The diary counts the job before yours longer than it usually takes and adds the drive between the two, so traffic has somewhere to go. If it still slips, you get a message from me before the time you picked, not an excuse after it.

• You get a message when I am on my way, not an unannounced knock
• If I am running late you hear it from me before the time you picked, not after
• If I have to move your booking, you hear the reason and you get the next free arrival window
• You do not need to take a day off. The car is what has to be there, not you

Where the car needs to be

I come to the car. The work happens on the outside of the glass, so I do not need your keys and I do not need to get inside your car. What I do need is to stand at the windscreen safely for about forty minutes.

That is easier than it sounds and it is usually a driveway, a work car park or a flat spot off the traffic.

• Legal, flat parking with room to stand in front of the windscreen
• Off the traffic. I will not work on the wrong side of a car parked on a busy road
• Shade if there is any, because glare hides the shape of a break
• Undercover if you have it, because it takes the weather out of the equation
• The glass dry, or dry enough that I can dry it myself

If I get there and I cannot reach the car

A locked gate, a boom gate at a work car park, a car that somebody drove off in, or a spot I cannot safely work in. It happens, and the honest version is that it costs me the slot.

What I will do is message you, tell you what I found and offer you the next free arrival window. What I will not do is invent a charge on the spot.

Rain, heat and the weather

A chip repair needs dry glass. Water sitting in a break hides how deep it goes and stops the repair working properly, so rain is not a delay I can push through to save you a reschedule.

If it is raining at your car and there is nowhere undercover, I move you to the next free arrival window. You do not pay for a visit that did not happen, and there is no fee for weather that neither of us controls.

• Undercover parking means rain is not a problem at all, so say so when you book
• In the open I may ask you to move the car into shade before I start
• If the weather turns mid job, you hear what that means for the repair at the car
• Rain is not your fault, so a reschedule for weather costs you nothing

If the glass cracks during the repair

Glass sometimes runs while it is being repaired. It is a known risk of the process rather than a mistake, because the break was already in the glass and the glass was already under tension.

You will hear it from me at the car, while I am still standing next to it. Not on an invoice and not in a voicemail two days later.

• If the repaired chip turns into a crack within 12 months, you get $100 back
• If the chip cannot be repaired, you pay nothing and there is no call out fee
• If it spreads during the repair, you do not pay for a repair that did not hold
• If the finish came out worse than I expected, I tell you rather than wait for you to spot it
• If it now needs replacing, I tell you what to ask a replacement shop, and that costs you nothing

If something else on the car gets damaged

This is the part most small business terms quietly skip, so here it is instead. If I damage something on your car that is not the chip I came to fix, tell me at the car and it gets dealt with between us, in writing, rather than argued about later.

• No claim of being insured, because no policy exists yet
• No small print saying that damage is your problem, because that is not how the law works either
• No asking you to sign anything that waives your rights before I start work

Cancelling and moving a booking

You can cancel or move a booking. Tell me as early as you can, because with a few hours on it I can offer the slot to somebody else instead of driving to an empty driveway.

• Cancelling costs nothing today, whenever you do it
• Moving a booking costs nothing today, and a reschedule for weather costs nothing either
• Nothing is taken in advance, so there is nothing to refund if you cancel
• If I cancel on you, you get the reason and first choice of the next free arrival window

Prices and paying

Two numbers are published and they are the same for everyone. Everything else on this site says pending on purpose, because a price invented to fill a table is the fastest way to lose the only thing this business is selling.

Here is the honest state of it.

Insurance claims are between you and your insurer

I am not an agent for any insurer, I am not paid by one, and I do not lodge claims. That means I have no reason to hold your policy details and I do not want them.

There are two things worth asking your insurer before you decide anything, and you ask them, not me. Whether the policy limits how many glass claims you can make, and whether a glass claim affects your no claim bonus. What the answers mean for your money is your call. I am not qualified to make it for you and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

What you can hold me to

Terms are only useful if they are specific about which promises are real. These are, and the ones on the right are not promises I am making.

Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law

Nothing on this page takes away your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, and nothing on it could, because those consumer guarantees cannot be excluded, restricted or signed away by a business. If any wording here ever seemed to do that, the law wins and that wording simply does not apply.

In plain terms, the services I sell have to come with due care and skill, have to be fit for the purpose you told me about, and have to be supplied within a reasonable time. If a service fails one of those, you are entitled to a remedy. Where the failure is major you can cancel and ask for a refund, and where it is minor I get a reasonable chance to put it right.

So the right order is this. Tell me first, because I would rather fix my own work than have you chase me. If we cannot sort it out, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Queensland Office of Fair Trading are the places to take it, and I am not going to pretend those doors are closed to you.

Common questions about the terms

One last honest note

This page describes how I actually intend to work, in plain words, and it is not legal advice. No lawyer has read it. One would tighten the wording, add the parts a small business forgets and probably shorten some of it, and getting that done is on the list before this site goes public.

So read it as a straight answer rather than as a document that has been through anybody's compliance review. Where something is not decided it says so instead of guessing, and every one of those gaps is a decision waiting on me, not a detail I am hiding. If you find something on this page that does not match what I actually did at your car, tell me and I will fix the page or fix the practice, whichever one is wrong.

Photo credits

The photos in the price steps that show each kind of damage are examples of what that damage looks like, not jobs done under this name.

The photo of a long crack is by Famartin, from Wikimedia Commons, cropped. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, and so is the cropped version. See the original.

The map of the area I cover is built on map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL).

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