Damage to Symphony Sliding Door

Hello fellow owners
On a recent trip abroad, my husband unfortunately badly damaged the sliding door on our AS Symphony by scraping it along a barrier (that we couldn't see) in a supermaret car park. It is dented badly with some scratches all in the bottom right hand corner of the door, but most of the door (80%) is unscathed.
For reasons I will not bore you with here, we decided not to claim on insurance. We really want to know if people think it would be cheaper (or even possible) to replace the door completely or repair the damaged one and what people think it might cost.
If anyone has any experience of this sort of work it would be good to get an opinion.
Many thanks
Helen
PS - I can't see how to attach a photograph to this post or I would have done!

Posting photos...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Hi Helen
Condolences for your injury. I too have a Symphony. You won't be able to get a new door and a second-hand one will be as scarce as rocking horse teeth. I'm afraid you are looking at fixing the one you have and I suspect you have already realised that yourselves. 

A couple of years ago I had some major welding work done on both sides of the van including the removal of a couple of dents, skimmed and repainted. The total bill came to a few grand so can't say what it would cost for repairing the door. 

Has it been bent? ie does it still shut properly? Difficult to say without a photo but from your description it sounds like a straightforward job. If you can find a small local independent body shop willing to take it on, I would have thought a couple of days to prep and paint would suffice. More if they have to straighten it first and if they need to replace those awful black transfers at the bottom (I've had mine removed). So unless I'm under estimating the job at say 20 hours at about £40 an hour then you should get change out of a grand.

Hopefully someone more in the know will come along cut that estimate for you.

Good luck.

As Crystalvoyager says, the key thing is whether the door functions correctly as a door. If it doesn't then it would probably be best to declare it to your insurance company and have it fixed professionally, because that takes all of the time-consuming aggravation of sourcing parts and choosing a paintshop out of your hands - it should all be done for you.

If it really is just cosmetic then I've had good results from backstreet body repair firms - if you ask around the local garages you'll generally get a fairly good idea of which ones will do a good job.

My advice would also be to avoid any body repair company that specialises in motorhomes, as they will - in my experience - always charge a big premium.