Typical cost for paint chip repair?

[ironxcross]

Sorry I am not sure if I'm in the right forum for this question...

But I recently bought a b7 A4, loving it! The one bad thing about it is that it came with a big chip on the rear fender from a shotty repair that's been done in the past. The car checked out otherwise and was super clean with only 45k miles so I got it anyway, and now obviously looking to get this fixed legitimately before it rusts away. The chip is about the size of a nickle and is rusted already, and the paint/filler around it from the repair is quite thick, probably 2-3mm.

I took it to a highly reputable body shop in town, since it seems like a good idea to get this fixed well and be done with it. The guy there said based on looking at it that it will probably cost around $600, maybe less if I'm lucky and it was only a small area that was poorly repaired. Does $600 sound fair for this? It's a tiny chip so I was hoping for more like a few hundred... but then again it clearly has been repaired poorly so I'm sure there's lots of extra work involved to get it back to "good."

Let me know if I am being stingy and $600 sounds fine, or if I should shop around for another quote. I'd definitely rather pay more to have it done right and can stomach $600, but the less I spend on this the more I have for some future mods... hence my cheapness. It's sad to take the money that would have bought a GIAC tune and spend it on a darn nickle sized paint chip :(

[rahip4567]

i would honestly just get a touch up. What color is your car?

[ironxcross]

It's black. A simple (cheap) touch up sounds like a great option to me, but if the old repair material is going to continue to chip away and cause problems down the road I'd rather not have to deal with that. Probably smarter to try a touch up first though I suppose.

[drob23]

Personally, I only think touch-up paint works for small paint chips, would never use it for any kind of large repair. I got touch-up paint from the dealer with with my paint code and I can tell a difference from about 2 ft away. Are you sure that the rust won't spread? I'd be inclined to get it done professionally but depends on how OCD you are and the paint quality on the rest of the car.