2026 Kia K5

Every other case here reprices a job the carrier had already written up. This one runs the other way. The estimate was produced from photographs on 12 August; GEICO’s document is dated 19 August, after an in-person inspection. Nothing was tuned in between, because there was nothing yet to tune against.

Priced at the rates measured from GEICO’s own documents, the estimator came out $518 over what GEICO allowed on a $11,547.73 repair, which is 4.5 percent. That figure is published as one job and not as an accuracy rate, for the same reason the Tesla case gives: a single result is an anecdote whichever direction it falls in. There is no accuracy percentage on this site and there will not be one until enough of these exist to mean something.

The totals agreeing hides three errors that mostly cancelled. Labor came in $1,212 high, parts $193 low, and the estimator produced nothing at all against $739 of miscellaneous charges. Read only the bottom line and this looks like a good result. Read the ledger and it is three problems in a trench coat.

The hours are where the judgment lives, because hours are what the model decides and rates are only arithmetic applied afterwards. GEICO wrote 26.3 body hours; the estimator wrote 10.5, sixty percent under. GEICO wrote 4.6 mechanical hours; the estimator wrote 21.5, which is $1,436 of the gap on its own and the largest single error on the car. Refinish went the other way, 18.2 against 11.9.

The parts are the half that holds up. $6,980 against $7,172.90 is 2.7 percent under on a $7,000 parts bill, and parts are the half of this estimate with real grounding behind it, because the corpus of what carriers actually allowed is indexed by make and injected into the prompt. There is no equivalent index of what carriers allow in HOURS per panel, and this car is what that absence costs.

The $739 of miscellaneous is a capability gap rather than a mistake. A carrier books cover-and-mask, hazardous waste, corrosion protection and the rest as separate charges, and the estimator has no line for any of it. It cannot be off by the wrong amount on a figure it never produces.

One detail worth recording because it probably drove the refinish overage: the estimator read the paint as matte purple. GEICO’s document says Steel Matte Gray. Both are matte, so the multi-stage refinish reasoning survives being wrong about the colour, but the write-up leaned on a custom finish and the refinish hours came in half again over what the carrier allowed.