I had my E parked in train lot and someone ripped off my ELEMENT Tag on the rear hatch. They must've used a key cause there is a nice scratch on it. So now some little punk is walking around with an E necklace.

Anyway, went to Dealer to get an estimate on the damage and a new Tag. Can you believe they want $450 to repaint and attach a new tag??? I mean it's just that one piece on the rear hatch! I can't get over this. Any help from a Dealer would be appreciated.

File a police report and call your insurance.

I bet there's no coincidence that they're charging $450 - His deductable is probably 500 and they don't want the added paperwork if they tried to charge more than 500.

My advice would be to wait until an E of the same color gets hit in the front and sent to a local junkyard. You can probably buy the whole rear gate for a couple hundred bucks and a lot less downtime.

From the thread title, I thought that someone "tagged" i.e. spraypainted graffiti on your Element. This happened to me once when I had my company truck and I drove a couple of miles without even knowing about it. I stopped off for a coffee, walked around the passenger side and said, "Oh sh**". Fortunately some solvent got it all off without damaging the paint.

That's a shame somebody chose to vandalize your E. There seem to be too many of these posts lately. Good luck with the repairs

I'd have given you my ELEMENT badge...I like the clean look of no badge and no H...

can you fix the scratch acceptably with some touch up paint?

sorry to hear about this, wish you could have caught the punk...

If you can repair it with touchup paint, you can also get another Element logo here for $14.31 (http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/auto/jsp/mws/prddisplay.jsp?inputstate=5&catcgry1=Element&catcgry2=2003&catcgry3=5DR+EX+4WD&catcgry4=KA4AT&catcgry5=EMBLEMS-CAUTION+LABELS).

it would be worth him doin it again just so you could catch 'em

-a la Pulp Fiction

try a bodyshop. No way would it cost over 400.