Home / Our crew

Our dent repair technicians
in Bellevue, WA

Four people will decide how your panel comes out.

So you should probably know who they are. Paintless repair has no filler to hide behind and no paint to bury a mistake under. The panel ends up exactly as good as the hands and the judgment behind it, which makes the crew the entire product.

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The short version

Dent Solutions NW is a paintless dent repair shop at 13421 NE 20th Street in Bellevue, Washington. Doug Hillius has been in PDR since 1999 and founded the company in 2004, working out of the back of his car. It is now four technicians and a full time office, with close to sixty years of hands on paintless repair between them.

59yrsCombined on the tools
1999Doug's first year in PDR
2004Dent Solutions founded
4Technicians on the floor
The Dent Solutions NW crew in the Bellevue shop: five paintless dent repair technicians in front of the shop wall
The whole shop, 13421 NE 20th Street Everyone who touches a car here, photographed in the bay your car would be worked in. Four technicians and the office, which is the entire company.
The record

Thirty years of this trade,
read across one line

Every claim on this page is on the chart. Pick a name to follow their track, including the thirteen years one of them spent out of the industry entirely.

Who was doing this, and when

Solid green is time on the tools. Everything else is the road that got them here.

Drag the chart sideways to see all thirty years

On the tools In the trade, not PDR Out of the industry Office and claims
Bellevue, Washington

Nobody here is learning the trade on your car.

In their own words

The crew

Written by them, edited only for length. Pick a name to read one at a time rather than wading through all five, because the actual histories are more interesting than anything we would have invented.

DH

Doug Hillius

Owner and technician

In PDRSince Feb 1999
Founded2004
Road racing14 years

My journey in paintless dent repair began in February 1999, when I graduated from dent school. I spent the next six years at Dent Wiz sharpening my skills, where I was also trusted to train new technicians fresh out of school. Teaching others the craft made me a better tech myself.

In 2004 I took the leap and founded Dent Solutions. In the beginning it was just me, working out of the back of my car and handling every part of the business, the repairs and the phone calls and the scheduling, all of it. As word spread and the workload grew beyond what one person could handle well, I was fortunate to bring on excellent technicians who share my standards for quality work.

Cars were not my first arena. Competition was. I earned a pre-law degree from Pacific Lutheran University in 1994, where I played college soccer on scholarship. The game took me all over the world, and those years taught me the discipline and drive I still bring to work every day.

Speed has always been in my blood. I raced off road motocross for many years, then spent fourteen years road racing motorcycles up and down the West Coast, in Washington, Oregon and California.

I have always loved cars and customizing them, and I think that is exactly why I am so passionate about what I do. Not just fixing cars, but taking care of the people who bring them to me. I own a few rare trucks myself, and there is nothing better than meeting fellow car owners and staying involved in the local car scene. I am a family man with two great kids who love joining me at car gatherings.

JH

Jeff Holdaway

Technician

In PDRSince the mid 90s
JoinedApril 2018
Placed4th, intl

I started working in the PDR industry in the mid 90s, for a prominent local company called Dent Masters in Northern Virginia. I had been doing leather furniture restoration and taught myself reupholstery in the process. I had just bought an industrial sewing machine and planned to start my own upholstery business. That is when I learned about PDR. Several close friends who worked in the industry introduced me to it, and I was instantly hooked. I loved the idea of taking something that was damaged and returning it to its original condition.

Initially most of my time was spent on used cars at dealerships and wholesale work, but I soon branched out into retail work for private customers. I helped start and run the first retail shop in the area, working with two other techs, in Tysons Corner, Virginia, one of the busiest areas for business in the country just outside DC.

In 2002 I branched out again, this time on my own, and became a hail chaser exclusively. I watched storm trackers to identify areas with large hail damage and partnered with local PDR companies to repair them. After adopting my daughter from China in 2005 I did not want to travel anymore, so I left the industry and stayed close to home. The following year I moved to Seattle. For the next decade I worked in other industries entirely, including bartending, restaurant and bar management, furniture delivery, quality control and furniture sales.

Fast forward to 2018, when I got a call from a close friend in Virginia who told me he had given my name to a local dent tech, Doug Hillius, who had a retail shop and was looking to hire. We met, and it seemed like the planets had aligned for me to jump back in with both feet. Getting back into PDR felt natural, like riding a bike. That following winter, my first year back, I competed in an international dent competition and took fourth place among the best in the industry. I have never looked back.

Since 2018 I have honed my skills more and more, working on more extreme damage and removing dents that once did not seem possible with PDR.

Jeff's motto, and the reason the hard jobs land on him: Autograph Your Work With Excellence.

RD

Ryan Dammann

Technician

JoinedJune 2015
TrainedDent Time, SD
StandingFirst hire

I have always had a passion for cars, and that passion started shaping my career long before I entered the paintless dent repair industry. In high school my interest in the automotive world led me to take auto detailing and auto body courses, giving me an early introduction to the craftsmanship and attention to detail that goes into working with vehicles.

After high school I ran the detail shop at a local family owned luxury body shop. From there I moved to an all hand car wash at a local specialty dealership. That is where I met Doug in 2008. During the seven years I spent at that dealership, Doug and I had many conversations about paintless dent removal and the opportunities in the industry. Those conversations eventually inspired me to turn a longtime passion into a career.

Before making the move officially, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the trade firsthand. For an entire year I spent my one day off each week shadowing Doug, watching him work and learning the ins and outs of paintless dent removal. That experience gave me a much deeper understanding of the skill, patience and precision the trade requires, and it confirmed this was the career path I wanted.

In May 2015 I attended Dent Time in San Diego to complete my professional dent repair training. Just one month later, in June 2015, I joined Doug as the very first employee at Dent Solutions, and I have proudly been here ever since. Over the years I have continued to develop as a technician while also helping train and mentor new technicians entering the industry.

Cars have always been more than a job for me. I genuinely enjoy the car scene and love attending shows whenever I get the chance, whether that is the newest supercars or rows of beautifully restored classics at Goodguys. One of my personal goals is to someday build a show car of my own. Outside of work, family is a huge part of my life: my wife, my two daughters and our English bulldog.

A year of unpaid Saturdays before he ever charged anyone. Ryan spent his one day off each week for a full year watching Doug work, then went and got formally trained anyway. That is the standard the rest of the crew is held to.

JG

Jason Gorcester

Technician

In PDR3.5 years
BeforeRace shop
FromSeattle

I grew up around cars and racing in the Seattle area. Teenage pit crew member to aspiring driver, which led to a German service and race shop in my twenties, to the computer world, and back to autobody by my thirties.

PDR had always been intriguing, so here I am, three and a half years into it with the best crew in the PNW.

Why a race background matters on a panel. Pit work is reading a machine under time pressure and knowing the difference between good enough and correct. That is most of this job.

M

Matt

Office operations

Joined2020
HandlesInsurance
AndScheduling

I have been part of the Dent Solutions team since 2020, where I oversee our office operations and help customers through every step of the repair process. I work closely with insurance companies and coordinate estimates and scheduling, to make sure everything runs smoothly from the first phone call to the day your vehicle is returned.

I believe great customer service starts with clear communication, honesty, and treating every customer with the care and respect they deserve. My goal is to make your experience as stress free and positive as possible.

Reading a panel before touching it

The board goes up before a single tool comes out.

“
Autograph your work with excellence.
JH
Jeff HoldawayTechnician since the mid 90s
Why this matters to you

A one person operation
cannot do these four things

Plenty of good technicians work alone, and some of them are excellent. Here is what a crew of four changes about the answer you get.

01

The damage gets matched to the technician

Extreme damage and the repairs that used to be considered impossible go to Jeff, who has spent the last eight years deliberately chasing them. Straightforward retail work moves faster with another technician. Nobody has to take a job they are not the right person for, because there is someone else in the building who is.

02

Somebody else reads the panel before you get an answer

Borderline panels are where shops get it wrong, usually by being optimistic. When a dent sits on the line between coming out clean and not coming out at all, more than one person can put a board on it and say so before you are quoted anything.

03

The phone gets answered by the person handling your claim

Matt runs the office full time, which means the insurance coordination, the estimate and the scheduling all sit with one person who knows your car. A solo technician is either under a panel or on the phone. He cannot be both.

04

The training is internal, and it shows

Doug trained new technicians at Dent Wiz before he ever started this company. Ryan spent a year shadowing Doug and now trains the people coming in behind him. The standard is not a policy on a wall, it is the same two people teaching it for twenty years.

13421 NE 20th Street, Bellevue

Same trade, same crew, same address.

Asked before every drop off

Questions about who touches your car

Who will actually work on my car?

One of four technicians: Doug Hillius, Jeff Holdaway, Ryan Dammann or Jason Gorcester. Which one depends on what the damage is and where it sits. Extreme or unusual damage tends to go to Jeff. If you want to know before you commit, ask, and we will tell you who has it.

How long has Dent Solutions NW been in business?

Doug Hillius founded the company in 2004, so it has been running for twenty two years. He has personally been doing paintless dent repair since February 1999, starting with six years at Dent Wiz before going out on his own.

Were your technicians formally trained, or did they learn on the job?

Formally trained, all of them. Doug graduated from dent school in 1999. Jeff came up through Dent Masters in Northern Virginia in the mid 90s. Ryan shadowed Doug for a year and then completed professional training at Dent Time in San Diego in 2015 before he touched a customer car. Jason came into PDR from autobody and a German service and race shop background.

Does the same person handle my insurance claim?

Yes. Matt has run the office since 2020 and handles the insurance coordination, the estimate and the scheduling. You are not passed between people, and the person you spoke to on the phone is the person tracking your car.

How many years of experience does the shop have between them?

Close to sixty years of hands on paintless dent repair across the four technicians. Doug has been in it since 1999, Jeff since the mid 90s with a gap in the middle, Ryan since 2015 and Jason for three and a half years.

Where are you and what area do you cover?

The shop is at 13421 NE 20th Street, Suite A, Bellevue, WA 98005. We work across Bellevue, Seattle, Kirkland, Redmond, Bothell, Issaquah, Renton and the rest of the Eastside. See the service area.

Where to go next
Put it in front of them

Send three photos.
A technician looks at it.

One straight on, one at an angle, one close, plus the year, make and model. It goes to a technician, not to a call center, and you get a real answer within the hour during business hours. Including when the answer is that paintless repair is the wrong method for what you have.

If you are looking for the cheapest number in the county, we are probably not it. What is here is thirty years of judgment about whether your panel comes back right.

Free photo estimate

How to Get Your Estimate

  1. 1Send three photosThe whole panel, one at an angle and one up close.
  2. 2Get a preliminary rangeBy text, within the hour during business hours.
  3. 3Bring it to the Bellevue shop13421 NE 20th St. The final price is confirmed in person.
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