Consumers who dread going from auto body shop to auto body shop for estimates to fix car dents and scratches can now do it by computer from the comfort of their homes.

DentBetty.com allows car owners to upload photos of their damaged cars and receive online bids for repairs from area garages.

Launched in San Francisco in July and Boston last month, the service is free, although DentBetty hopes to expand nationally and eventually start charging repair shops a small subscription fee.

"The thesis behind it is that it's much easier to upload photos on a computer to get bids online - it literally takes 15 minutes - than it is to spend a half a day driving around," said Alec Murray, a DentBetty investor and board member from Wellesley who's handling the company's East Coast rollout.

DentBetty is designed for car owners who don't want to go through their insurance companies for cosmetic dent repairs. Six local auto body shops have signed on so far, and Murray expects to have 20 shops within a 45-mile radius of Boston by year's end.

The auto body business is moving more toward Internet referrals, just as insurance companies allow customers to submit photos online for claims, said Michael Hynes, whose Hynes Auto Body in Chestnut Hill is trying DentBetty.

"So many people now just go online and do stuff, and it really seems like it can work for certain types of repairs," he said. "Minor dents and scratches can be accurately appraised through good pictures."

The nonbinding estimates obtained through DentBetty include the distance to the auto body shop, how quickly it can make the repair, whether pickup and delivery are included, and how confident the shop is in its cost estimate.

"It gives the auto body shop an opportunity to create a little wiggle room around the estimate, and it's fair to everybody involved," Murray said.

Both sides of the process are blind: Auto body shops don't see the car owner's name when they submit quotes, and the car owners only see a shop's name when they choose an estimate.

Murray said he immediately was hooked on DentBetty after CEO and founder Andrew Mann showed him a demo of the Web site a year ago.

"I am constantly putting dents in my wife's SUV as I drive around Boston, (because) I'm used to driving smaller cars," said Murray, a consultant for People Logic, a Cambridge "human capital" consulting firm. "I hated the process of getting repair estimates and, consequently, often didn't get dents fixed for a long time."

Leo DeLeo, co-owner of DeLeo's Auto Body in Cambridge, sees DentBetty as a customer-service tool, particularly for people with hectic schedules.

"When somebody gets into an accident, it's stressful," he said. "This way, they can sit at home and have a couple of days to think about (the quote), and we can make life easier for them."