Car-scratch repair pens are not magic. They might help you patch up light scratches on your car, sure, but they aren’t magic. What our gently buffed colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports discovered when they tested some popular pens advertised for quick scratch repair. One problem with the products: a paint with no color can’t replace colored paint that has been scratched away.

That’s not a problem when you just have a fine scratch on the clear coat of your vehicle. That’s the kind of damage that pens like the DuPont Pro Fusion Color or the Turtle Wax Scratch Repair Pen are supposed to fix. The problem, CR notes, is that the pens are advertised as working on “all colors” of car paint, and you can’t blame consumers who don’t know better for assuming that this means it will fix all scratches. Even scratches that go down below the colored paint.

Once a scratch is severe enough, you’ll be stuck patching up the paint, adding your own clear coat, and then sanding it down to a smooth finish. Or you could just leave it. Spending $10 or so on one of these pens when it isn’t going to cover the real damage to the paint, though, isn’t worth your time.

Car scratch repair pens [Consumer Reports]

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