Advice needed-parking accident

Ectophile

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

Why not use chips-away? They won't need to remove the bumper; that's overkill. Anyway its stupid to spend £500 on a scratch; why can't people be more reasonable and just live with a few scratches; my car is covered in them. Sometimes, when I feel like it, I fill and respray the worst ones from a rattle can; costs no more than £12

If you scratch your own car, you live with it. If someone else scratches your car, you want it fixed properly.


Also, the other party may have the car on a lease or PCP deal. If they hand the car back with visible damage, then they will be billed for the full cost of repairing the damage.

Shoshannah

debtdebt wrote: »

Why do you thunk £500 is a rip off price for a bumper repair and respray? Do you have previous experience of bodyshop rates? Just because you think the price is high doesn't mean it's not unreasonable.

I think £500 is a fair figure.

If you're not happy, let your insurance deal with it.

Given that I had to pay £1000 towards a repair on a 2017 hire car for similar damage, I also think £500 is to be expected and likely a good price.

Slightly worse damage on my own car (not my fault that time, though the hire car was... ) cost me less than £100 to fix because it was a 1992 car, I bought a replacement bumper on eBay and sprayed it up myself with rattle cans etc. The end result wasn't perfect but good enough for my needs on a car of that age.

As far as I'm concerned the owner of the vehicle has the right for the damage to be righted to a level they are happy with, provided it's not betterment.

OP I would have gone via the insurance in your position; hopefully your excess is lower than £500. Any update?

EdGasketTheSecond

Yes but the OP could have just driven off. Its a bit mean to land her with a £500 bill for being honest; its only a plastic bumper. If it were me I wouldn't take it any further. In fact I did just that when someone at work scraped my bumper about 3 years ago.

Tokk

Someone bumped a previous car when new - car park speeds (reversing out of a space, I was stationary waiting for someone coming out of a space several cars further along)...
Damage was next to invisible - you could see rippling if you looked at it in the right light, but exchanged details and said I'd get it checked to be on the safe side -VW main stealer quoted 700 to fix it, their insurance paid it.

You'd almost certainly find better rates from independent body shops, but if you're going through insurance there are excesses for using non-approved repairers... And it's up to third party who they ask to quote for it, not you.


As much as it's excellent of you to do the right thing and own up, it's still in third parties court to get a quote if you're both happy to get it done off the insurance radar.
If they get that quote and you can't/won't pay it then it goes through insurance and that's that - there's only so much legwork it's fair to put the aggrieved party through (it's not their fault they were bumped and it's not fair to expect them to go quote shopping).

If someone bumped my car and owned up I'd consider it a courtesy to attempt to find a non-insurance resolution (given their honesty), but either way it would be getting repaired properly.
(If you're feeling like a bit of searching, you'll find some examples of invisible damage becoming a big issue later, iirc focus letting water in through the bumpers following very light bumps)

Tokk

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

Yes but the OP could have just driven off. Its a bit mean to land her with a £500 bill for being honest; its only a plastic bumper. If it were me I wouldn't take it any further. In fact I did just that when someone at work scraped my bumper about 3 years ago.

IMHO...

Honesty should be the default.

OP did the right thing.
Third party returned the favour by trusting their honesty and offering them the chance to make amends without claiming on their insurance... So TP did the right thing, too.

OP doesn't want to pay what TP was quoted.
It isn't TP's fault that OP doesn't want to pay that much any more than it's TP's fault that OP accidentally bumped their car.

It's up to OP whether to pay it or use their insurance.

The amount quoted doesn't sound ridiculous, perhaps on the high side but odds are TP doesn't know a decent independent body shop and went to their local main dealer.

debtdebt

A main dealer wouldn't quote just £500. It would have been a lot more.

Vereniki

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I decided to go through insurance as I did not trust the other party to keep their word. As soon as I mentioned insurance they said their partner works in auto trade business and they can get it done cheaper. So for my peace of mind I asked them to claim against my insurance. I have no damage to my car so I'm not claiming on my car. Premiums are unlikely to rise more than £500 next year.

Unfortunately honesty isn't a given as only a few days later someone dented my passenger side front door while I was parked in the same car park and didn't even leave a note. Hey ho. Life's full of this kind of thing sadly.

Penelopa.Pitstop

Don't be surprised if claim never comes. Other owner my decide they don't want to tell their insurance about incident and have claim on their record.

jcb208

I would of said If you don't want to except a smart repair then we will need to go through the insurance due to costs

Mercdriver

jcb208 wrote: »

I would of said If you don't want to except a smart repair then we will need to go through the insurance due to costs

For clarity do you mean 'accept' as except would mean the opposite. (Others might have said would have said, but your meaning is clear in that bit)