Bumped a car, excessive quote

[lilsquish]

morning, last week i bumped a car in a school car park causing slight damage to both cars.

I exchanged details and took photos of the damage. Very slight, scrapes - no dents. The owner stated she would take it to a garage to get a quote for repair. All fine.

When i got home, my huaband wiped down the scrapes with some T cut and it was good as new. I contacted the other owner and suggested she try this however she wanted to take it to a garage instead.

My husband had a quick look at her car the next day (it was in school carpark) and 100% certain the damage was less than my car and would buff out.

Now iv just had the quote from the garage through and i feel its very excessive.

Theyre quoting £550, itemising repair abd repaint in two areas and refitting the bumper.

Has anyone had any experience if this and know what i can do?

I wanted to settle it without claiming insurance to prevent premium going up etc but i feel this quote is ridiculous.

Its definitely a real quote etc, I dont in any way think the girl is trying to get anything more than she is due, i think the garage tho has bumped up the bill as they think insurance is paying........help!!

You could ask for 3 quotes? Or at least 2

I personally hate T cut and wouldn't take that as a viable abs reasonable alternative - it works by stripping the top layer of paint from the car to remove the scratch which means depending on the colour of the car and how knowledgeable you are using T cut you could end up with colour variations on your car

Unfortunately it's one of those things you might just have to suck up. I had scratches removed from my car but has a mobile company come to the house and do it on the drive for a couple of hundred pounds I think

As someone who has experience of the industry it really doesn't sound like the quote is being bumped up at all. The panel removal and respray of bumper and side panels will be necessary. You can't just touch up an area as it will be noticeable. Surrounding panels will need to be flicked up to ensure a correct blend.

If they are happy to let you send someone round to quote then great but if there is only small difference I would pay the extra to go through their garage to keep them happy.

iv been on mumsnet a long time, i put a lot of info in as i know how conclusions are jumped to if you leave things out.

yes i perhaps laboured the point a bit much about the minor damage and not believing it needs a respray. but bare in mind iv seen/felt the scrapes.

however i have been corrected by other posters who have had bad damage that looked like nothing so I accept i am wrong to have assumed that it is minor.

i apologise to those who have been angered by my posts and attitude towards this, im honestly not a rude cheeky fucker in real life.

Its been a stressful time and think this has pushed me to the brink.

I know this probably didnt come across well but the TCut suggestion wasnt just so it didnt cost me much financially, i was also mortified about putting her out by having to go to a garage etc. so was hopefully of a quick easy fix.

anyway iv rambled on enough.

Thanks everyone

@Smallgoon she is entitled to have the car repaired to the exact standard and condition it was in before the OP damaged it. What don't you understand about that?

A woman pulled o to a space next to me OP when I was pulling out of space and had minimal damage. I admitted I hadn't double checked in a tiny instance and took blame. She said she'd a quote for £1200 for what looked like next to no damage (my DH buffed out the damage on our car and he's useless) and when I queried it she didn't get back to me, was obviously trying her luck so I now would always double check and get 3 quotes through the insurers

As for age and make of car I think you're right it very much depends on the car, my wing mirror was knocked off recently and it was £1000 for a new one as it's got lights, retracts and is heated, it wouldn't have been half as much for an older less expensive model.

It's amazing the amount of personal injury claims that pop up later.

That's because insurers (on either side) sell the details on to one of these alleged "no win no fee" outfits that set about getting you to claim you had some "slight injury" that is mysteriously just under the threshold needed for serious medical proof.

Happened to us a couple of years ago after a taxi tapped the back of our car. Persistent buggers too. But as soon as they said you you need to take out "after the event insurance" I lost interest. Probably a good thing, as there have been a couple of stories of people ending up owing a lot of money because something when wrong in the scam claim process.

@lilsquish

sorry my reply was to Lochroy

Fair enough on the make and model. I don't agree with your opinion it doesn't need a respray though - that's why insurance helps. A garage will do anything you'll pay them to. An insurance assessor would make an informed decision.

We have a garage that we use all the time for anything car related. If someone bumps into me that’s where I will go. I will not be getting other quotes. If the person who causes the damage is not happy with it then I will be contacting their insurance company,

With these type of incidents I also wonder if it would have played out differently had OP hit a man’s car. Would her husband be inspecting the car in the school car park the next day, would there have been a phone call to suggest using t cut instead of worrying about garage repairs.

The man who hit me was a bit patronising, talking about using a plunger to pull out the dent, and explaining over and over again that his car want damaged. T cot was also mentioned as if it was something I would never have heard of!!

I think had I been a man it would have played out differently.

Ah OP, I would find this stressful too. It is stressful to make a mistake that then costs time and money, plus the added factors of fearing being ripped off, cross with yourself etc. That's honestly why I would just hand the whole thing over to your insurer.

With these type of incidents I also wonder if it would have played out differently had OP hit a man’s car.

Oh absolutely. I deal with garages/cars a lot and it's taken me years to find decent places to get things done that both do a good job and don't patronise me.

I will not be getting other quotes.

I'd be the same. However there is an onus on you to keep the costs to the 3rd party to a minimum. Not something I've ever agreed with, but there you go. (It's to stop people having a tiny knock and then hiring a Rolls Royce hire car "because the other party is paying").

However there is an onus on you to keep the costs to the 3rd party to a minimum.

Bollocks to that. If someone hits my car it goes through insurance, however for the avoiders out there, it's important to know who the 3rd party is. That is the person who was hit, not the person who caused the damage.

@FundamentallyFucked

With these type of incidents I also wonder if it would have played out differently had OP hit a man’s car.

Oh absolutely. I deal with garages/cars a lot and it's taken me years to find decent places to get things done that both do a good job and don't patronise me.

To be honest I found the garages brilliant, it was the person who hit me who was a bit sexist and patronising.

T cut is a home solution to strip away a layer of paint and remove scuffs. It can slightly change he colour of your paintwork. A plunger will not pull out a dent in a metal. I know this. I find it insulting that he reversed into my parked car, caused damage then suggested cheap solutions to patch it up.

If I had been a man i don’t think any of this would have been suggested. And if op had hit a blokes car I’m not sure the phone call explaining about t cut, or the husbands inspection would have happened either.

It’s happened to me before, I hit a parked car when I was reversing, went and found the owner, damage was fairly minimal, it was a 20+ year old Ford escort, that was in very bad condition (covered in rust, very tatty). I offered to pay out of pocket as they said have a friend who owns a garage and would give them a good price, didn’t hear anything for weeks until I get a letter saying they managed to get 4K out of my insurance for a car that was worth about £500 at most. I thought if it costs more to repair a car then replace it the car is written off?

I called my insurance and said why on earth have you agreed to pay out 4K when the car isn’t even worth a quarter of that? Why not just write it off? They just said since the value is on the small side of most of their quotes they just approved it as it wasn’t worth the hassle trying to dispute it. So for years it looked like I caused 4K of damage to a parked car when I applied for insurance.

Someone had a low impact collision with my car, from the outside it didn’t look to bad, however to repair it I had to have a new side panel near the petrol cap as you couldn’t pop it back into place and a whole new bumper as it came as one piece and was scratched. Total cost £1k

You also don’t know what other damage may have been caused as cars are built now to collapse around you in a crash

She is entitled to have her car put back as it was. You maybe prepared to t cut out scratches but you are being unreasonable to expect her to

Bloody hell what side of the bed did you lot get out of this morning!

The OP has been accused of being a know it all, superior, looking down on the other car owner, sneering at her car...all because she asked if we felt it reasonable to challenge a quote that was more than expecting.

To be fair OP, if you had damaged my car I’d be a bit pissed off that you suggested t cut but I wouldn’t have a problem with you getting an alternative quote as long as it didn’t cost me time wise.

Absolutely no need for some of the responses though!

I think it was all the information about how there was very little damage in op and her husband’s opinion. I also had a recent experience of a man thinking he knew more about car body damage simply becoase he was man so I am maybe overly sensitive about the trotting out of the husbands opinion after his ‘inspection’ of the car.

The phone call about t cut was the killer for me. Then op putting in the same sentence the car type and her view that it doesn’t warrant a repsray (although she later said she wasn’t linking the two). I would have contacted my insurance company I think at this stage as I would have interpreted this as op not wanting to fix the car.

If I was her I'd say to go through your insurance. That way she's not inconvenienced by getting more quotes and you can't complain at how much the quote is.

A man went into the back of me and my bumper looked ok, but on inspection the internal had been damaged so needed a new bumper. Was over 1k for that.

I think my issue is how iv worded it (off a nightshift) and how its been interpreted here. I got the quote through just as i got into bed and was shocked at the cost and work quoted so i hurriedly typed out a post on here. - god i wish i hadnt.

it was a text i sent her, not a phone call.

the exact wording i sent was this:

Hi , its ** here. sorry again for earlier, I was wondering if you could send me the photos you took of the damage to your car?
Iv managed to get the marks off of mine with a damp cloth so hoping yours isnt too bad either. Thanks, **.

i never actually mentioned TCut to her, as at that point all my husband used was a wet cloth and they wiped off lol.

her reply was

'Dont worry, accidents happen. I'll take it to a garage tomo and get a quote for repair'

I then said

'Great, thanks'

My husband used a tiny bit of TCut after this , and no we didn't know this took a layer of paint off.

and for the avoidance of doubt, her sex did not come into this!

Op, to go back to your original question, the quote seems reasonable to me. I think it’s a bit cheeky to ask for a second quote to be honest. I wouldn’t appreciate that if you’d bumped my car, and I’d be instructing my insurance company to contact yours. I am picky about who repairs my car and wouldn’t necessarily want to go with the cheapest quote.

Don't pass it to insurers. Tell her to go through an accident handling company. They don't put it through the insurance but will get best price at the garage - I work for an accident repair co

Tell her to go through an accident handling company.
Wtf.

Surely you’d go through your insurance for this? Maybe not if the quote was £100 or less but as the quote is £550 then you either pay it or your insurance pays it. Job done.

Your premium might go up slightly (I was surprised how little mine went up when I’d had the car written off) but surely that’s better than forking out £550 of your own money?

Sorry if anyone else has posted this - I'm on my way out!

I was told that if I didn't claim anything for my car (which you aren't doing) then premiums would not change. I pranged someone's car and should really have claimed on my insurance.

I didn't and paid her but could have claimed apparently without affecting my insurance.

If you don't claim on your insurance then get a few quotes.