I live in a house which only has on street parking. A few weeks ago, my NDN was driving into the road to park, some idiot came flying around the corner and my neighbour had to dive out of the way in his van, which led to him catching the bumper of my car and bending one side of it out. We bent it back as best we could but the metal is split and folded now and it looks a bit shite.
I get on really well with my NDN and his wife, they are lovely. He said he would order another bumper, and really didn’t want to go through the insurance as it would push his premiums up. He definitely does have insurance. When I say bumper, it’s actually a nudge bar on the front of a 4x4. I know the type I had is very rare and I said at the time he would struggle to find one. He had a look online and said he had found the exact one and would order it in the next couple of weeks when he had the money.
6 weeks passed and….nothing. I was getting a bit cheesed off by now so sent a message saying if it was going to be a problem to buy a new bumper maybe it’s better to go through the insurance? He was like no no don’t worry I’ll borrow the money and sort it out now. He then tried to order the bumper, which is only available to buy from an EU country, and then apparently the company promptly cancelled the order as they no longer deliver to the U.K. because of brexit.
They’ve also scoured every breaker/eBay etc to try and find one but no luck. It’s kind of been left now that they’ve set up an alert on eBay and that’s kind of it 🤷♀️.
Part of me thinks I need to just let it go, it’s only a car. It does really annoy me that it looks crap now though. My car is old and pretty high mileage and I will most likely keep it until it dies, so the resale value isn’t really an issue. It just pisses me off every time I look at it!
Or the other option is to go through the insurance and see if they can fix it. I’ve a feeling due to the age of my car and the scarcity of the part they would probably write my car off. When I’ve had cars written off in the past which are still drivable, I’ve had a payout and been able to keep the car, which is what I hope would happen here. My car would still look shit but some financial compensation would make that less annoying.
WWYD?
YANBU - go through the insurance
YABU - let it go for the sake of neighbourly relations