On Saturday morning, a woman reversed into our fence. She lives out the back of us - don’t know her at all as we are in a very small cul de sac of 4 houses and she lives over the back where there are parking spaces outside of a few houses.
I didn’t realise she’d done it as it’s in our back garden - until she knocked on my door and told me. I’m grateful she was honest about it and commend her for doing so as we genuinely would have been so puzzled otherwise
She said she was on heavy duty antibiotics and had her two small children in the car and just misjudged. We went into the garden to see the damage - and yeah. She’s caved in the fence, torn it from the posts and it cannot be put back into place
I took her number, told her not to stress , thanked her for letting me know and advised I’d be in touch once I’d got a quote for the damage and we’d take it from there
A local fencing guy came out - we’ve used him on and off for years. The upshot is, it’s almost £400 to put right (we do not have basic fence panels .. I’ve no idea what they’re called but they’re grooved with horizontal posts across them)
I sent her over the quote and she messaged back to say she’s a single parent in social housing and she doesn’t know what to do
So. What do I do? Tell her to go through her insurance? I appreciate an excess payment can be a lot. Do we suck up the cost ourselves and ‘be kind?’ ( we can afford to do this if we have to BUT not easily on a whim and not without feeling it) or .. something else?
What would you do?