How a small dent can total a car....
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| Posted on April 5, 2021 at 14:52:36 | ||
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Posts: 16242
Location: So. California Joined: March 1, 1999 Contributor Since: March 1, 1999 |
A while back, my son got hit in a parking lot by a jerk that took off without owning up to it. The hit and runner tagged the driver's side quarter panel with about a 5" diameter dent that pushed in the quarter panel about an inch or so and broke the joint that connects the bumper around to the quarter panel.  I'd been after him for a while and finally got him to take my truck to work so I could go over to the shop and see what they could do. We've known the owner for over 20 years and his son was friends with my son, so we always get the friends and family service. My thought was if it could be done for a couple thousand, maybe we'd just pay for it to avoid the insurance claim as our deductible is $1,000. Unfortunately, it needed a whole new bumper skin and the quarter panel had a some tweaks in a couple areas that would be hard to fix without a ton of bondo which they don't like to do and they felt it wouldn't be that great a fix. But, if we made a claim the first glance would put it at about $4,000, so we decided to make a claim. Three weeks later, USAA totaled the car. The problem is that inner quarter panel is part of the unibody structure and it's dented and tweaked at the bottom right, under the gas fill area. Also, the line is off for the wheel well. (That skinny tire is just something they use to make it easy to work on, his wheel is just fine)  To make matters worse, you can't just fix that inner quarter, you have to cut it out along with another piece and the pillar structure on the left of the gas filler and all of it has to be welded. Now, if the outter quarter panel was like the olden days and bolted on to a frame, no problem. But in this case, the quarter panel has to fit perfectly to the inner panel and the bottom part is actual glued, not bolted to the inner structure. The estimate escalated to $8,100 and a decision to total the car.  All of this was complicated because the regular adjuster was on vacation and the shop had to deal with a new guy that had little incentive to do much when it's not his territory. So, after arguing over the valuation of the car and the ratio which seems to be about 65% of the value, I got a number of $7,500 would work on Friday and talked to the shop and they agreed to trim their hourly rate and get there. Then, I get a call Friday night that he was totaling it anyway. His justification was that it's a safety issue and that the shop can't do it for that price, and more BS. Finally, this morning I went back to the shop and got a PDF of the estimate at just under $7,500 and the owner's son emailed the new quote to the adjuster. While drafting a nasty email and preparing to attach the PDF to the adjuster, lo and behold, he calls, we've been approved for the shop to move forward to buy parts and do the work! I always wondered why a lot of seemingly minor accidents result in totaling cars. It's all about unibody construction that makes it very hard and expensive to fix. Today fenders are not made of steel and bolted on, but rather are thin aluminum or plastic glued on to the body. So far, this whole process has taken 3 weeks and it'll be a couple weeks for the shop to actually do the work and get it done. Luckily, I got off the hook because my son was really disappointed and was wishing he just left it like it was with a little dent. As an aside, I'd called the adjuster first in the morning to find out what the salvage value of the car was. It was awfully high at $4,538, but I figured that we could fix it and perhaps, pocket a few grand. Whether the adjuster now knew that he wouldn't get car for auction had any impact of the decision to fix, I'll never know. Still, you have to be a bulldog with insurance companies. -Rod
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| Yep, it's all about insurance companys and panel shops making a killing!, posted on April 5, 2021 at 15:09:15 | |
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Posts: 19654
Location: Sydney Joined: June 26, 2000 |
We had a similar thing - While our renos were happening we had to park up the street at times and Shaz's PT Cruiser got hit and runned in the rear RH quarter. Due to the giant size of the replacement quarter panel and the way it blends into the roof turret and the door arch, they wrote it off. Shaz had a heart to heart with the insurance assessor (including tears, because she loves her PT) and they reviewed and gave the repair the green light :-) Trying to hide from entropy John K
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| I have the 2020 hatchback - is that a hatch? Man, hope I avoid dents. nt, posted on April 5, 2021 at 16:37:35 | |
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nt
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