Another little thing that makes having an agent worth the little extra cost.
Datsun310Guy wrote: When talking to insurance guys always mention how the other guy admitted fault. Say it a lot - that sped up a claim I had once.
Actually, that really doesn't matter. The drivers don't decide liability, the insurance adjusters do. It certainly doesn't help the cause if you have a driver saying they are liable. Definitely not someone you'd want to put on a witness stand if it ever got that far. However, far, far less than 1% of claims ever do. There have been many times where a driver says it's their fault and in reality, it isn't and we deny the claim.
OP can throw a new door and fender on there unpainted if he wants by trying to find one from a salvage yard that's the same color, but the insurance company will never write it that way. They'll write to have them painted. They have to. Also, it's very uncommon to write for just "cosmetic" damage to a rocker or A/B pillars. It usually involves a bare minimum of a floor pull or more likely being put on the frame machine. It'll add a few hundred dollars to the estimate at a bare minimum.
I finally had a chance to give it a closer look this morning. The door sill is bent up pretty good on the bottom where the door pushed into it and the mounting point for the bottom hinge appears to be slightly pushed in. There's also some VERY minor damage to the rear door as well.
I'm no insuanceologist but at this point I'm thinking she's done (though I'm probably still gonna go for the buyback).
Went to the body shop today. Preliminary estimate is $3124, likely to rise once they get the door off and assess the damage we can't see yet. Semi-official amount to total is $4000. So it's still too close to call, I'll find out next week when it goes in for repairs.
When I got rear-ended, the other guy's insurance paid a shop $4,400 to fix my (optimistically) $5,000 Saturn. They must have thought it was worth more.
Official estimate came in at $5078. I haven't gotten official word on whether they'll total it but at that price I imagine they will. Looks like the door sill and hinge areas took more damage than it looked like.
I may be of the minority here, but I usually prefer them to be totaled for anything more than a bumper.
So ultimately it was NOT totaled. They spent $5300 on repairs and $700 paying for the rental but I've got it back and I can't even tell it was hit.
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