DescentBB

I have a '97 civic 4-door. A co-worker backed into me last monday. now she is hounding me to have a friend of hers fix the car without involving her insurance. the damage is not severe as only the bumper cover was really effected.

now, i have literally got 5 different estimates. and of course her friend gave the lowest. i have done my research now and feel i have a good idea of what the options are. now i'd like to get opinions from some of you who know better than i.

option 1: replace the bumper with an aftermarket bumper. it would come primed and be painted. I'm told the job should take the better part of 3 days, largely for painting, buffing, and drying.

option 2: Sand down the entire bumper and repaint it without replacing it. this would be more labor and likely more money than option 1, but it would leave me with the original Honda bumper instead of an aftermarket product. I've pretty much ruled this option out because the bumper has already been hit once in the past. i'm concerned the paint wouldn't hold up anyway.

option 3: Order a new OEM bumper and have that painted and put on. More expensive, but it would be the best quality bumper overall. it might take more time to order.

To complicate matters, she knows I expect her to get a rental car for me if it required overnight work. Only her friend is saying it won't. He's saying he'll do the work all in the same day. This concerns me that he intends to skimp on the paint process. I feel like I shouldn't use her friend because I'm bound to get screwed that way. At first she wanted me to borrow her car, ugh.

So first of all...option 1, 2, 3, or (fill in the blank) ?

And ultimately (assuming i was right to rule out option 2) ...

Since it was her fault and she is paying for this, should i just insist on the OEM bumper?

-or-

am i just being greedy to want OEM and would be OK to put the aftermarket bumper cover on?

OEM, hands down. You don't want an aftermarket bumper. There is a possibility it will be of lower quality or have some other malady. Always go for OEM, its her fault, make her pay for it. Your car would have an otherwise perfect OEM bumper had she not hit you. Why should you opt for something less than what you had?

I spent 15 years as an auto mech. The insurance coverage will go with the aftermarket bumber anyway due to cost, unless you insist otherwise, and strongly. The paint will dry in a day, and more than likly he will paint it a day or two early anyway to assist her and you, he does not need your car there for that part of the job, only to R&R the part does he need the car. Another point to consider is your insurance rates, on the east coast your rates would go up also simply because you where involved - fault is not considered. So you may want to consider that. The last point I would like to mention is who does he work for, what does the better business peeps say about them, and will he back up the paint job from peeling for X amount of time.

tu arch and cuda. arch sums up why i feel i should have OEM.

cuda, in texas my insurance will not be affected. 4 of the 5 (the 5th being her friend) told me 2 and half days to get the whole job done right. i'm unnerved that his would be quicker and cheaper. as far as who he works for...her friend is a sole proprietor who has a shoddy little office. it looks like a place fred sanford might work. i know that isn't always significant.

but one thing that concerned me is i asked her to get me a copy of her friend's warranty and she did not produce it when she said she would. i definitely want a lifetime guarantee and i never ever want to have to use it.

The lack of warrenty and sole proprietor of a small ugly shop tells me to go elsewhere. Your making the right choice in my mind for those two reasons alone. Actually the small ugly shop does it alone. I no longer work on cars because I can't take it physicaly anymore. But the first thing I look at is a clean shop (shows pride in the work) and hands that are not damaged (he knows how to use tools).

i agree with Cuda, my 4 years experience in High School taught me enough about aftermarket crap.

OEM is always your best bet, because for another reason cuda didnt mention, aftermarket will almost 100% of the time have some kind of flaw in it.

Get her to give you a deposit equal to the price of the oem replacement job as collateral on her friends work since he won't provide a decent written guarantee. If you like his work she gets the deposit back, if you don't you keep the deposit and she gets the bumper he screwed up.

If she is confident in his work she can prove it by backing him up with a cash deposit, if she doesn't trust his work that much why should you?
At that point if she tries to smile and beg that girly cute way tell her to go piss up a rope!

the latest wrinkle is not good...

so i talk to her about a half hour ago. i explain that i've got 3 more estimates since her friend's this morning. i explain that of the five total body shops, only her friend's said the paint would take less than two days to do right. i explain that i want the OEM part and not some refurbished or aftermarket job...

she goes ballistic.

now before going on i should mention that after her friend did the estimate (early this afternoon) i asked if he would give a lifetime guarantee. he said that he would but did not show me in writing. i told her i wanted to see it before i agreed to anything. she told me she would get the written warranty and that i should go ahead back to the office. when she returned to the office, she did not bring the written copy of the warranty. she said i could see it when we dropped the car off. i said that would not work for me. i said it would be a waste of time and again stated i had to see it before agreeing to anything.

at that point she tells me, "I've already paid him". Well i didn't think too much of that at that time and just assumed she was lying, which she probably is. however, when i told her just now that i wanted to go with someone different, she completely flips out. starts screaming and yelling at me. starts telling me that I'm stressing her out!

she even threatened to dispute my claim and say the accident was my fault. well at that point, no more Mr. Nice Pally. First i told her to go right ahead because I have witnesses. They didn't see the collision (which she doesn't know), but they saw that i was driving cautiously through the parking lot at about 5 mph. what she probably hasnt realized is that she signed as the responsible party for paying on the estimate i had at her friend's shop. that right there oughta stand up as showing she accepted culpability.

But i wasn't done yet. I politely explained that i didn't ask for this to happen. it was entirely her fault. and that i was only trying to save her some money out of kindness. i explained that my priority was getting the job done right, with the right parts, and a guarantee. saving her money was a distant 4th for me. she's f'ing hysterical at this point. the b!tch thinks she's the injured party. by the time i was done she was just sort of sobbing quietly into the phone. and i never raised my voice.

i have a few more questions for two of the shops that gave me estimates and then i'm making my decision as to where I want it done. if she doesn't like that I'm done with her and going straight to her insurance company.

hysterical people are weak of mind. life is a mental state. mental toughness is a question of a level of consciousness. it's not about your motion, it's about your stillness.

i want to go live with the monkeys like Jane f'ing Goodall. In fact, with jane goodall. Is she still cute?

lol. the good news is you'll get over it.

Don't do deals. You WILL get burned. I would stop playing around, and just go straight to the insurance company now. You never signed any agreements with these two, so cover your own arse and go with the pros.

I've been burned by the local yokel body shop...

Good luck!

Sounds like a nasty situation.

The fact that you are not total strangers but co-workers doesn't help anything. It sounds as though you don't know each other well, but she expects more courtesy from your part than she would have from a total stranger.

I have this uncanny feeling I will never dare to go out with my 323i when it's restored... I will have spent more money on it than anything else before, and there will be well over 1000 personal work hours into it. If someone so much as scratches the paint, I think I'd break down... Eeh.

If she wasn't a co-worker, I would have gone to her insurance on the 1st or 2nd day. However, after last night my 'nice guy' lease has run out. she failed to show up for work today (wonder why). i left her a message saying i expect a cashiers check today and that i will be contacting her insurance company if i have not heard from her by 2 pm.

Oddly enough, I was involved in a similar incident just yesterday.

Trichord... Don't be a trailer queen!

If you worry about what might happen, you will never truly enjoy what you have. What's the point of having a beautifully restored classic if you keep it on a trailer in a hermetically sealed container?

Use it, drive it, and enjoy it!