Hmm SWMBO is a bit :irked: now. Received a letter from insurance regarding the incident where she slowly shunted the rear of a BMW X5 with her Ford Ka (linky).

Anyway, letter states

...Moving into the total repair account, we can confirm the following,

Repairs to Cxx xxx - BMW X5

Go down to a BMW garage and ask for a quote of your own...

And then dispute it with the insurers

Do you know which car he hired? You might find that if his insurers promise him a like-for-like courtesy car, the price soon racks up..... also remember that if the insurance is paying, repair centres tend to take a few liberties!

Chris

1k for a bumper and paint (assume metallic) plus labour for removal and refitting of new one sounds about right. most mountings will have to be changed as will deformable crash structures behind the outer plastic.

rear parking sensors are in that area too, and possibly some lights as well??

Yeah, I've come to accept the fact that the bumper is expensive.

What I can't get over is the rental costs

Looking at some rental sites, I reckon the X5 will cost around £200 per day, in hire charges. So I suppose the quoted car rental could be for 1 week.

The car was totally driveable - the bloke drove off with nothing more than a scratch, so whilst I can just about understand an exhorbitant repair bill, the job should just take a day or two as he can drive the car whilst the parts are being ordered, and then just take it in for a day's job to have the bumper replaced.

I had this problem on a repair to my car. Even though it was roadworthy, they didn't know exactly what parts they needed until they stripped the bumper hence the longer wait rather than just ordering a bumper in advance. I didn't have my car for 2 weeks but the invoice had less than 10 hours labour. Go figure.

You'll probably lose at least 2 yrs NCB and I doubt that a

TBH it sounds about right, actually it sounds quite cheap

I ran into the back of a Saab in my iccle Rover 100 a long time ago. One of those things, the lady involved had to do an emergency stop as she turned into a side street as some kid decided it would be a great idea to just step out on the road. I only hit the back of that car at about slide to a halt-speeds. Really no speed at all, I wasn't going fast anyway.

The damage to that vehicle was a bit of trim, mine had to have a light replaced + panel + respray of bonnet etc.

The cost of the little trim on the Saab was about 1500 quid as they replaced the whole rear bumper on it :eek:

It is amazing how much the cost screams up though :(

A red skoda octavia I know had the rear bumper replaced last week (shell only) and a few clips hammered straight - £700 billed to the shunter's insurance co. - ludicrous, and as long as the insurers let their repairers get away with this fraud, we all pay more insurance.

It's a beemer. What did you expect?

I've never heard of this hiring thing though...that's somethin' you might wanna look into.

My first experience of skoda was slamming into the back of an M reg one in my (at the time to me) new fiesta sport - line of traffic and one "nice person" decided to let a lorry cross so everyone hit the brakes, I was a little late .

The woman driving was more concerned about my car than hers, while I kept asking if she was ok.

"Yes I'm ok" was the reply and she only had a minor scratch to the bumper, meanwhile mine had to have the bonnet, spotlights and bumper replaced :eek: .

Strange that the insurance costs to her were

Probably used one of these Legal drive hire companies - who really take the mic

£450 10 years ago for the hire of a basic fiat Bravo 3dr for 3 days. Nearly lost my NCD over it as other parties insurers would not pay.