Went to the first matinee with some friends today to see the new Star Wars movie. Dropped by a local Italian restaurant for lunch afterwards. On the way home, I was negotiating a clover leaf to get on the feeder road that will put me on the freeway back toward the house.

I'm first in line and roll forward slightly because of a possible opening and decide it wasn't worth it. Next thing I know, WHAM! After about 30 seconds of @#$$%&, I got out of the car and walked back. The right side of my rear bumper is scraped up a bit and there's white paint on her front bumper but the damage looks relatively superficial. The lady that hit me is very apologetic and very embarrassed but does have insurance so we exchange info. I head directly for my insurance agent (about 20 minutes away) and by the time we call the other insurance agent, they've already received a call from the lady that hit me and 10 minutes later, I've got a claim number. Not too bad, so far. They give me a toll free number to call in the claim on and they must be on the east coast because by the time I get home, I get the standard "we're open between 8 and 4" recording. It was 3:20, my time. I left my name and number and we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping to get a call back tomorrow morning sometime.

All things considered, I think I got lucky. I crawled under the car after I got home and there's no obvious deformations that I can see behind the visible body work of the rear bumper. When I stand directly behind the car and scrutinize it, I can see that the right side of the bumper it pushed forward and upwards, just barely. It's mainly visible because of the difference between the way the facia trims the left and right exhausts. If you're not really looking for it, it's not obvious. At least the car is drivable so hopefully I'll only be out of it for a week (maybe less, I hope) when I do get it repaired.

Wish me luck!
Steve R.

 

Sorry to hear that man. Best of luck with a quick and thorough claim and a quick and thorough repair!

Sounds like it could've been a lot worse though.

Craig

 

Bah, you seem like a good guy from all your posts on here. Sorry that happened to you.

 

A similar thing happened to me about 2 weeks ago. The left side of the rear bumper was slight pushed in, and caused the tow hook cover to pop out as the tow hook bit was protruding. The bumper was scratched a bit also.

After insurance claim etc, I dropped it in at the approved repairer on Monday morning. I collected the car on Wednesday morning.

If you have paint protection on your car I suggest you inform the repairer of this also.

 

Bummer!

 

dont feel too bad. i also got rearended by a guy going like 5 mph. the damage was bad enough to land me $500 but i never bothered to fix it b/c its not THAT noticable. good luck with the claim.

 

[QUOTE=FraudulentNeon,May 19 2005, 05:15 PM]Bah, you seem like a good guy from all your posts on here.

 

Update: I just turned the car in. The original quote is ~$350 to remove, repair, and repaint the rear facia. I'm expecting that number to go up a little, depending on what kind of damage they find underneath. Based on how it looks, I don't expect them to find anything serious but there may be some minor straightening to do. Wish me luck!

Drive Safe,
Steve R.

 

I can't imagine how you must feel ;sorry for the pain man

 

The conclusion:

I picked my car up from the body shop today. Basically, it was a two day turn around. They pulled the rear facia, repaired and repainted it, and didn't find any other structural damage underneath.

The color matches and everything lines up just like it did before the impact. I'm happy!

It's nice to know these things can go smoothly, sometime!

Thanks for the positive thoughts!
Drive Safe,
Steve R.