+1 everyone nowadays tries to get out of it free. Puah, USA. hahaha

 

Alot of respect to the kid for stepping up. I hope everything goes well with the direction your taking with him.

 

Well I've got my first quote. $1,257 dollars

 

Exactly.

Your insurance company does not need to be made aware of anything, despite how badly they want to record every little accident.

Your bases are covered. If at any point you feel uneasy about him and his intentions to fix things, you call the insurance company. There is no steadfast rule about you having to call them immediately or they won't provide coverage.

Similar happened to me: Lady opened her door into my car as I drove past and ripped up the passenger door, rim and rear quarter. She cried, said she'd pay out of pocket. I agreed, filed with police, asked her to sign a document agreeing she would cover equivalent cost to that of the insurance company and she freaked out. Refused to sign it, cried some more, etc etc so I told her I did my best to accommodate what she wanted but now I was no longer comfortable and would allow my insurance company to repair it and recover their costs however they saw fit. I came out fine and didn't feel any undue stress despite her trying to be manipulative.

 

Well I called him and told him the quote via voicemail. However I've heard from a few of my friends that his parents may want me to take my car to a shop "they know" to get an estimate there.

I'm kind of wary of that seeing as how they could skew the estimate in their favor. I have no connections to anyone around here and I took it to a neutral shop where I did not know the guy. (Collision masters) and got a quote there for $1,283.91.

What should I do?

 

you should definitely do some research to find a couple quality shops and get estimates from them as well so you can compare your quotes with their own.

 

As stated by others, give him a break for being upfront with you. If his parents are unhappy with those quotes and you're really feeling good, take it to the shop they recommend (granted it looks legit of course). With two quotes within $30 of each other though, it doesn't sound like you'll see much deviation from future mechanics.

My $.02 is: take it to the guy you're most comfortable with working on your car - It is still is your car and his fault, so him and his parents are gonna have to suck it up.

 

I would guess that the parents are thinking a little bondo, a little paint and some buffing will take it right out. They don't realize that its plastic and the whole bumper needs to be replaced. They come unpainted and it has to be color matched well or it'll look worse than it did before.

That costs money, your estimates seem reasonable.

 

Good thing he was honest.
Someone hit my car on my door and mangled it and left without a note.

Yea, just ask him to pay for it instead of going through the insurance.
No need to be anal to your school friend. Be cool as he was cool with your car.

 

This seems a lot.
I'm on your side and all that...but $1200 for the honda car bumper job is way too crazy. Maybe something like $500~600 or even less. I mean unless you swap the bumper out ( I don't think it's necessary unless you really want new bumper over it) it's just a paint job and redoing the clipping on bumper to me.

Good luck anyways.