I managed to scrape my rental
 

I kind of feel beaten up twice today. Somehow my client did not manage to hurt me despite his best efforts, but for some reason Enterprise e-mailed me at 11pm. They finally have an estimate for the damage and it is over $1,500. I could purchase a perfectly-good beater for that amount!

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571379361

I didn't think it was that bad. Sand, pull the metal until it is close, use just a little bit of filler, sand, and repaint. The car is less than a year old, so they shouldn't really need to blend it in.

Well, somehow this took twenty-four days, and the estimate came in. I just do not understand what the front bumper, headlamp, and fender have to do with the door. If those are right at the top I wonder how relevant everything else is. A new door is a little over $200 on car-part.com, but they show far more work than that. I would think the rocker panel would be the difficult part. They show $277.40 for that and $493.60 for the door (including the back door!)

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571379350

They attached these pictures:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...2&d=1571380130

I don't see any bumpers, fenders, or headlights!

Since Enterprise requires using a credit card, in theory that will take care of it. I also switched to comprehensive insurance for the rental, but if paying out-of-pocket is cheaper than paying higher premiums for three years, I will do that.

According to this, your insurance can go up 44% after an accident and will stay up for 36 months. I currently pay $90 a month, which works out to $3,240 for three years. Forty-four percent of that is $1,425.60, or 92% of the estimate.

Does that include my $250 deductible?

I have a great deal of math ahead of me. This will probably delay me paying off my student loan (and credit cards).

By the way, I declined accident forgiveness, but I have it anyway. USAA said that I have been with them at least five years without an accident, but this kind of seems like a waste of a Get out of Jail Free card.

Jeebus. Shoulda bondo'd and rattle-canned that sucka before returning it.

I do not have any idea how long it would have been before I could have done that, but renting for a week or two would have been far cheaper.

However, what would they have done had they discovered that I damaged their property, did not tell them, and attempted to hide it?

Would it be any worse?

I don't think a claim on a rental insurance policy should affect your regular insurance. I'm pretty sure the rental insurance goes through Enterprise itself, essentially they try to talk everyone into buying it to offset the cost of the few that end up damaging cars. Which I guess is exactly how standard insurance works too, just through a different entity.

How did that happen?

Don't file a claim with your insurance; have your CC insurance cover it since it won't go against your record then. I'd have them pull all that other junk you didn't do off the quote too. They are trying to take you for a ride.

Do you purchase auto insurance through a voice conversation? If so, that's why you ended up with extra insurance fluff you didn't want (accident forgiveness). Back when I was a new driver I instructed my agent (in person) to give me the legal minimum insurance because I needed to keep my cost down. Years later I found out he had given me something like quadruple the minimum, and when I angrily confronted him (he works like 3 days a week cause robbing kids is easy money), he said he always gives new drivers higher coverage because it's a "good idea". WTF- I don't have any assets to protect anyhow, and I won't as long as I'm paying too much for insurance.

Anyhow, that's how I discovered online policies, and I got my parents to switch too. Way cheaper, and you specify exactly what you want, with no decisions made by crooks.

You're paying too much for insurance even though USAA is a good place to get it. I'd look into why you're paying too much.

I declined Enterprise's coverage and momentarily upgraded my regular policy.

How did what happen? The damage?

I did not file a claim with my insurance, but Enterprise insisted on taking my insurance when I returned the car.

I have done everything possible with USAA on-line, but the site says that they gave me accident forgiveness because I have had them for at least five years without an accident.

Count your blessings...that would cost 3x that here!

Yeah, $1500 sounds very reasonable. Replacing the front bumper ranged from that much to as low as $1000... for a piece of plastic and Styrofoam (plus paint and clear coat).

I must have missed something because the story is disjointed and incomplete... another post perhaps?

They're doing exactly that. A lot of parts are being removed, but the labor ops for the rocker panel and door panel are RPR (repair). The 3 parts with RR (remove & replace) and with part numbers are priced below list.

They have to blend. It's a year old car and it's going to auction soon under the premise that it's had a year of light use and is otherwise basically perfect- and dealers want to pay top dollar for that. Anything that looks like sheetmetal damage is going to drop it into a totally different price range because dealers know that even if there's nothing actually wrong with it, they're going to have to spend time and money looking for things wrong so they don't get surprises after they sell it.

It's a bummer, but it still looks like they're trying to repair it on the cheap- they're not putting a new rocker panel and door skin on it.

Yeah should have rented it for a few more days and took it to a Mexican owned body shop.

Wow, I didn't expect Google to have relevant results for "Mexican owned body shop," but it sure did! Just not in my area and the top result for Phoenix was a place called "A Cheap Body Shop" There was no mention of Mexicans!

I think the best course of action would have been Jerry Seinfeld's from when a valet stunk up his car. Here is part of it, but not the part that I wanted (and some random stuff, which isn't necessarily appropriate):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pEhqiCD27E

The valet stank up the car, he took it to a car wash, they said they never had a car smell so badly, and they didn't seem to be able to make it any better. In that clip he convinces the restaurant manager to climb inside, which in turn convinces the manager to agree to pay Jerry to have the car treated. I am sure there were more shenanigans, but in the end Jerry drove to a shady part of town, parked in front of some shady-looking guys, made eye contact, and while still looking at them and walking away, threw his keys into the car.

All that I needed to do was find some druggie and had them steal the car!

Where does one find a druggie?! How would my insurance covering a stolen car be better than my insurance covering a scrape?

Curses! Foiled again!

People say that I should have gotten rental insurance. The problem is that I have rented dozens of times without a problem. Ten dollars a day, maybe thirteen with tax, multiplied by all of the times that I rented...

The thing is, if I pay extra for rental insurance I am in this situation:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571584498https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571584509https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571584515https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571584524

Weird. I have received three notifications, but #13 was the most recent. I have hardly received any notifications in the last week, so I started checking recent posts again.

I wonder why I stopped...

The algorithm must know that you're not answering burning questions, like how'd you scrape the rental, so it doesn't bother notifying.

Who is not answering questions?

From the Beater thread:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1571882317

I checked my personal e-mail this morning before work and when I came home I had fifty updates, although hardly any have new posts.