Our 1998 Jeep Cherokee with 145K miles was hit by another car that didn’t stop at a stop sign. It left a small dent near the fuel door plus some minor scratches to the bumper and the lights. The other driver “pleaded guilty” and we filed a claim through her insurance. Our insurance inspected the damage and estimated a little over $900 in repairs. Besides the dent, there are no safety issues with the car.
I understand that we are not required to fix the car even if the insurance company pays us for the full amount of the damage, right? If so, is it a good idea to just cash the check and live with the dent, considering the age of the car and its mileage? We don’t plan to replace it any time soon but we don’t expect it to last longer than 2-3 more years and by then it won’t probably have any commercial value even as a trade-in.
I wouldn’t.
I would leave the truck ugly and spend the money on function.
You say there’s no safety problems so take their money then prioritize other repairs like brakes, tires, suspension, tune up etc so the truck WORKS right no matter what it looks like.
Otherwise, they just paid for your gas for a year.
Agreed keep the money, maybe save it for a down payment On a newer car when this one dies. As a PS this will show on a carfax, so you can claim deminished value to the insurance co as well, as a car with a dirty carfax is worth less then a car with out.
I always loved the big band aid stickers for cars, If you can live with it take the cash and move on, otherwise take the cash and try a paintless dent repair, I have had very satisfactory results for 1/10th the cost.
Back in the early 1980s, I had a friend whose Ford Maverick was hit in the rear by an ambulance on a run to the hospital. The rear end of the ambulance hit the rear of the Maverick as the ambulance rounded the corner at an intersection. The ambulance stopped briefly, but then raced on to the hospital. My wife and I witnessed the incident from the window of a restaurant where we were eating.
At any rate, the insurance company for the ambulance company insisted the car be repaired. My friend was willing to settle for the cost of the repair. He hated the Maverick and was already planning to trade it. The insurance said the Maverick had to be fixed. The Maverick went to a body shop and the insurance company of the ambulance operator furnished a rental car. The repair took a week longer than expected. Three hours after my friend got the Maverick back, he traded it in. He could have saved the insurance company some money.
I was hit by a hit and run driver in an Oldsmobile, which, at the time was 26 years old. I had the license plate of the car that hit me, but the motorist was not insured. The police insisted that I had to report it to my own insurance company which I did. It turned out that I had uninsured motorist coverage on all my vehicles. A claims adjuster showed up in my driveway and printed me a check on the spot. I assumed that the car was totaled and I told her I would get the title. “Not on your life”, she replied. “You keep your old heap”.
I had a similar incident with my '88 Escort probably about 15+ years ago. A truck hit it while it was parked on a construction site where I worked. If I recall correctly it had damaged 1 of the headlight assemblies and left a small crack in the paint. The estimate was $777.xx. As I was on my way home from work one afternoon I saw another Escort sitting on a flatbed truck and stopped to ask if they would sell me the parts I needed to repair my headlight. The owner told me he was getting ready to haul it off for scrap and told me to get anything I needed. When I had got the parts I needed I ask him how much I owed him, he replied $5., I think the only other thing I had to buy was parking light bulb. Total cost to repair the car was about $6. About 250K-300K miles and 15+ years later I am still using the car as a daily driver. I only paid $500. for the car when I bought it in '93.
