Dr. Ding

You may recall that last month my husband was backed into by an elderly gentleman in a parking lot. I correctly guesstimated that this minor ordeal would eat up a month of my life. I have struggled while dealing with this gentleman with the image of my 80+ year-old grandfather. I want to be nice and understanding and willing to work with him, but at the same time, he didn’t bother to glance in his rearview, let alone look over his shoulder and barreled into our only family vehicle. I finally decided that I can be polite, yet firm in my resolve to get this handled correctly and fairly. Fair being that he take responsibility for his mistake by fixing the durn thing—correctly.

The things we have learned:

1)Always get the other guy’s insurance information—policy number, and phone number. Even if you choose to see if it can be handled outside of insurance, you will want that information as leverage.

2) Be very leery about going outside of insurance. Even if you decide to be kind and get an estimate off the record, make sure he understands that you are willing to get one estimate at the establishment of your choice. Inform him that if he is unwilling to pay for those charges at that establishment, then you will go ahead and contact his insurance agent.

3) If he refuses to provide his insurance information, call the police.

4) You have a right to have your vehicle repaired wherever you see fit. The insurance company may tell you what they will and won’t cover, but you can go to whomever you want.

5) Regardless of the insurance company’s desire to cut costs, the guy who hit you is probably a bigger cheapskate—go with insurance.

6) Beware of guys with monikers like Dr. Ding.

For the record, Dr. Ding was a very nice guy and I understand that paint less dent repair is sometimes a great idea—like times where you have hail damage or a door ding. Not in times where some guy has backed into you and destroyed three panels of your car.

Let me sum up the ordeal.

1) Mr. Cheapskate backs into my minivan.

2) In an attempt to be fair and nice, I get two estimates—both in the neighborhood of 2 grand, not including one week of car rental.

3) Mr. Cheapskate is unhappy with the estimates and asks me to meet him on a streetcorner with Dr. Ding.

4) We call Dr. Ding who suggests he can repair one panel and we could find a mobile paint service to touch up the other two panels. Yeah, right.

5) I call Mr. Cheapskate and explain that we will not be meeting Dr. Ding and that if he would like to handle this outside of insurance, we’ll go with the higher estimate and one week of car rental.

6) Mr. Cheapskate is not happy, insists I will have my car fixed wherever it is cheapest.

7) I politely explain that we will either have our car fixed at the higher estimate, or we will contact his insurance company and have their underwriter take a look at it.

8) Mr. Cheapskate insists on calling the body shop (I’m not quite sure why—I suppose he figures they were trying to cheat him in the estimate, or that I’m just stupid and/or am trying to cheat him in some way).

9) I feel a little bit bad about being so firm with Grandpa. Then I feel really proud of myself for standing up for myself (and not crying).

10) Mr. Cheapskate has his insurance company contact me.

11) Mr. Cheapskate’s insurance pays over $2K in repairs and one week of car rental to have my vehicle repaired properly—go figure.

12) I spend a week with a Dodge Caravan and am reminded why I am a Toyota snob.

That’s it in a nutshell. Tomorrow I get to claim my minivan. By the way, you know when you’ve truly settled into minivan territory when you tell the rental company you really don’t want to upgrade to an SUV, you’ll come back to swap out for the van when they have it ready. In my defense, every time my 4-year-old opened his big SUV door in a parking lot, I had visions of Dr. Ding dance in my head. There is a reason they put sliding doors on minivans.