An 05 Clio has just been picked up from my road by Copart, so presumably it's written off. The only damage I could see was the driver's airbag had gone off and a scuff on the front RH side of the bumper (I've polished out worse). All the panel gaps looked good and seemed to line up.
How much would it cost to replace the airbag?
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Mrs F had a daft bump into the back of a mid sized Kia a couple of months ago. Her C3's nearside bumber corner contacted the Kia's offside rear bumper corner. When she got home I pressed in two displaced bumper retaining clips on her car with my thumbs, t-cut the scuff and with a touch up pencil made good where the bumper paint had scraped away to black over an area that a wasp would cover (it's all I could think of that size). 5mins and you couldn't see it had happened.
The Kia driver said it had to go through proper channels but Mrs F said she'd happily sort it for cash as the Kia looked as if it could be easily sorted too. However the same day paperwork was started and it was taken to a repairers for quotation. The cost was to replace the bumper which of course was half the back of the car, make good mounting brackets and spray... £1000+.
Bodyshops and insurer as an incestuous mix and can soon write off an older car between them.
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>> Bodyshops and insurer as an incestuous mix and can soon write off an older car
>> between them.
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NONSENSE!!!!!!!
Why would a bodyshop want to write off a car? that means no business for them!
Many bodyshops are going under... its the insurance companys that have the final say - and they really push to get costs down.
The labour rate in a bodyshop round here, would be around £30 an hour compared to £100 in a mechanical workshop...
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Sorry it's true.
A high quote for an insignificant bit of cosmetic damage on a run of the mill car perhaps 5-6yrs old will often cause the car to be written off on economic grounds.
In the real life example I gave the car my wife hit could have easily had a smart repair for perhaps £100-£150 but no... it *had* to have a complete new bumper.
The whole decision making process was between the bodyshop and insurer. Hence my comment.
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I don't suppose the electrics of an eight-year-old Renault could be trusted to withstand a sneeze, never mind an airbag detonation. Would you want it afterwards?
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Capitalism is addicted to turnover which brings a percentage. It is therefore motivated to be as wasteful as possible. The result is systematic, colossal worldwide waste, essentially stupid, deeply immoral and in a word, criminal.
We are all used to it and many aren't even aware of it. Their little beady eyes light up with joy as their stupid jalopies are repaired by cynical shopkeepers at a cost of £1,000, instead of getting a twenty-minute, virtually free invisible mend from an intelligent owner.
Prats.
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Doesn't take much to write off a car - Fenlander
