By which I mean I slid on some ice on a country lane and crashed through a metal fence. Then I drove a few miles to school whilst the fender worked its way loose. Finally, to add insult to her injury I parked her in a side street and walked the remaining way to school, leaving her looking sad and lonely and no doubt feeling very sorry for herself.
Poor baby. (Yes, I believe I did actually call her that out loud when I was driving home that evening and begging her not to collapse in a heap. She got me all the way to a garage and promptly fell apart).
This all sounds very dramatic, but I assure you that fortunately my car is a tough little cookie and actually, in terms of how battered she looks, I think she emerged relatively unscathed. A friend managed to fix her up a little on Wednesday night so that she held together, told me it was all just cosmetic damage and I decided that overall, the railings had come off far worse.
After D's handiwork with a pair of pliers and some duct tape, I expected this accident to set me back around £700. Inconvenient, annoying, but manageable. So when the nice man at BMW phoned me up yesterday morning and began our conversation with, “are you sitting down, Miss?” I knew the diagnosis wasn't going to be great. I wasn't sitting down, but I managed to balance my coffee so that I could grip onto a friend's wrist instead.
“You're looking at three and a half grand to start with, then...”
He did carry on, but I was too busy mouthing “WHAT?!?” to my friend and whispering the numbers so she could share in my fury.
Now normally I would be very careful about posting anything to do with who I actually am – I don't put pictures of myself, my friends, my horse up; I don't name my friends or school; and generally on the Blog Paranoia Scale I'm about a 6, usually. (No One Reads the Copy's BPS can be learned about here).
But this has incensed me so greatly that I'm going to show you part of my car so you can see how totally UNDAMAGED she actually is. I think I might take a sledgehammer to the bonnet and headlights, just to make sure I get my money's worth from the repair man.
It would actually be cheaper for me to write her off, as then Mini would replace her for free. It would also be cheaper to just buy an old banger to drive around until I've found a Saturday job to pay for the car/had time to take it back up north where it will be considerably cheaper to fix. In the meantime, I need to find a way of getting to school (which is handily situated in the middle of nowhere).
Horse and cart? (love this idea, Sion probably wouldn't).
Skis? (would work at the moment, but the snow is going).
Unicycle?
Hey, April, you're right to get irritated at the estimated cost of repair. You'll pay the BMW dealer top dollar ("top pound"?) in return for the dealer's doing top-of-the-line body work.
ReplyDeleteTo this un-trained eye, it appears you may be able to get away with a little banging on the fender, a little paint, and a little effort to replace the covering over the wheelwell. Then the bumper's going to have to be replaced.
In the States, "body shops" deliberately over-estimate the cost of body work and then haggle with the insurance company over the actual cost. If it's that way in England, then maybe you'll want to tell your BMW dealer that the repairs are being paid by you, not by an insurer. Then ask him to give you a better price.
When you get his best price, then take your car to an independent body shop for an estimate. Sometimes it's worth trading a little craftsmanship for a lesser repair price.
Here's wishing you good luck. I'm real glad your accident wasn't worse.
Hey Rider,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. I am irritated! Sadly the parts underneath the fender (the horn, fog lights, etc) were all completely wrecked as was the wheel alignment... I think it's the sheer number of small parts needed that pushed the cost up.
But it's getting fixed now (verrrry slowly) so I'm grateful for that. I went through my insurance in the end - cheaper for me and the insurance company got 20% off for some reason. But, as you say, I was really lucky - it was very icy and the accident could easily have been much worse!
On the plus side, the garage are also going to valet the car for me... Which is brave of them, considering I have a horse and consequently my boot is smothered in bits of straw!