Are the specific repairs itemized? If not, I'd ask the car owner to have the repair shop break down the repairs by by price saying, "that way I know how much of the total repair bill I'm responsible for". Say it as if you 'assume' they also know only a percentage of the damage was done by your son, not in a challenging way that puts them on the defensive.

Oh that's perfect! That's exactly what I was looking for but wasn't verbalizing very well. 'A way to not put them on the defensive!'

I like the way dlm phrased that. It does sound like either the owner is trying to get some extra work done at your expense or the body shop just listed all the body work they noticed. I'm curious - did the owner see it happen?

"Dumb - but it's done and we obviously told the owner to get a few estimates and that we would take care of the damages."

All kids do dumb things --
But what I wanted to say was a great big "Good for you!" for telling the owners and setting the example for your kids that you did.

Sadly, it isn't obvious...

I would find my own body shop & ask the owner to take it there. I also would not hand them a check; I would pay the body shop myself.

I'll write more tomorrow but my neighbor hit my son's GF's car - they took my neighbor to small claims court & won close to what the highest estimate was.

No he didn't. Apparantly it was someone walking down the street who saw my son throw the rock. Not being from the neighborhood and knowing that it was our kid he called the cops on his cell which was the right thing to do. DH saw commotion outside and went out and the guy asked us if it was our car and DH said "No, that's my son, what's going on?" then the cop showed up and took a report and contacted the owner.

I don't know, I was a bit put off by the owner. Turns out he lives on the next street over but always parks on our side street. The other day I was pulling up when I saw him in the car and went over w/ my other kids in tow to offer my sincerest apologies, offer to pay for it and ask him if he would come over so that DS1 could formerly apologize to him. He's older and retired and I just felt like he could barely be bothered to look at me while he talked down his nose to me. He said that he and his wife would be over but they haven't and I really want my son to put a face to it so I will probably haul him over to their house now that I know where they live as I don't take this lightly at all.

I don't want to to be friendly w/ him but I know that I'm a hot head and I just think that the whole thing could have been handled much better.

I mean a neighbor peed on my van (he moved out the next wk) because I had the nerve to tell him to please not set fireworks off at midnight and the police advise me NOT to file a report becuase of starting something and here's my 6 year kid getting a report filed against him when all the cops would have had to do was look up the license plate right there and walk around the corner and ask the guy if he wanted to file a report!

Since 6 year old kids aren't scary we SHOULD file reports, but because a big stupid old idiot pees on my van in public and starts screaming at me I'm advised NOT to file a report because he might start something w/ me? Well there's a can of worms!

It just makes me angry - and I'm NOT sticking up for my kid - he was really bad.

Since the owner didn't see what happened I would think it would be hard for him to try and blame all the damage on your son. It does seem odd that he'd park his car where he couldn't see it but maybe your side street is quieter than his.

It's not necessary to tell you that you're doing the right thing - you already know that. But I thought I'd pass along a little story about what my son did when he was about the same age. We were shopping at a K Mart and while going through the check out line my son apparently saw something on the rack and since I also had a 4 and a 2 year old I didn't see him steal it. When we got out to the car I noticed a small bulge in his jacket pocket and something shiny sticking out.

I marched all three of them back into K Mart and made my son apologize to the manager and admit what he had done. It really made an impression on my son. In fact for a high school writing assignment he wrote a short story titled "I was a K Mart Criminal."

And the item that he coveted so much that he stole it - a Michael Jackson sequined glove - the one made famous in his Moonwalk dance. He;s now 31 and still remembers the entire incident.

I don't want to to be friendly w/ him but I know that I'm a hot head and I just think that the whole thing could have been handled much better.

But it sounds like from what you are saying that you are more pissed off at how the cops handled it than anything he did. I mean, if I read you right, the cops wrote up the report before even contacting him. It doesn't sound like he insisted you pay for the damage, you volunteered. So he didn't call the cops, someone else did and he wasn't hassling you about it, you volunteered to pay.

The only thing he did "wrong" was not be all warm and friendly when you apologized but maybe he was ticked from the incident as a whole and just didn't want to be bothered dealing with it. If he's older and retired he is probably not thinking about this in terms of how to make it a learning experience for your son, he is thinking about the fact that now he has to deal with damage to his car that he didn't want to deal with.

dlm already nailed how to deal with it. I'm just saying - I understand that you are a hothead but I don't see where this guy has really done anything wrong or could have handled things differently. If he had made a huge deal out of it and called the police and insisted on a report and threatened to sue that would be one thing.

Two years ago, my brother in law accidentally backed into the driver's side door of my car, leaving a dent that was about 4" long.

I took the car to the body shop of my choice and was told that the door, front fender, and pin striping running the entire length had to be worked on/fixed. The auto guy told me that there was no way to get the paint color to match without doing the door and fender, so that they could feather the color to match. Pin striping has to be in 1 straight line and that was fixed as well. To work on the door required moving and reinstalling the mirror.

Total cost was just about $1000...for a 4" dent. Take that for what it's worth.

McMann - that story is too funny! Good for you and him. I hope this incident has that much of a lasting impression on DS.

kgwlisa - no I'm not ticked at the guy for the incident or anything. He just seemed so dismissive of me and I can understand that. We are clearly 2 different types of people. I just see so many parents in the area who don't care what their kids do and let them run amuck that I just thought that he could have put his paper down for a moment and looked me in the eye. So no I really don't care to be friendly - just courteous and respectful and do the right thing.

lesterd - I was assuming in the 800-1000 range (DH seemed surprised - I told told him to take off his rose colored glasses - it's a Volvo and not his duct taped together 1993 Huyndai Excel that he can't part w/). This guys pinstriping was already messed up and had nothing to do w/ what DS did. Feathering was included in the estimate but not for a rear fender. It says new rear fender. And new side view mirror. I don't think that the guy is trying to get over on me - I think that he just went and got 2 estimates and gave them to me when I asked.

Why isn't he submitting through his insurance? I assume there is a police or incident report?

I don't know if this will help you; but hopefully you can take something from the story. This is the reason I say not to hand them the money directly...

My story is that son's GF was parked on my side of street where there is no parking signs. Later we find out that they may not be legal signs.. My neighbor, directly across backed out of her driveway, bumping GF's car. There is a small scratch - similar to what a shopping cart would do. I tried to wake the kids; at one point hubby told neighbor to leave. Kids woke up; she called her parents (car registered to them) who said don't worry about calling police. The damage on my neighbors new minivan is worst.

A few days later as hubby & I are sitting in the ENT office getting his 1st needle biopsy; GF texts me to say her parents were calling police & would be at my house later that day. I told her no because of what we were going through. The father spoke to neighbor; don't know where I was; neighbor told her to get estimate; when he saw it was $800 he said get 2 more; one was $400; another $600. I was shocked because the dent would not devalue her 15 year old car.

Eventually they got tired of waiting for the neighbor to pay (gave them a week IIRC) and filed a claim in small claims court where the judge ruled for almost the most expensive of the 3 estimates. The GF never fixed her car & pocketed the money. This has put me in a bad spot with my neighbors even though I spoke to them after it happened & told them we were on their side. It makes me sick that her parents took my neighbors to court and pocketed the money.

Looking back over it; I don't know why neither called their insurance company because paying a deductible would have been cheaper then what was put out.

When I scraped my dh's new mustang against the garage doorway opening it left a scrap along the edge of the fender from about 9-12 o'clock. He took it to shop and they tried to tell him I scraped it from 9-4 o'clock. I think I know where the car stopped along the wall and there are no scrapes past 12. This was a really high end shop and as I don't think they were trying to get over on us it just bugged me that they would try to tell dh I did more damage than I did.

As for your situation, I can understand them having to spray the nearby areas too but replacing the mirror and bumper/fender seems odd. It also bugs me that when damage a car that aleady has damaged pinstriping that you would have to pay for that. Or when you damage a bumper that is already beat up totally that you would have to pay to repair whole thing. There has got to be a way to kindly tell the person that you want to pay for all the damage you caused but that there is preexisting damage to take into consideration. I think that wording is good. Also, if you want to take to your own shop you may tell them that you know of a place that does really good work and that you really want the job done nicely. Often the words we use can easily sway someone.

My son was playing with the neighbor kids. The neighbor boy and girl were throwing rocks up into a pine tree to knock off the cones. Several owners told kids to stop, luckily my kid was standing away and not throwing. This happened to be the one day my dh took his mustang out of garage and parked on street because we had to use garage for something that day. Sure enough, boy hit the car. Hit it on a spot that you cannot pop out a dent, it is on the edge of the back of car, not a flat spot. Dh was devistated. But this boy is our son's buddy and they play together daily. It was not intentional, even though we told them to stop. We thought of telling the parents but decided the friendship was more important. We will just get it repaired when we fix the damage I did to the fender. Luckily it is really small and not noticable at all.

Your poor husbands car!!!!!!

Yeah, he came home and I sat him down and started crying. He said, "What's wrong? Did you wreck my car or something?" He was more upset that I even thought of driving it than damaging it. It is the only thing in 21yrs of marriage that I consider to be HIS.

Oh, well, a few weeks later he was parking it in the garage and got too close to the other fender and scraped it against a bolt on the shelves. Since it was already hurt he did not feel so bad.

Then last summer he pulled this lightweight trailer out onto the street. The mustang was parking in driveway. When he moved the trailer around the car he did not realize the rubber caps were not on the yakima bars that stuck out. He got too close to back bumper when he made the turn and one of the rails scraped a big 12" long line across the top of the bumper. He said many many Fbombs. Course it did not help when I asked him why he was so close to the car when he pulled the trailer around.

You said the pinstripe had some pre-existing damage. Perhaps the fender does also. But the repair shop that gave the estimate does not know what damage came from your son and what was already there. They were simply asked to give an estimate to have it fixed and they did. I don't think it was intentional on anyone's part :)

roselvr - they may have pocketed the money rather then getting the car fixed but they can do that. In most states you don't have to get the car fixed even if you received the money from an insurance company. As long as you own the vehicle it's your decision. If it's a leased car you have to have it repaired or when the lease is up you'll have to pay then.

Yeah, I understand that.. it's the way they handled it; made a big deal about this tiny scratch and how it needs to be fixed; then they don't fix it.

Karma played out. Last week someone hit her car & took off. Damaged the mirror; I don't know what else, I haven't spoken to her about it.

If the situation was reversed and this happened to my son's car; I would not sue their neighbor; especially since it appears we may be in laws one day. If damage was bad enough to need to be fixed; I would go through insurance. I have to live with the decision they made.. my neighbor is taking it out on me.

All she needed was rubbing compound.

He may not want to submit a claim to his insurance company. That can trigger a rate increase depending on what company it is. Also, the damagee (I know, not a real word, but I like the sound of it) is entitled to take his/her car to the shop of his/her choice. I know that when I have been hit (four times in our school parking lot, no less), I always get my estimate from the body shop we have used over the years. They do the best work and give me a decent price.

Bravo for teaching your son such a valuable lesson and venting your frustrations to us!!!

Most automobile insurance property damage deductibles are $500 and up. I was rear-ended last year and the guy who hit me wanted me to submit it to my insurance carrier and have them subro against his carrier. No way, why should I make a claim with my insurance carrier that will raise my rates because I was stopped at a red light and the guy behind me didn't stop? Absolute clear liability.

Also, with regard to payment of damages - the person suffering damage does not have to use the compensation $$ to repair the car regardless of whether he owns it outright. The purpose of payment is to compensate the owner of the vehicle for the damages, he isn't obligated to fix it. If the car is leased, it will be up to him at the end of the lease to repair the damage or have the lease company charge him for the damage.

Do you have a local body shop that would fairly estimate the damage that was done by the rock thrown by your son? I would ask your neighbor to take it and get an estimate for only the damage caused by your son.

Will the guy who saw the whole thing happen attest to the damages your son pointed out? Perhaps enlisting his help with enlightening your neighbor as to what damage your son caused will dash your neighbor's hopes of having all of his body work done on your dime.

Chiroptera makes a good point......

Almost a wk. went by from the time that I spoke w/ the owner and got the estimates and he still hadn't come over for a formal apology so I got his address off of one of the estimates and DH took DS over to apologize properly. DS made a 'Sorry' card and shook his hand.

DH said the owner is a quiet man and was quite understanding about not having that kind of money laying around. He's going w/ the lowest estimate and is fine w/ us making monthly payments to him until it's paid off.

I'm keeping the cash from the yard sale out to use for daily expenses and will write a monthly check out to the owner so that we can show that we did pay him should any problems arise down the road. I don't think that there will be though.

I told DH that if the owner was generous and understanding enough to accept monthly payments then I have no problem getting him a new side view mirror!

Sorry you had to go through this. Awesome job with how you guys handled DS.

And right, the guy may have asked for an estimate and they gave him just that but it should've been itemized since your son isn't responsible for all that.

I'm glad he's willing to accept payments.

That is great that he will take payments. You are lucky that he will do so given the litigous society that we now live in. It is much better than you turning it in to your insurance company, or he into his.

I would say your DS has learned an important life lesson and kudos to you for handling this so well.

Thanks - I appreciate your kind words!

DS is finally getting to the point where he can sort of talk about it w/o getting angry and clamming up. Hopefully soon he will be able to smile and chalk it up to a stupid thing that's done and move on.

If this had been my kid, he wouldn't sit down for a week, would be grounded until he'd done enough chores to make up for the check I wrote, and I'd have written a check for the larger estimate, got the injured party to sign a statement that the incident was closed and that I was no longer liable for any damages resulting from the incident. Case closed.

(Why should he traipse over to your house for a "formal apology"?)

What the man is like isn't relevant. What his daughter is like isn't relevant. I don't understand why you don't just pay for it and get it over with. Monthly payments? Is he charging interest? I would.