Accident? Find Your Own Parts (For Cheaper!)
By Meg
It’s unfortunate that I can talk about this, really, but I’ve been there. In July of 2009, my S2000 was t-boned during what pretty much was a normal afternoon… The rest of the summer was anything but, after that point.
The damage was fairly extensive, and my husband and I were on pins and needles for almost two weeks before the adjuster came out to take a look at the car. We had no idea how much the damage was, and we were very much afraid that she would be totaled.
Thankfully, she wasn’t. The repair bill came back around $6,000 if I remember right, minus our $500 deductible. One thing I made sure we did was opt to get the insurance settlement ourselves and then find a body shop, not let the shop get paid directly. It was decided that it would be better off for us to do it this way. (Note: every situation IS unique, examine your own circumstances and come to your own conclusion. Perhaps the convenience is more important to you.)
We’re both big car nuts, so buying car parts is normal for us. It also means I have a fairly extensive knowledge of how much certain parts go for. The night of the accident, I was already on eBay and had already purchased a used passenger side door for our S2000.
While insurance was put-putting along with their settlement paperwork, I was busy collecting replacement parts: the new door, a new window, new door sills, a new set of side view mirrors, pricing out quarter panels and looking into reputable body shops to do the work. In fact, I figured if I saved a bunch of money on parts we could have a better shop do the work than we originally might have been able to, had we let them find the parts. (Reminder: It’s worth it to pay a body shop more money for a better job than to get it done cheap.)
In the end, the parts I collected and the work that we had done at the body shop came in just under the settlement amount — Meaning we were something like $100 in the positive and the car was completely back together. When I looked back at what the adjuster had put together, it kinda made me laugh — insurance companies look at what the “going rate” is for used parts, if available, and if not used they’ll use brand new OEM prices. Either can be quite outrageous!
Simply doing a bit of research yourself can save you quite a bit of money, and if you drive a fairly common car, it’s even easier.
Don’t wait for bad news to look into it — Go ahead, surf eBay today and price out some used parts for your car. I bet it’s cheaper than you thought it would be.