I don’t want to get insurance involved, I’ll pay for it myself.

We here this statement all too often when people are afraid of there insurance going up. The problem with this especially when it is someone else paying for your car, is that there may be hidden damage. The complexity of today’s vehicles make it nearly impossible to know everything it is going to take to fix your vehicle correctly without first having it disassembled. We are in the middle of a repair right now that is being paid by a third party who didn’t want to use insurance so they came in and paid the initial estimate amount up front with a credit card. Once the vehicle was disassembled we found some additional damage and although we made it abundantly clear in the beginning that there could be hidden damage we now can’t get ahold of the third party who is supposed to be paying. This leaves the customer responsible for paying the remainder of the bill.

My word of advice to anyone who is going to agree to let an individual pay for their vehicle repairs out of pocket is to do so after acquiring all of their insurance information. By doing this you have a back up plan in the event they back out after repairs have begun. You also know for sure that they do have coverage and are not trying to avoid a ticket for no insurance. I also recommend calling the police if you have an accident on public property no matter how small the damage may seem as again you could be left paying for your own repairs if the other person suddenly decides they are not at fault.