Accident - few questions

Thanks for the input. My eyes aren't seeing the paint mismatch as badly as others but who knows what it will look like once I see it outside and not under shop lights.

Mercury did admit 100% liability but they were stalling so I went through our insurance, Geico. Geico was not helpful. Their adjuster recommended new aftermarket bumper and repair the fender despite my requests for new OEM bumper and fender. I was pissed because why the heck would they do that when Mercury is footing the bill. That's why I skipped the Geico repair shop and took it to the independent. Their offer was a new OEM bumper, fender and bracket so I took the offer. Of course, they tried to short change me so here I am .

I'll update after talking to the shop manager on Monday. Everything's closed for Thanksgiving. I'll probably change to AAA after all this is done.

 

Agreed. That's why we're going to pursue the DV claim (even if the odds aren't great). We usually drive our cars until they die. I'm usually pretty chill with car repair but it's always been damage to our cars when they were several years old. This one was two weeks old.

 

Ridiculously late update since we had our second baby and it's been a crazy time moving as well.

1. The car was repaired and overall it was passable. They did not replace the adhesive liner on fender (attaches to the windshield) so it was just dangling. I bought the part myself and paid a different shop to stick it on. I was so sick of the original shop at that point.
2. We moved and 1 month after arriving, my wife gets sideswiped...on the opposite side!!! This time they nailed the fender, the door but missed the rear view, and the bumper. Other driver's insurance pays for new fender, repair the bumper and door. This shop did a slightly better job.
3. I talked to a lawyer about the DV claim, he said he wouldn't recommend it because...well, basically the Prius isn't worth enough (nice to hear that you're not rich enough to be worth the time). He did say I could pursue it in small claims but since I had moved away, forget it.

Anyhow, just wanted to close up this thread. I actually have video of the 2nd accident. After the first, I bought my wife a dashcam. Thank god we did otherwise it would've been a he said/she said situation because the other driver flat out lied. Nobody stayed to volunteer as a witness. Once we showed the video to the other insurance company, they gave up and agreed to full responsibility. I would upload the video but it's 24 megabytes and in the MOV format so the website won't accept it.