Nope they listed the damage on the thing and it was all the bumper scratch. I mean they might have just done what doctors do and falsely inflate the price but it didn't seem to be made up damage.
This incident that I saw the aftermath of had the car suffer "a scratch" and a couple of popped clips. Aside from the bumper cover sticking out proud of the fender on the driver's side by about 2mm, this was the only other visible damage. "A scratch" or two as it were.
This is the final estimate that became the bill for that "scratch".
These are far cheaper prices than a Lexus dealer would charge for parts and the body repair work (assuming the dealership has a bodyshop). These repairs were carried out at a Hyundai-certified independent body repair facility associated with but not owned by the local Hyundai dealer, so the prices were cheaper than the other local dealer's in-house bodyshop.
Just "scratching" a modern car is far more expensive to repair than you seem to think.
Really damn gross if so though like the bug was in awful fucking shape at that crash so the guy would have to have been like "I, someone who can afford a fairly new lexus, find this 500$ charge unreasonable, so I will cost this poor person whose car is probably totalled and in need of replacement a surcharge."
Why is that supposed to be their responsibility when it was your responsibility to not hit them in the first place? Further, you have no idea of their financial status. For all you know, that could have been a company car that was issued to him and he
couldn't have actually afforded the car. Or he could have had significant money at the time he purchased it, but now he's got a wife suffering from cancer while having to pay for round the clock child care/college/other huge nasty family expenses that aren't immediately obvious. FFS, I was T-boned/clipped in my XJ6 of the time (not the one I have now) during one of the absolute
worst business years I've ever had - to the point where for a couple months I was buying ramen in bulk so I had enough money to feed my (furry) cat. But I've got a nice looking Jaguar, so that automatically means I had enough money to let the miscreant who hit me not pay for what damage they did, right?
Hint: It doesn't.
Hey guess what I was forced to pay the first year after that crash? Three thosand five hundred dollars. The bug is worth maybe half that. My insurance before the crash was under 1k.
That is not how car liability insurance works, or how the liability part of comprehensive car insurance works. The price you pay for liability insurance does not take into account the replacement value of your car. It is calculated based on how likely
you are to do damage to
other people's cars and property, and how much that damage is likely to cost when you hit them. When you hit the Lexus, you told the insurance company that you are an inattentive driver who likes running into stationary objects that cost significant amounts of money to repair and therefore are high-risk; your premium was adjusted accordingly. You could be driving a car that was free to replace because the manufacturer was giving them away and it still wouldn't affect your liability rate.
Rear ending someone on the street is actually one of the 'minor accidents' that will jack your insurance rates up a seemingly disproportionate rate here in the US, because it is (usually correctly) assumed that the person doing the rear-ending was at fault unless it can be proven otherwise (good luck with that). It is further assumed, again usually correctly, that this was due to inattention and that the accident was correspondingly completely preventable. This is hard to disprove, which is why
the swoop and squat scam has been a perennial favorite and in turn is why dash cams are becoming wildly popular these days - they're the reliable only way to prove you
weren't being an idiot and should not be at fault, if that indeed is the case.