Originally Posted by
nightracerx
They wouldn't salvage the car if there was only minor front bumper damage, was the car still drivable when you got into the accident?
I was in an accident with my own car, where it seemed there was only back bumper damage and a tail light broken and such, and the car seemed quite drivable (except the tail light broken made it
legally not so), but a thorough inspection of the car turned up frame damage that was invisible from the outside and did not obviously affect the car in normal driving (but affected the structural safety of the car going forward), and as a result of that the insurance company totalled the car. Having said that, in this case it was an older car, and it only took $3500 or so to total it, and I don't think the bil in my casel was
much more than that. Still, the point it is, damage
behind the bumper can cost
way more than damage
to the bumper, but you can't tell if there is damage behind the bumper until you take the bumper off, which obviously as a renter you wouldn't do!
I can't day whether this is what happened in this case, or whether it was you "renters mixed up" scenario, but it certianly is possible to have more damage found in a thorough inspection than an ininital quick inspection first estimated.