Had a similar experience last year—someone dinged my side mirror in a parking lot. Dealer quoted me $600, deductible was $750... ended up ordering the part online and swapping it myself for under $200. Insurance math never adds up, does it?
Insurance math's a funny thing, honestly. Reminds me of a client I had a while back who got rear-ended at a stoplight—pretty minor damage, just a cracked bumper and a busted tail light. Dealer quoted him almost $1,200 to fix it, but his deductible was a flat $1k. He called me up, pretty annoyed, asking what the point of insurance even was if he was gonna end up paying almost the whole bill himself.
I told him straight up: insurance isn't really for the little stuff. It's there so you don't have to sell your kidney when you total your car or cause serious injury. For minor dings and dents, yeah, the math often doesn't add up—especially if you can handle a wrench or screwdriver yourself. Anyway, he ended up grabbing a bumper cover from a junkyard and ordering a tail light online for under $250 total. Fixed it himself in one afternoon and saved a good chunk of change.
The thing is, insurance companies know most folks won't bother filing small claims because deductibles are typically set higher to keep premiums down. So yeah, that mirror was never gonna make sense financially to go through insurance. Good move handling it yourself.
On another note... nice job scoring the military discount. I've seen some seriously sweet deals come out of those programs—one guy I knew switched companies and saved enough each month to cover his Netflix subscription and then some. Not life-changing maybe, but hey, every dollar counts these days, right?
