Sometimes, when one person causes minor damage to another person’s car it’s less expensive in the long run just to pay for the repairs out of pocket instead of involving the insurance companies.

In today’s story, one person doesn’t want to involve insurance but also doesn’t want to be tricked into paying for unnecessary repairs.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

You want to go to insurance since your scam didn’t work? I’ll go to insurance.

This was a few years ago during my senior year in college.

I was living in a converted house that was 5 apartments.

There was a small parking lot and the spaces were tight.

I had a car and my two roommates didn’t but this was never a problem cause we’d usually go to the store together, could walk to campus and they’d rarely ask for rides anywhere.

One roommate asked for a ride.

Well, one day my one roommate asked for a quick ride to the park so she could get a water sample from the lake for her chemistry class.

Nbd as it’d take less than 10 minutes.

We go out to my car and I’m pulling out when I accidentally scrape against the car next to me.

These spaces were really tight and we were parked too closely together.

It wasn’t a big scrape.

It was honestly barely noticeable and mostly on the passenger door.

I figure I’ll run this quick errand and then try to figure out which apartment the driver lives in.

They probably won’t even notice before I get back.

10 minutes later my roommate and I are back and surprisingly there’s a girl in the parking lot.

I quickly realize she is the owner of the car.

They talk about how to handle it.

I explain what happen and say we can figure it out.

She says she wants to talk to her parents first and I say I’ll do the same since I’m on their insurance.

We both know where the other lives anyways.

His dad gave him some advice.

My dad’s advice was that the deductible for the car is $500 so I’d have to pay anything less than that anyways.

I should see if the owner wants to avoid insurance to prevent rates going up.

I tell her this and she says she’ll get back to me with some estimates.

Later she hands me a few estimates that vary greatly in price and work done.

One or two were well over $500 and had what was clearly unnecessary work.

I forget the details but it was something about replacing the hub caps or tires all together when there was like nothing noticeable about that.

He decides to look into these estimates himself.

I contact the places myself to see what they say and get the most telling response from the place with the most affordable estimate.

This was a kind woman from a clearly family shop versus the others which where bigger places and dealerships.

The woman tells me that the car didn’t actually need that much done like I assumed and the owner was insisting on extra work to the tires.

Her estimate was low because she only wrote it up for what needed not the unnecessary work the woman asked for.

I go back to the other student and tell her that I’d cover the cost of the lowest estimate one from the mom and pop shop.

The other student doesn’t like the mom and pop shop.

She says she didn’t like that estimate and wanted to go with the pricier one from the big expensive dealership with a lot of cosmetic work in the estimate.

She says some BS about not trusting the family shop and how they didn’t seem reliable when I could tell they were kind and genuine when I visited them.

Started insulting their shop too.

She says if I refuse to pay then she’s going to go through insurance and I’d better be prepared to pay.

He contacted his insurance company.

Well, now it’s time for my malicious compliance.

I decide to call my insurance preemptively to get ahead of this and let them know this woman might be contacting them with a claim.

I wanted to give my side first.

When I followed up with them awhile later about paying the deductible I found out she never even filed a claim or contacted insurance at all.

So my rate didn’t go up whatsoever and I didn’t have to pay a penny.

It sounds like she was just trying to get him to pay for some unnecessary work on her car.

That backfired!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person explains car insurance.

This is a good point.

Another person thinks the student’s requests weren’t unreasonable.

He called her bluff, and it worked!

You never want to just give in.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.