[bluejays]

Ok, a little scenario that happened to my dad on Feb. 20th or so. He was at a gas station, filled up and backed into another car when leaving. He hit the other car's rear driverside bumper near the gas tank. Anyway, the kid driving the car suggested and my dad agreed to settle out of insurance since it was minor with basically a small dent in the bumper and the obvious paint damage. No insurance info exchanged aside from home numbers and my dad's policy number given to the kid for whatever reason (without the insurance company). Well, the kid goes home and tells his father (apparently father's car) and the dad nicely has been calling our house speaking to my dad. Anyway, we have a really good body shop guy who literally would charge no more than $200 I'm sure considering no structural damage, but the father refused to take it anywhere but this particular person he knows. Anyway, my dad just said that there's no choice there, and that the shop fax us the estimate before doing anything. They fax the estimate to us, and there are several things totally out of wack.

1) Date on the top and bottom of the "estimate" are dated Dec. 27/07. We're not even sure if this is the actual car. The VIN and make are there, but my dad never even took this guys car info down.

2) 10 hours in total labour for this job, with removing left door handles also involved in the job. Considering our car is a 2001 Sebring (low car), there's no way it hit this guys handles (my dad said there would be no way, but did say there is a slight possibility the left door got scratched).

3) The recent death of my grandmother means we're pretty cashstrapped so my dad said he'd use his Visa, but this guy says he doesn't accept Visa or any cards as a form of payment apparently according to the kids father.


Here are some anomalies of this situation. A few days back, I was in a bad car accident (nobody injured and the other party was in fault) so really, we don't want to go to insurance simply because it's a dinger on the record for such a minor fender bender. Second, we live in Toronto and from what I hear, you have to report any accidents within 48 hours or there's no case? We don't mind paying this guy, so spare the lecture, but really, he's refusing to take it anywhere else, and it seriously has a tone of he's screwing us. Now, my dad really has a bad heart condition and he's worrying silly about this and it looks like I'm gonna call the kids father up tomorrow and blast him for suggesting a place that he "wouldn't trust anyone else" to giving his car, but this trustworthy place is giving us a misdated fraudulant "estimate". Is there anything insurance would do if we went to them now (basically, would insurance cover us almost a month later in Ontario)? What would you guys suggest considering all these odd circumstances?