Tuesday, October 23, 2007

2 seconds, $700

I backed into this Nissan Titan pickup. A minor dent, I thought. Sigh.

Well, my naive idea of covering the damage myself so our insurance wouldn't go up did not work. When the gracious guy who I backed into gave me his estimates, I saw that life is indeed more expensive in North America.

If I were in Nairobi, it would have cost about $70 to fix this. Ten times less!!

Moral of the story - pay attention, every second you are behind the wheel. Or have your accident in Nairobi.

2 comments:

jasonjyee said...

That's the problem with cars in the US... nobody bothers to fix them. it's $700 because they'll pull off the old fender and replace the entire part. so the breakdown will probably be like $50 labor and $650 parts... when it really should be $100 labor and a few bucks for touch up paint

Anonymous said...

Paul,
Count your blessings. I did this in grad school, and asked for an estimate but instead was stuck with a repair bill that included even the air conditioning!