We've had our car almost three years and at the time I bought it it didnt have a scratch on it. Over the years I've picked up around 5 or 6 minor dents and scratches all just from parking in supermarket car parks etc. Last week our main road was closed off for resurfacing for a few days and we had to park a couple of streets away. We get to the car Monday morning and some idiot has backed in to the drivers door and caved it in so badly that it wont shut properly. There's a gap at the top where the door frame meets the body and not only will it let water in when it rains, it renders the air con virtually undetectable and causes a lot of road noise. So we will have to get this one fixed. Got a quote today - that's $5,000 pesos I could have better spent. :roll: You see it regularly, people reverse until they bump the car behind them. It's as if hitting the car behind is a signal that they've backed up as far as they can.
My car is full of dings from other people's bad driving. I've had several dings happen in the Soriana parking lot, the spaces are too small there. Costco has nice big spaces and the car doesn't seem to get bonked there. At Soriana one person in a Hummer pulled out the space next to mine dragging a shopping cart from the bumper of their car, they dragged the cart down the ENTIRE side of my car and scratched the whole length of it. I can't imagine being that oblivious, or not hearing the noise, or doing that to someone else's car. But then I can't imagine driving something that big either.
Not sure where you got your quote steve but you might want to try going to a place I went to get a dent bumped out. It's on Bonampak & Portillo behind the Pemex and right beside a mechanics shop. I haven't had any major work but the guy said, buy me a coke, really there is no charge. I gave him 50 pesos and said thanks and went my merry way. It pays (in terms of insanity) to have a car you don't so much care about here. Unforunately, if you have one that means the world to you, you will be angry every time you look at your prized posession. One of my favorites is how your car is used as something to lean on, sit on, put beer cans on, or for women to set down their purse so that they can rifle through it to find their cell phones. God forbid you show up and look at them like GET THE BLEEP OFF WTF?... they don't even see you nor do they apologize. Oh wait how about this one. Someone stops in the middle of the road to drop someone off or pick someone up. They can pull over to the side, but instead they just decide to sit there for ten minutes while you sit on your horn and try to get them to move. Hey, as long as you're not inconveniencing them, who gives a BLEEP.
It's not unique to Mexico at all. I've lived in the same condo for about 4 years......brand new building when we moved in. Nobody had the parking spaces on either side of me when we moved in. Then the space to the left was occupied. No dings on the truck on that side til this day. Then some num-nut occupied the space on the left of me and all of a sudden I started getting dings. I left him a nasty note and the dings stopped. When he see's me now, he can't even look me in the eye cause I'm sure he knew his wife was ramming open the door and he never said anything to her. Usually when I go shopping, I park farthest from the store just cause in reduces the likelyhood that someone will park next to me and ding up my truck. I sucks to have to do that, but those dings are free to get fixed. Oh....an don't get me started on those folks who like to lean/sit/use my truck like it's their own! I go balistic when that happens. Michelle
Ah, but did you know Steve, that those roadworks aren't the local council's doing? Apparently, it's some PAN politician going around fixing up the roads hoping to get votes for doing it. I think this must be the only country I've lived in where someone with zero authority to do so can close off a public road (complete with police cars redirecting traffic), in order to reseal it!
Liz: Thanks for that maybe we should get some more quotes first. We went to the one recommended by the insurance company... before we found out that the excess on the insurance is more than the cost of the repair job. Michelle: Do you live next door to Mexicans In 15+ years of driving in the UK I think there is only one occasion I recall where my car got dented by others careless parking. Here it's half a dozen bumps in 3 years. It's the not looking behind and reversing until they feel they hit the car that gets me. You see it regularly. I've even seen one guy deliberately pushing a parked car with his own, it wasnt blocking his driveway it just overlapped his house frontage a little. I suppose at least here I haven't had my car broken into yet, whereas in the UK it was a fairly regular occurrence. Drew: I'm not really bothered who repairs the road, it needed doing and it got done. He wont get my vote anyway since I can't vote. Only downside to me is it's now even more of a racetrack than it was before.
My neighbor had a two tone truck> Green and Bondo! The thing in notice here in the tropics is the lack of position sense or distance. It is amazing to pass a truck coming at you on a street and the truck driver is sure you are going to hit him. Which might exlain the dings we get!
I hear ya Steve. I'd had my brand new car only a couple of months before it had a dent in the side from someone opening their car door into it. I now park as far away as possible from other cars in the supermarkets. It means a bit of a trek to the entrance but it's worth it. My husband rented a brand new Mustang for the weekend over his birthday. We think when it was parked outside our apartment, someone banged it and left a huge mark on the front of it. People just don't give a damn!
I don't know of any Mexicans who live in my building. But, yes, there is a HUGE Mexican community only blocks away. LOL! Perhaps their driving habits are rubbing off on non-Mexicans..... Michelle
>It means a bit of a trek to the entrance but it's worth it. The locals will try to fit into a park 1/2 the size of their car if it saves them walking an extra 10 metres in the Walmart parking lot. I always park way out where there are no cars anywhere, because then when you leave you don't get stuck behind some EDITED BY MOD that takes 5 minutes to back out of their park.
