Last summer, in late June, my husband and I got a much newer car after getting a letter in the mail saying we had been pre-approved for a good sized car loan. Then, in early August, he was about to pull out of the driveway in front of our apartment to come pick me up from the office.

A woman who had been visiting the neighbor in the building across from ours had borrowed the neighbor's truck. She was backing out from the other side of the parking lot, and my husband laid on the horn, but she wasn't watching what she was doing. She smacked into the passenger side bumper...then had the nerve to pretend she didn't understand English...until a Spanish speaking police officer arrived to take a report. (And, of course, none of the neighbors who were out on the balcony in the other building saw a thing.) The woman had insurance as did we. (A day or two AFTER the accident our insurance was cancelled because of a missed payment that didn't arrive in the mail in time for the deadline, so we now have a different insurer.)

So...a few days pass and the investigator for the woman's insurance company comes. He listened to my husband's account of the situation, and said it was clearly the woman's fault, and his company would pay for repairing our car (which is a 2004, as opposed to the 1995 we traded in to buy it). He said he would process the paper work and the company would notify us when the check was ready. Then, the woman's insurance company claims adjuster said the incident was my husband's fault, and the company would not pay the claim for the repair because my husband was in the protection of a parking spot, and the whole thing was HIS fault. Bull. By now, both of us were upset. Our own insurance company sent the body shop a check for $600, which was the amount of the estimated cost of the repair work minus the $500 deductible (which we did not have then and don't have now in our tight budget. We eventually told the body shop to send that check back, since we couldn't afford to have the work done. So...now we have an almost new car with an unsightly dent in the passenger side rear bumper...and life goes on...but everytime I saw the damage, it made me upset to think that woman got off scot-free.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the phone rang, and it was a man at the body shop my husband picked from the yellow pages. He told my husband to bring the car in so he could look at it...because he might be able to fix it without it costing us a dime. My husband did take the car over later that afternoon. Pretty soon, I got a call from the body shop. The man said my husband was there with him and he wanted the man to tell me what he'd told my husband. The man went on to say that it is his job to deal with insurance companies, and if we agreed, he would let my husband have a loaner vehicle while our car was being repaired. The man told me on the phone, "your car is beautiful, until you look at it from a certain angle, but we can restore it so that no one will ever know the fender was dented." He went on to say that often an insurance company does not pay directly to customers for repair work; too many customers take the money and run, I guess. But, if a body shop is on the phone, the insurance company then knows the customer is serious about having the repair work doen, and they will oftentimes pay up.

I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical...but I agreed, with the understanding that we do not have money for the repair bill, and no work would be done unless money was obtained from the insurance company. Jay drove me to work this morning, and I suggested he call the body shop to see what was happening.

Before he could do so, the body shop called him and said the car was fixed, and he could come pick it up this afternoon. My husband dropped off the loaner car and picked up our car just before he picked me up from the office tonight. The repair work was done so flawlessly it's impossible to tell the car was ever even damaged. The body shop used all new parts, and everything is as good as new.

So, yes...there are still wonders in the world! We are extremely happy with the work, and you can bet anyone needing body work done on a vehicle will be speedily referred to that body shop.