9 yr old car damaged bumper

Not that it matters anymore, but didn't this occur in a parking lot? You said your wife backed into him, I would assume that she wasn't backing around public streets.

May be different where you are, but where I live, insurance and law in general have little to nothing to do with parking lots unless you back into person.

Last time someone scratched my car I wasn't able to do anything about it even with a plate number since I was not killed in the process. While people may be saying that what you paid was unethical, at least you did something. Better than most people in my poorly run city who casually smash into anything in their way.

Wow, this thread. You're lucky he didn't get insurance or small claims court involved. I'm sure this is exactly the type of drama he wanted to deal with this past week.

Wow. So much effort to avoid paying what's actually due the guy.

I had a less than one year old car rear-ended and Allstate didn't want to put an OEM bumper cover on it. Seriously! They argued that the insurance industry norm was to always, always replace with non-OEM. After much wrangling with them, they agreed to pay for an OEM bumper cover.

Forget what his insurance company says, you can only restore him to where he was by replacing the cover and repainting it, plus cost of a vehicle while his is in the shop and time off of work. You're getting off cheap here pal.

Quote from komondor : I would like to encourage him to get the bumper repaired

you have no right to tell the person whether he needs to actually replace the bumper or not

Quote from komondor : The guy actually only wanted 140.00 for 3 days of car rental and I offered 200.00, i certainly don't feel the guy has been miserable and I am certainly not a deadbeat my wife hit the car in a parking lot and went thru the trouble to find out who the owner was and to make sure her information got to him. Like most other people money is tight for me as much as anyone else so I don't want to overspend on the repair and want to be fair, that is why I asked for opinions here. Most people think I should pay for a new bumper and repaint his whole car so that the paint all matches.

couldn't care less really if your money's tight
if your money is so tight, you should minimize your chances of damaging other people's property.
Maybe don't have the wife drive then, or better yet use public transportation

If you damaged my car, no matter what type of damage, you'll be paying for it.
I just had my car recently repaired, bumper was $1000 for OEM + Paint, another $2000 to replace the shock absorbers under the bumper cover.

The person I rearended was driving a 5 year old Honda Accord, was pretty beat up.
Didn't stop their insurance for claiming full coverage repair costs.

It cost total $7000 to repair my car, im sure it cost about the same to repair her car.

i keep hearing this guy go on and on about how the car was 9 years old. Who cares? It doesn't matter if it's a 1 year old car or a 100 year old car. If you break it you got to buy them a new one. That's life buddy. If you don't like it then don't break stuff.