Body Work Estimate?

I got into a minor accident this past weekend- my car doesn't have a scratch.  Her car has a little crack in her bumper.

Her car is an M reg (which I *think* means it 1994-5), Volkswagen Polo. 

Does anyone have any clue how much this might be?  to get a whole new bumper?  If it's cheap enough, I would rather avoid insurance (and my company as this is a company car), and just pay out of pocket

I'm on the other side of the pond so I will just comment that I just had a minor scratch fixed and they charged me (ins.) $1,000. So I would figure since this is the UK maybe £1000.
Obviously I have no idea but there are professionals who specialize in small dent repairs so I would check around.
Sorry I'm not more help.

I'm on the other side of the pond so I will just comment that I just had a minor scratch fixed and they charged me (ins.) $1,000. So I would figure since this is the UK maybe £1000.

Yes, but if the body shop knows they'll be billing an insurance company, they jack the price WAY up on the estimate.  For private pay, it's usually considerably less (in the U.S.).  Insured or not, $1,000 for a minor scratch still sounds crazy.

However, replacing an entire bumper would probably be quite costly...several hundred £££ at least.  Best have her get an estimate and see if it's an amount you can stomach.  Good luck.

Yes, but if the body shop knows they'll be billing an insurance company, they jack the price WAY up on the estimate.  For private pay, it's usually considerably less (in the U.S.).  Insured or not, $1,000 for a minor scratch still sounds crazy.

However, replacing an entire bumper would probably be quite costly...several hundred £££ at least.  Best have her get an estimate and see if it's an amount you can stomach.  Good luck.

I agree.  DH had a minor skirmish with one of those huge f*cking Porsche SUVs in the McD's car park just before Christmas - bastard swooped into the space next to us while we were indoors and parked so crookedly that even if it hadn't been dark AND raining cats & dogs and DH'd been able to see perfectly well behind him, there STILL wouldn't have been any way to avoid the behemoth.  He wound up leaving a TINY (we're talking maybe 1cm long?) scratch on the rear wheel well and the guy was a total asshat about it, demanding our insurance details and generally just making a complete ass of himself.  (Of course, he WAS the owner of a Porsche SUV. )

Anyway, long story short, we made the guy get an estimate before we gave him our insurance details.  He *clearly* wanted us to go with his body shop, which quoted £310 for the paint touchup (!!) - we didn't have an extra £310 sitting around and the loss of our no-claims bonus was less than that, anyway, so we went ahead and contacted the insurance.  God only knows what they wound up paying - but we switched insurance companies in the end, anyway, and are paying less now than before.   I know that's not really any option for you with a company car/insurance, but I'd definitely ask for an estimate before making any decisions.

(tl;dr)

It depends on how honest the repair shop are - my mechanic would find one down the scrap yard for a M reg - easy to come by and respray it to match the original car.  He did that for my old car and charged 98 pounds 

Her car is an M reg (which I *think* means it 1994-5), Volkswagen Polo. 

Yes, "M" as a prefix before numbers on the registration (e.g. M123 ABC) means the car was registered between August 1994 and July 1995 (assuming it was just issued with a standard registration when first sold and it's not a number transferred from another vehicle).