As some of you may know, my wife and I bought a brand new Pontiac G6 a few weeks back. As luck would have it, some idiot coming the other way made a left turn in front of my wife (who is 7 months pregnant by the way) with my 3 year old son in the car. She crashed right into him. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt. We did have to spend 4 hours at the hospital with my wife hooked up to a baby monitor just to make sure everything is okay with the bun in the oven.

Now the guy who caused the accident has admitted fault and his insurance company is covering everything. The claims adjuster has been very nice and was quick about getting us into a rental car. However, I just don't feel comfortable about how the repairs are being handled. So far the estimate is up to $10,000 to repair it. The guy at the body shop (who is also the dealer we bought the car from) told us that the frame rails were bent and needed to be replaced. We met with the adjuster on Saturday and he said they don't need to replace the entire frame rail. They can just cut off the bent part and weld on a new piece. To me that sounds like taking the cheap way out, but he said GM approves of this type of repair. When we called the body shop guy, he seemed to change his story that GM recommends cutting off the bent part and welding on a new piece. I feel like that would weaken the structure of the car, but I'm not an engineer, so I don't know. Does anyone know if that's legit, or is the adjuster trying to pull a fast one?

I've also done some homework and found that, because the car has been in an accident requiring $3000+ in body work and repairs, the value of the car now, compared to if it had not been in an accident, is now $3000 less than what it was. Personally, I feel it's perfectly fair to ask this guy's insurance company to compensate us for that loss, but the claims adjuster looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. Is it that crazy to ask for the lost value on a car that was so new we hadn't even made the first payment on it?