I knew it was inevitable, but my 2005 STi has a nice door ding in the drivers rear door. Despite always parking far away from danger, there's always that guy that for some reason has to park next to you.

Anyway, I am pretty sure who did this. There is a guy in the apartment across the street from me with a white pickup truck that parked next to me overnight yesterday, I thought it was a little clost considering there were no other cars in the row. I didn't notice the dent until later on, but judging from where his truck was parked, and that there is matching white paint on the dent I am pretty sure it was him.

I want to contact him about it, but I believe it would be hard to prove it was him. Even if I couldn't get him to pay for the damages, I would at least like for him to be more careful next time -- so I don't go fix this dent just to get another. However, I do not know this guy personally. The last thing I want is to **** him off, and have him do something to my car that would cost more to fix and that I couldn't prove who did it.

So what is everyone else's opinion?

 

oh man.. if your gonna door his car... dont do it. your messing w/ a trunk theres gonna be more damage done to your car then his. id say if you were to go that low put crap in his gas tank and shove something in his exhaust. =p hahah oh man reminds me of the old days. <-- not that i did any of it

 

a banana in the tailpipe.

 

Believe me, this situation has happened to me more than once. No matter how far away you park there is always someone who is compelled to park next to your car, and then feels the need to be careless and ding you. In the past when some one rammed into my bumper in the parking lot, and I discovered who it was, I "acted on it." What I did didn't get me anywhere but into the official membership of, "The ******* Club." Just let it go, we all have to realize that no matter how much we love our cars, they're just stuff.

 

While your neighbor was careless, it's a consequence of parking where space is limited. There are a lot of people who just aren't conscious of respecting a person's car, even a nice one. Have you ever seen someone parallel park using the 'parking by touch' method? They back until their bumpers make contact with the car behind them, then move forward until they gently bump the car in front of them, repeating this sequence until they are satisfied that they are parked correctly in the spot. LOL

While you are probably right that it's the guy and his truck that dinged your car, the fact that there were no witnesses means that just maybe it was someone else. Who likes to be accused of something they didn't do? There's no defense against such an accusation because likely he has no witnesses to say otherwise, either.

Just get the ding pulled and concentrate on moving to a different neighborhood or buying a home with a garage.

--
0==WW==0
"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

Dont feel bad, i went to the bank the day after purchasing my new car and some idiot despite parking 10 spots away from the next nearest car felt the need to park his circa 1990 caravan on top of me. I knew walking out i was going to have a ding and low and behold a fresh ding in the rear driver side door. I know that generally theres no way to prove something like this was doen unless witnessing it (which i also have a good story about) however I waited and watched this guys kid swing the door open again the same way after backing out of the spot, then decided to question why he doesnt teach his kid how to open a car door (the kid was about 15 so he def knew better)... Guy just got in his van and drove away. Its frustrating and rather ignorant that people have so little care for anothers property.

 

When the WRX is not in the garage, nobody parks further out in the lots than I do. Still, the dings happen.

You are probably right about who the guilty party is, but you don't know it for a fact. You also say you don't want to risk pissing the guy off. The best judgement here is a no-brainer... forget about it. Get the dent fixed or learn to live with it.

 

There's no way to prove it, but check to see if he has paint the color of your car on his door. If he does, break his freakin' windows.

My motto is this: "If you don't f*ck it up yourself you can always count on someone else to do it for you."