A New Wing Mirror

I did something not so frugal yesterday and knocked the wing mirror off the car. Not just a little bit bent  but completely smashed, cover missing and hanging off the car by the electric cable ! I took it to the garage that we always use and they very kindly removed the broken one and sealed up the gap with masking tape. I then asked them to source a new one. I went home and looked up prices online and thought that I had a rough idea of what the garage would charge. Imagine my dismay when they called and said the price would be £247 plus VAT !! Apparently since the car is no longer manufactured they could only get the part from a main dealer. I said thank you very much but how about we source the part and you fit it ? They agreed, so then the search for a bargain was on !

It took less than 5 minutes to find the correct mirror on Ebay and pay £59.99 with free delivery ! Then we looked for the correct colour of paint so that we could paint the mirror to match the car. The Ebay company wanted £23.99 to do this and we thought that we could probably do better. This morning we found the code inside the passenger door and used it to order the correct spray paint from Amazon, only £4.03 using a gift card from Swagbucks. Grand total so far under £65 and a bit of time. The garage will probably charge under £30 to fit the mirror so all told under £100 saving us around £150. Of course it would have been better not to have hit something in the first place but accidents do happen !