It's relatively common, even in the 'burbs. The automotive media does talk about it being a problem, and there are several threads about it on these fora, with suggested solutions. Soy-based wire insulation is pretty standard in newer vehicles, and rodents seem to find it to be delicious.
That level of damage is $5400?!?!? I would love to see the itemized bill. The only way I see that cost being realistic is if the entire system needs to be replaced.
If the entire harness needs to be replaced, the labor is probably 90% of the cost. Some of these harnesses require gutting the whole car to replace.
A perfectly fine fix would be a few replacement wires and wire taps. I think I would opt to do that myself over having my car ripped apart and having a complicated wire harness replaced. How many clips will they break or miss attaching in the process? How many wires will slowly rub against something because of a poor installation, causing hard to track down issues maybe years later? What about connectors not quite seated properly and getting water inside them which corrode eventually? No thanks.
You make it sound so simple to repair. If the damage were reliably repairable, I suspect the insurance company would be demanding a repair over a replacement. Insurance companies are quite good at that.
Certainly looks like it from the picture.
Just so I understand, you believe your diagnosis, from a picture, is reason to believe that both the dealer AND the insurance company are incorrect about what is needed to properly repair the vehicle?
We're being presented with a picture and being told, "here's the damage" and "this is what it costs to fix this" so yes, I'm with @MisterJJ on this one. There's more to this story than we're being told, has to be. Also, insurance adjuster signed off on the computer in my VW scenario, looked at the damage, agreed with the dealership and then said insurance wasn't covering it. So they were wrong in my $2400 mistake, dealership and adjuster, I'm sure it happens all the time if it happened to me.
I'm going to have to side with @MisterJJ as well that the repair looks very simple, but I know insurance companies and they don't want a wrongful death lawsuit if they OK'd a less-than-perfect repair so most of the time insurance companies demand replacing entire systems instead of components and everything must be factory OE replacement without any modifications, shortcuts, splices, etc. and that very well could mean an entire wiring harness since auto companies hate connectors and love to have SKUs that are highly interconnected from a wiring standpoint.
Absolutely. I have no money to make off of this and... no liability to assume. Notice that I said what I would do, not what someone else should do.
www.psychologytoday.com
Are you sure you're not projecting? We're all sitting here and saying from experience in this specific area we question $5,400 unless something is being misrepresented in some way.This is just silliness.
.Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills.
Projection:
