As expensive as cars are, they are fairly easy to damage. If you have ever accidentally dented or scraped the paint on your own car, you know what we’re talking about. Hopefully you’ve never been responsible for damage to someone else’s car.

While minor dings may not be a big deal and minor paint issues can be repaired with a little bottle of touch up paint, bigger accidents can get quite expensive.

One good neighbor recently shared a picture on Facebook that proves what being a good neighbor really looks like. It turns out that honesty, at least in this situation, really was the best policy.

One neighbor shared that when her 3-year-old son opened the car door he accidentally hit the neighbor’s car. Instead of ignoring the situation or lying about it, the neighbor decided to come clean and admit what happened. Not only that, but the neighbor offered to pay to repair the damage in cash instead of involving insurance companies.

The neighbor whose car was damaged could have reacted in anger or could have insisted that the neighbor pay more than necessary for the damage. Instead, the neighbor did the exact opposite.

The neighbor whose car was damaged surprised the neighbor with the 3-year-old by handing over an itemized invoice for the damage. The first part of the invoice was pretty much what you’d expect. It was a list of repairs and how much each repair cost. For example, expenses included “damage repair and re-spray.”

Further down on the invoice, it looked a little bit like the neighbor might have been taking advantage of the situation by itemizing repair costs that weren’t really part of the repair, such as how much the neighbor spent on “tea while pondering repair.”

The neighbor definitely was not trying to take advantage of the situation. Instead, at the end of the invoice, the neighbor made it clear that all was forgiven. The last item on the invoice was “these things happen,” and that item canceled out the price of all the other items on the invoice bringing the grand total to $0.

Just to make sure there was no misunderstanding. The neighbor wrote on the invoice “NO CHARGE!” just like that in all caps. Underneath, the neighbor added, “The only thing we ask is that you keep taking our parcels in when we are not here, thanks!”

 

Talk about being neighborly! It turns out that being good, honest, helpful neighbors was all that was needed to “pay” for the repairs.

Have you ever had a neighbor as kind and understanding as the neighbor in this story?