Measured · 20 claims · thin

Bumper Absorber: repaired or replaced?

Counted off 20 estimates written by adjusters on real claims. Not what anybody thinks should happen — what the carrier itself put on the document.

Not once in 20 claims was a bumper absorber repaired. That is not a tendency, it is the absence of a decision: on these documents this panel is a replacement item.

How this was counted

Every line on every parsed carrier estimate was matched to a panel and read for the operation the adjuster wrote. A line saying replace counts as a replacement; a line saying repair counts as a repair. Lines that say neither are counted nowhere rather than being assigned a decision they do not state.

Coverage: January 2024 to August 2026. Last reviewed 14 August 2026.

This rests on 20 claims. It is published with its count rather than withheld, because a thin number labelled thin is more useful than no number, but it is a hint about this panel and not a rule.

What this cannot tell you

• It is not a rule for your car. A ratio across 20 claims says what usually happened, not what should happen to a specific panel with specific damage.
• Severity is not in the count. A creased panel and a scuffed one are one line each here. The documents record the decision, not the depth of the dent.
• It is the carrier’s decision, not the right one. This measures what was written on estimates of record. Where a shop disagreed and won, the corpus sees the original document.

Other panels

Every panel, the method and the sample bands are on the repair or replace page.