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Is this follow-up after a car crash a potential scam?
You have to realize that you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.  You want to do things "unofficially" by not reporting the accident (to insurance companies and/or police), but you want to do it "officially" in that you want to have legal recourse if they try to hit you up for more money.  The only way to have it both ways is to trust the other person. From a financial perspective, ultimately you need to decide if the monetary cost of your raised insurance premiums, etc., outweighs the cost of whatever money the other party in the accident will try to squeeze out of you (factoring in the likelihood that they will do so).  You also would need to factor in the likelihood that, rather than trying to scam you, they'll pursue legal action against you. In short, from a purely monetary perspective, if the legitimate cost of repairs is $700 and the cost to you of doing it by the book via insurance is $2000, you should be willing to be scammed for up to $1300, because you'll still come out ahead.  Of course, there are psychological considerations, like whether someone unscrupulous enough to scam you will stop at $1300.  But those numbers are the baseline for whatever outcome calculations you want to do. On the more qualitative side of things, it is possible they're trying to scam you, but also possible they're just trying to hustle you into doing everything quickly without thinking about it.  They may not be trying to gouge you monetarily, they just want to pressure you so they get their money.  I agree with other answerers here that the ideal way would be for them to send you an actual bill after repairs are complete.  However, you could ask them to send you a written copy of the repair shop estimate, along with a written letter in which they state that they will consider payment of that amount to resolve the issue and won't pursue you further.  The legal strength of that is dubious, but at least you have some documentation that you didn't just try to stiff them.  If they won't give you some form of written documentation, I would read that as a red flag, bite the bullet, and contact your insurance company.