Isnt paint meant to flex and not crack? Thanks for the quick and informative response btw!
Yes, it does flex due to limited thermal expansion and contraction, but it has limits, and those limits are easily crossed when the substrate (plastic bumper) gets slightly compressed during a low speed impact.
It looks from your photo that the damage is dead center, right above the licence plate. I'd wager someone reversed your car straight into something, like a car behind, when getting out a parking spot. Or vice-versa, of course, someone hit you in a low speed parking incident that left no immediate mark.
The photo just looks so like paint cracking due to an impact that it can't reasonably be anything else. If I were a Dodge dealer I'd be saying the same to you, and I'm not against you in anyway, and have no money in the issue. I'm not even a bodyshop expert, but I've seen it in my own vehicles several times (Toyota, Mini, and Dodge so it happens to them all). I know exactly where the minor bumper impacts occurred, and lo and behold the exact same paint cracking issue that you see.
In fact I could show you on my Challenger right now. An idiot in a truck hit my rear corner at about 1mph while I was stationary at a light and they were trying to squeeze by into another lane. There was no obvious damage but the next day I had minor cracking of the paint exactly at the impact point.
Which is also why I know what the body shop repair estimates are.
