My wife was siedswiped in her 2004 Prius by another driver who moved into her lane in a traffic circle. It was clearly the other driver’s fault. The police arrived, issued a crash report, and didn’t ticket my wife. (We don’t know if they ticketed the other driver.) The whole right side of our car is affected, but it is still driveable.
We have had GEICO for the past five years and made no claims.
In other circumstances, we would have expected the car to be totalled, and wouldn’t be too upset about that, but less than a month ago, the high-voltage battery failed, and we replaced it at a price of $3,400, hoping to get another few years of service out of it. It previously belonged to my wife’s mother, and despite being 23 years old, it only has 82,000 miles.
We didn’t have collision coverage. We live in Massachusetts.
We got a call from GEICO yesterday while we were driving in our other car, and the agent asked if we had called the other driver’s insurance company. We haven’t. The connection was bad, and we asked him to call back, but he hasn’t.
It’s been a few years since we’ve had a auto accident, and we’ve never dealt with GEICO for a claim. So I have a few questions.
Is it up to us to call the other driver’s company and get them to deal with this? Is GEICO going to do anything for us?
Is there anyway we can get some portion of the $3,400 we just paid added to the value of the car, which otherwise would probably only have a value of $3,00-4,000?
Any advice about GEICO specifically, or making auto insurance claims generally?
In my experience (not with GEICO), you file a claim with your insurance company, which you may be able to do online, and let them handle it. You may need to pay the deductible but may get the money back eventually
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I submitted the claim with GEICO the next day, provided all the info, and uploaded pictures and documents. I didn’t think I had to deal with the other company.
It’s always a good idea to get that information at the time of the accident, if at all possible. In the future I would recommend calling your insurance company immediately and making sure you get whatever they want while you still have the other party available. At the very least you should make sure to get their contact information (name, address, phone). The police report should have that information as well.
GEICO should be able to handle it as long as you gave them the crash report number and municipality. You definitely don’t need to talk to the other company, but GEICO would obviously love to just get that info from you rather than having to call the other party to get it or call the PD to get it from the crash report.
I wouldn’t count on it. You can probably upload documents into the claims tool to support your valuation of the car. Otherwise they will just use whatever standard valuation they have for that car based on age, mileage, and condition.
If you are not happy with the result of the claims process you can generally appeal - first to someone higher up at the insurance company and then to whatever state board oversees these things in your state. They may rule in your favor if you have evidence that the value of claim is too low.
When I had a car totalled (on black ice) I mentioned to the insurance company employee about the aftermarket additions (alarm system, Bridgestone Blizzak tires, which didn’t prevent the accident). I think they increased the offered amount a bit due to that.
I’ve had a car totalled in MA, completely the other drivers fault, but my agent did everything including talking to the other driver’s insurance. I didn’t have GEICO though.
And also as part of that experience, I asked if there would be any further reimbursement due to the fact I had bought 4 new tires about a month ago. They told me that anything required to make the car function doesn’t get any further reimbursement beyond the calculation based on age & condition. So a high end stereo might get you more money, a large repair the month before would not.
They’d usually send you to an affiliated/approved body shop (or mechanic, if there’s potential drivetrain damage too) to get an approved estimate. If it’s going to be cheaper than totaling the car, then you should be able to get it repaired. Depending on your plan, they may loan you another vehicle while it’s in the shop. You’re not obligated to use that shop, by the way, if you have another preferred shop you go to. Ask your claims adjuster how the value estimation process works.
If the cost of the repairs exceeds the value of the car, hmm… I can’t remember what happens then, if they were originally going to total it instead… the other insurer might just send you a check for what they think the car was worth, and you might have to pay the difference yourself out of pocket to the body shop?
This is almost certainly the case, especially if the value of the new battery is not taken into account. I assume that the payout assumes that the insurer keeps the car for salvage value, and that if we want to keep it, we might get a lower sum. Is that right?
Several times, I’ve had accidents (both my fault and theirs) cause damage to the car and/or attached accessories, like bike racks and bicycles. They usually lowball their initial offer, but every time I fought them and got the amount increased by usually around 2x (a grand or two), but one time by nearly 13x (from their initial $800 to $10k). It took a lot of documentation and two months of email and phone calls involving half a dozen people at the company and a call to a lawyer (didn’t have to pay, just to get an estimate and assessment), but it worked. It’s never easy but almost always worth it if you genuinely feel you’re being shorted.
And yes, there is usually a state agency (insurance ombudsman, maybe?) that will fight for you / with you, if you don’t feel confident taking on the insurer on your own.
Their incentive is to process your claim as cheaply and quickly as possible. If you’re satisfied, great, everyone wins. If not, keep arguing with them — but politely, patiently, with evidence and reason on your side.
This is the part I can’t quite remember, sorry. It’s been a while since my last accident and I don’t want to speculate. Ask your insurance company what happens, or perhaps another poster knows.
I will say this, though: In my experience, everything about a claim is negotiable, no matter how strongly they insist otherwise.
There are other things you may have to consider if you want to keep a car that the insurance company is declaring totaled. Some states (maybe all?) will put a brand on your title that the car is “salvage”. It may require you to jump through some hoops to be allowed to drive it (proof of repair, etc) and then it may get an additional “rebuilt/repaired” title brand that may or may not hurt your resale in the future.
This is all governed by state law so you probably need to research your specific case. Your insurance company may or may not be helpful. Your state agency is likely to be a bit more helpful, but might take some more work/time.
Body work is surprisingly expensive. I’m not sure it’d be worth fixing your car in order to try to recoup some of the battery cost. One way you could get some of the cost back is to sell your scrapped car to someone who rebuilds Prius cars. For some cars, there may be people who specialize in buying scrapped cars and using the parts to fix up other cars. If there’s someone in your area who does that for Prius cars, ask them how much they’ll give you for your car with the newer batteries. Typically they get their cars from auction where they know pretty much nothing about the car. Since you can show that the batteries are just a month old, you might get a premium for your car.
AAack! Ya hit three nerves!
1: “Lowball”, aka, the low-end of a reasonable range of value.
2: Insurance Commissioner. There’s one for every state, sometimes elected and sometimes appointed. A complaint to the commissioner creates some paperwork and headache for the claims department, and may contribute to showing a pattern of bad behavior that will be dealt with. But it will not directly affect your claim, except inasmuch as it will get more eyes on the situation and possibly some new thoughts.
3: Their primary incentive is to Protect Their Insured. They do that by following the laws and making a reasonable effort to resolve your claim. It does not always feel like this (see item 1). The adjuster’s own personal incentive is to settle your claim as quickly as possible so they have less work on their desk. But they get absolutely no benefit for paying the least amount possible. A company bonusing on low payments would be shut down in short order as that readily translates into a bad faith execution of their contract to…wait for it…protect their insured.
The expensive battery replacement doesn’t add much value to the car because had you NOT done that maintenance work the value of the car would be essentially $0, scrap. By doing the battery you restored the car to a normal market value, plus maybe a bump for the peace of mind a buyer would have about that one part of the car. Think about it like you’re looking at two otherwise identical 22 year old Priuses, one has a functional battery, one has a new battery. How much more would you be willing to pay for the refreshed car, knowing that all the other high-mileage issues are still lurking?
And lastly: If you don’t have collision coverage on your own policy, you are the one who needs to be contacting the insurer of the at-fault person. It is YOUR claim, and it is against the other driver. Your insurer should not file the claim for you or advocate on your behalf with them, as that can be interpreted as them legally representing you. And if the adjuster doing that stuff hasn’t got a law license, they are practicing law without a license, and that’s no good.
This is my view as well. This claim has nothing to do with GEICO. You need to contact the other driver’s insurance company (if he has one). It may require filing a lawsuit to find out.
Former insurance (non-injury) adjuster here - but it’s been over a decade and every company is different, so please, take this as a well educated outsider’s opinion at best for now.
First, and to the point, my sympathy for your plight - sounds like you had no responsibility for it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a PITA.
Okay, on to who / what / when / where and why of the claim.
I’d fully expect a car given the above to be totaled - given the age alone, it’s market value (more on that later) is going to be low, parts are going to be rare if available at all, and repair costs (labor) is going to be high. A -decade- ago, the usual fenderbender (literal) where you scrape bumpers with cosmetic damage was over a grand. Thus my despair.
As for the ugrade to the battery, make sure you have documentation. If you have it, then odds are very good that given the recent nature of the replacement, you can get a substantial fraction of that value added in. No, it won’t be 100%, because just like a car coming off the lot, it’s not a new item that could be reinstalled (and probably not salvageable) but historically it would be a noticeable chunk depending on all the local factors.
Now onto value vs. totaling. In general (see provisos above) value is determined by comps, much like a home. They’ll try to look for a like year - make - model - mileage vehicle in your general area for value in the recentish (generally less than a year) past. Probably with an adjustment as above, but not for certain. They’ll generally do an estimate for the repairs, and if the estimate is say, over 80% of said value, they’ll consider it a total (because once they open it up there’s a good chance of additional damage and they don’t want to be on the hook for that).
So, yeah, given parts and labor, and the probable low value, totaling is to be expected. If you agree with that carrier, the equations simple. They take the car, give you a check, and it’s done. If you want to keep/repair it yourself since you can still drive it, the equation changes. Value of vehicle - whatever they would have been able to get for salvaging it for parts = you payout. It will get a salvage title which means that it had been declared a total loss one already, and that can affect future insurability (generally not eligible for COMP/COLL for many carriers), but generally not an issue for future liability only policies.
This was probably wise, given what I just said, but it’ll hurt your options with GEICO. When you have your own company file a claim (as a NAF driver) they’re fundamentally working because they have the right to subrogate for their expenses in paying out for your damages. If they don’t have that right, the most they could probably do is offer to open a claim on your behalf with the other carrier. They can’t give statements, make demands or anything else.
What I’d advise is to contact the other carrier immediately if you have that information. Otherwise, request a copy of the Police Report ASAP - you need to be able to find the at fault party and their coverage as quickly as possible, because while you’re clear the damage left the vehicle driveable, if there’s any further damage after that (water leaking into the door causing damage, etc.) that’s technically back on you - in most states you have a duty to mitigate the damage.
If they don’t have insurance, that’s going to involve taking them to court… not much I can do to help, though if they don’t have coverage, and you carry UMPD (Uninsured Motorist Property Damage) then you could have your carrier verify that and make a claim under said coverage. Might want to check your DEC page.
If you have other general questions, I’ll answer them best I can. But I didn’t write policies when I had my P&C license or handle claims for your specific state, nor worked for GEICO.
I agree. I went through this with my car and Progressive a number of years ago. I got hit by a car, which was 100% the other driver’s fault; they had a stop sign and I didn’t, failed to yield to me, and hit my car. There was never any controversy about that.
I didn’t have collision coverage with Progressive, so I worked with the other driver’s insurance. Their insurance asked me a ton of questions, then got my car repaired at a local shop. They also paid for a rental for me to drive in the interim. It kind of sucked driving a lousy rental for a while, but at least I had a car, and when all was said and done my car was made whole at no expense to me.
In another situation, my car got rear-ended, and the guy who hit me had some dodgy insurance (which I’m not sure was even a real company). The only contact info was a phone number in San Francisco that nobody ever answered. I left a ton of messages that weren’t returned. I looked up the insurance company, found no web site for them, and a ton of complaints from people who had the same experience as me… There was nobody to talk to and nobody to track down. They were a ghost. The person who hit me pretty much didn’t have insurance.
Luckily, in that case it was literally a fender-bender (my rear fender just had a dent in the middle). I didn’t even bother to get it fixed, because it didn’t affect anything. I’d have loved it fixed, for aesthetic purposes, but I was fortunate that it didn’t really matter.
Three summers ago, a twenty year old kid sideswiped my then thirteen year old Honda Fit on the highway. He caused what appeared to be mostly cosmetic damage but the body shop estimate was $6,000 or so. Allstate paid for the work and recovered my deductible for a car that I bought new for $20,000 in September, 2010. So your car might still get fixed under insurance.
(BTW, that twenty year old kid was driving a three month old Honda HR-V so I suspect he was going to have a very unhappy experience with the parents.)
If the car is worth less than the cost to repair it (and it almost certainly is) then the insurance company of the person who hit you will total the car.
My experience with an old, drivable car that was totaled is that:
I kept the car.
I was paid the totaled amount (possibly less a salvage value? I don’t think so, but it was a long time ago).
I hired a local body shop to pull the rear end out so that we could use the trunk (which had been smashed in).
We drove it another few years with a salvage title.
When the plastic parts started to fail, and we wanted a newer car, we sold it for a few hundred dollars, salvage title and all.
If you like the car and you think the damage is cosmetic, or can be reduced to “cosmetic” for a modest price, then there’s no reason to throw it away just because it’s been totaled.