A young lady got a brand new car. Went to an insurance company, knowing SQUAT about car insurance, signed up. Great! No one smarter in the ways of insurance, certainly not her supposedly involved dad or boyfriend advised her, she said it was taken care of, everyone assumed she did fine. So she damaged her car to the tune of over $3000 and insurance won’t pay because she had no collision, only liability. On a brand new car? Shouldn’t the insurance man have advised her that a brand new car needed MORE? Is it all dummy’s fault? Why did the insurance say, ‘oh, what you have is just fine and dandy’? This is disgusting. I told her to find another insurance company, and wise up, google, ASK someone for chrissake.
Unless it can be proven that the insurance company misled her into believing she had more coverage than she actually did, then the onus is on her, too bad so sad. However, I find it very hard to believe that the agent didn’t at least try and upsell her for more insurance coverage (more money for the company, more commission for the agent.) I’d be willing to wager that she asked for the bare minimum coverage required by law, and waved away any offers to provide more comprehensive coverage – people don’t always tell the full truth, especially in situations like this.
Did she finance the car?
Almost all lenders would require comprehensive coverage.
I see this a lot over here: People go onto a website and search for the cheapest possible cover, which is often for third party risks only. They get involved in a collision and even though they believe that they were innocent victims, the other driver tells a different story and the insurance Co decide it’s 50/50.
I find it difficult to imagine anyone doing that with a brand new car though; but it seems people still fall for the ancient Nigerian banker scam so anything is possible.
No. Her father bought it for her. Brand new. She’s run it into the ground, and this stupid thing (and it WAS an accident, she never took a drink or drug in her life AFAIK) (wrecking the axle taking a turn late at night) - caused major damage. She, or Daddy, has to pay…don’t know what the insurance people told her. It is entirely feasible she took the lowest payment, but as I said she is very young, her first car, wants to do it all on her own, blah…how could they have let her out of there, knowing a brand new car needs more??? Everyone here is at fault. Her indifferent father/boyfriend. the insurance company for going like, ‘sure, whatever, brand new car?..meh, get the bitch out of the office, its almost happy hour’. Her: I gots insurance…oh shit!..wtf? I DONT HAVE INSURANCE FOR THIS?
How could the insurance company (or her father or her boyfriend for that matter) have stopped her, if she wasn’t required to have it ? By refusing to sell her any insurance at all if she didn’t buy more coverage than was legally required? The agent probably would have made more money if he sold her full coverage, so there was no reason not to try. All anyone could do was advise her, and she’s probably not going to tell you “The insurance agent (my father,my boyfriend) said I should also get collision and comprehensive, but I decided not to 'cause it was a lot cheaper”. You seem to want to blame everyone except the person who actually made the decision.
Reported for forum change.
Careful with the punctuation marks. You are going to land someone a guest spot on the Jerry Springer show.
It isn’t everyone’s fault. It is just hers and maybe her father’s for buying her a new car despite the fact that she didn’t have the knowledge or sense of responsibility to take care of one. That is a big reason why young drivers usually start off with crappy, used cars. They tend to have a real talent for fucking them up and then blaming someone else (The curb just jumped out in front of me!).
This is America. You are perfectly free to buy a $200,000 Ferrari with cash and then drive it straight into the nearest telephone pole. It is nobody else’s business as long as you have the minimum liability insurance to protect others from your own stupidity.
I have a feeling that anyone that can buy a new car with cash can also scratch together a few thousands dollars to fix the car as well. A single car accident caused by incompetence or negligence doesn’t have anything to do with insurance agents or anyone else. I would be a lot more concerned about teaching her to operate a multi-thousand pound missile properly. Just be thankful because that pesky road obstruction that jumped out of nowhere could have been a child on a bike or an 18 wheeler. Funerals cost a whole lot more than $3000 and are a real tragedy.
There is no way the insurance company is at fault here. Insurance is a written contract that someone signed and every detail of coverage was provided. And $3000? Chump change compared to the total cost of a new car, and she could have totaled it and lost everything. She needs to learn a lesson from this, $3000 is pretty low tuition for this kind of thing. And I don’t buy that is was no fault of her own either.
This bit about “run it into the ground” seems to be indicative of her real attitude to looking after the car. As others have surmised, I wouldn’t be surprised if she would only accept the cheapest coverage.
Is the young lady in question your daughter? Why didn’t you teach her how insurance works?
I wonder if the father bought the car but insisted that the daughter pay for the insurance out of her own pocket. In that case, I can well understand why she might decide to get the minimal coverage.
Yes, you don’t. So why are you assuming that they specifically tried to sell her as little coverage as possible?
Yet when the mechanic finds an imminent safety concern and pushes additional repairs beyond the $29.95 oil change or $99.95 brake pads he’s a scumbag.
The insurance agent should have told her - very clearly - that she would be on the hook for total damage; any competent agent should have, if only for the added commission. He should have said that she was buying insurance for typically older cheaper cars where serious damage would exceed the write-off.
There’s always the possibility he did (or tried) and now that the chickens are home to roost she’s claiming he didn’t.
You’re buying into the claim that an insurance salesman didn’t try to upsell this young woman?
I don’t think I’d call the sale of collision coverage on a brand-new car “upselling”.
BTW, if the insurance guy did try to sell her collision coverage but she refused, I wonder if he would have had her sign something to indicate that she understood what she was doing.
If she bought the insurance online, and not from an agent, the computer may very well have tried to talk her out of comprehensive, so to speak. I recently bought a brand new car outright (it was a 2016 with 28 miles on the odometer, bought last April). I went online to add it to my current policy, and I had some difficulty manually setting the choices to comprehensive, and a low deductible. Apparently if your car is paid for, the computer assumes you don’t want comprehensive, so if you don’t know enough to know what that is, you might end up not getting it. A lot of insurance websites have a “Tell us what you want to spend, and we’ll build a policy for you.”
On the other hand, if she dealt face-to-face with an agent, the story is fishy, because yeah, and agent would try to get the biggest policy out of her possible, and would not want someone with a new car not to have full coverage, because they’re going to come back mad if exactly this situation comes up.
What is there to sign and why would anyone besides the owner have responsibility for it? Cars that are financed have more insurance requirements than those imposed by state law but others don’t. It is none of their business if you buy a car with cash and crash it the first day if you want.
Insurance agents always want to sell you the most expensive policy that fits your needs but they aren’t your guardian. The only thing that they are required to ensure is that you meet the legal minimum insurance requirements. Some people with money choose to self-insure which is generally a winning bet in the long run if you have the money to back up your risk and actually know how to drive.
I don’t know the details of how she bought insurance, it could very well have been an online search, and she just picked the cheapest that showed up. A little taken out of the bank every month. I know it’s her fault for not researching it better, or asking around. I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
But if she HAD actually walked into an insurance office, they SHOULD have told dummy she would need better coverage, and not let her out of there without even a discussion.
Not everyone is smart out there about this shit, you know. Too bad, too sad.
Well, lesson learned. Who knows, the patched up shitbox might very well cost very little to insure now. I will advise her, if she asks, to find out.