My wife had a rental car last week, and during the week she got parked in at work one evening and drove it across a short field to get out. Upon returning the car, they told her there was some damage to the undercarriage.
She called her insurance company to make a claim for that, and during that call she told them the “driving across a field” story without prompting. We were in my car at the time so I couldn’t slap the phone out of her hand and tell her she shouldn’t just volunteer that, but what was done was done.
Later we had a discussion about it, and my position was: “be honest, but say as little as possible; if they don’t ask, you don’t have to tell them.”
Personally, I would have said “I don’t know what that’s from” and if pressed probably said “the clerk didn’t check the undercarriage when we did the walkaround.”
I was going to ask how they found it, but I’m guessing they did an oil change and caught it then. If that was the case, it could have been from any of the last handful of people. OTOH, if there was grass caught in the wheels, it was pretty clearly from you. But, like I said, unless they checked there before beforehand or the ‘damage to the undercarriage’ was the plastic thing at the front falling off and obvious from the walkaround, I don’t think there would be much they could do about it if you had said “I dunno”.
ETA, if you have an AMEX card, call them the next time you rent a car. They have really good car rental insurance. You have to call them first to get it set up, then as soon as they see a charge from a car rental place they charge you some small fee (like 10 or 20 dollars) and they’ll cover you better then the rental agency or you’re regular car insurance. On top of that if you use the AMEX insurance you can take the car rental insurance off your car insurance policy and deny the insurance the rental place tries to sell you.
At least that’s how it worked the last time I rented a car a few years back.
Unless she knows the damage occurred there, the story isn’t relevent. If she is sure, then she should tell them. Saying you don’t know when you do would be fraud. But saying I don’t know is fine if it’s true.
I’m in the “be honest, but only answer the questions that are actually asked and are relevant” camp. In any semi-adversarial relationship, it’s a pretty good policy.
“be honest, but say as little as possible; if they don’t ask, you don’t have to tell them.”
That’s what I do in all negotiations. In the case of the OP’s wife she doesn’t even know if she caused the damage and there’s no reason to expect that the car rental company will be honest if they knew the damage was pre-existing. Offering additional information is no more honest than simply answering the questions asked.
I used to work in claims at an insurance company. It’s not fraud to stick to precise answers to the questions they ask. It’s stupid to volunteer information, particularly anything that could make you sound like a careless driver. If they asked her, “Did you drive your vehicle across a grassy field at any time?” and she said anything but “Yes,” that might be fraudulent (although likely unprovable). But to volunteer that information unasked is naive.
My parents have always told me to be honest. My mom especially once told me she hates liars. She can forgive a lot of things, but if someone lies to her she finds it difficult to trust that person again.
Odd then that when I got into an accident, she told me to lie to the insurance company and say I was wearing a seat belt when I wasn’t. It was the other guy’s fault, but the seat belt thing probably made his insurance company give up a few thousand more dollars. I looked at her differently after that.
Ultimately though, I don’t think of that incident as THE incident that turned me bad or anything like that. I have morals of my own, and I try to be truthful whenever I can. I don’t know if this made me more truthful in defiance of her, or less so.
Tell the truth. It’s easy to rationalize when it’s a “faceless, rich” insurance company. But it’s still dishonest, IMO a lie of omission, to not volunteer something integrally relevant. You’ll be getting at least some money you know you’re not entitled to. “But they don’t know I’m not entitled to it” is not an excuse. Your wife did something careless. It’s her fault the damage occurred. She did the right thing on the call.
But honestly, not sure why a claims adjuster wouldn’t ask how the damage occurred unless it’s some type of “no fault” situation.
The scenario as presented is actually pretty complex and who owes what to whom is going to depend on the insurance contract, the rental agreement, some state statutes, and what actually caused the damage. But for purposes of the OP, Antinor01.
In other situations, I can’t overstate the importance of being candid. One example from real life: Me: Mr. Schleckendorfer says he believes you were distracted by your cell phone when the accident happened. That your head was bowed, possibly dialing or texting. Is he right? Insured: Oh no! I never text. My phone was ringing and I was reaching for it. It was hardly a distraction. Me: Ok, fine. It wouldn’t void your coverage or anything, but it might have an effect on the value of Mr. Schleckendorfer’s claim so I just wanted to know what I’m dealing with.
<several months later> Me: Mr. Schlekendorfer has decided he doesn’t want to accept my offer to settle his claim. He’s mad as hell about the texting thing, despite me explaining to him you don’t text, so he wants to sue you.
<next day, defense attorney advises me he has spoken with Insured, who again denies any cell phone use>
<formal discovery ensues, Insured denies cell phone use in her deposition, cell phone records are subpoenaed, records show about a dozen texts sent & received at about the time of the accident, she finally admits to texting at the time of the accident>
<trial happens, jury crucifies Insured for texting & driving AND lying about it.
Seems like a stretch to claim ignorance. I’m assuming they didn’t put the car up on a lift when she returned it, that they did the same “walk around the car” inspection they do when you pick up the car. The one where everyone agrees there’s no damage anywhere, to avoid nonsense later on. So, when did that damage occur? “That scratching sound I heard driving through the ditch could have been anything! How do I know that caused the damage?”
It’s not a stretch. If they didn’t put the car up on a lift when she picked it up she has no idea if the car was already damaged, and even then she may not be qualified to determine if there was damage. Without even going that far she doesn’t yet know if the car is damaged at all, there’s no reason to trust someone on the phone about that.
It’s her insurance company that she called, and they are representing her, and if they wanted to know whether she had done anything that might damage the car they’d ask her.
The op doesn’t say she heard scratching, just that she drove across a field. If she wasn’t aware of any damage happening then it’s true that she doesn’t know.
I agree. The OP didn’t say what kind of field it was or how fast she drove across it but it is perfectly normal and reasonable to drive almost any car across a field or pasture as long as it is just a reasonably flat stretch of grass. A lot of parking lots for rural events are just pastures after all and people drive all kinds of cars across those.
Unless she drove 50 mph across a rutted bog filled with tree stumps and giant rocks, I wouldn’t assume that the field had anything to do with it. Did she say what kind of field it was, he fast she went and what condition it was in? If the damage was caused by driving over obstacles, she would have known it instantly. Undercarriage damage usually makes a horrible sound and is more commonly caused by driving over something like a concrete parking stop or a curb.
Her exact words, as I remember them, were: “The only thing I can think of that was unusual was when I got parked in at work and had to cut across a field to get out.”
She works at a private museum in a very rich residential/suburban area. The field she drove across was akin to a front or side lawn of a house (the museum owners buy up surrounding properties as they become available and the staff parks at these houses until they are demolished and landscaped over to become part of the grounds).
For the conversation with her insurance company that occurred in my car, none of the 2nd paragraph above was relayed to the woman on the phone, only the first statement. The only follow up was “Did you notice any damage or change in the way the car performed?” and the answer was “No.”
On a later conversation with the insurance adjuster who was handling her claim, which I believe was the “official” on record interview, they didn’t ask about the field at all; they were mostly only interested in her interaction with the rental company.
But in any case, this isn’t really about this particular incident, but interactions with insurance claims in general.
I voted “I have no idea how that could have happened!” because that is what I would say in real life even if I knew damned well how it happened. In this case though, it also happens to be the most accurate statement for the facts given. If that is all of the known facts, then it sounds like she really doesn’t know how it happened. Cutting across a suburban field shouldn’t cause any harm so it must have been something else that caused it probably when she didn’t even have the car.
If they put it up on a lift when she got back to show damage that was not apparent in the walk-around when she picked it up, that’s a different story. It would be reasonable, IMO, to say why the hell should we assume I did that? How do I know it wasn’t there when I picked up the car? Perhaps the OP can clarify, because I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the walk-around inspection when she dropped it off showed damage (without requiring a lift) that was NOT there when she picked it up after they completed the same type of inspection.
Which leads to the obvious question–how did it get there? The undercarriage can’t get damaged without the car being driven. No one bangs into your undercarriage in a parking lot. Why did the OP’s wife think to point out that she drove across a field, if that wasn’t relevant? Driving across a flat span of grass doesn’t damage the undercarriage. Why would they make a claim to their own insurance company if they had any thought that the damage didn’t occur when she was driving the car? Doesn’t add up, at least as related.
I think you’re misunderstanding roles here. The insurance company in this exchange is trying to determine if they’re on the hook for a claim. If the circumstance related was, “I bottomed out speeding through a ravine,” I can assure you the claimant’s interests would not be top of mind. I’m not saying that’s what occurred, just making a point.
But in any event, my original answer would stand unless I’m misunderstanding. Sounded to me like obvious damage appeared that hadn’t been there when she picked it up, and she thought driving through the field was an important enough fact to relay. Since she was the one driving it, she would know.
Then why did they submit an insurance claim? The OP noted, “Upon returning the car, they told her there was some damage to the undercarriage.” Again, I’m assuming that when she dropped off the car, it was inspected in her presence, just as it was when she picked it up–just as is standard practice at most car rental places, just so there’s no “that damage was already there when I picked it up” nonsense.
If a car rental place called me up after I left and said they discovered damage that I had no idea had been there, they’d be out of luck. And there would be no way I’d be submitting a claim.
