The problem, the way I see it, is that if you DON’T hand over your info and the other party makes some dinky little claim, the other party’s insurance company may very well pay it just to be done with their insured, and then come looking for you to reimburse them. Now you’ve got a black mark against you, and for what?
If you then try to involve your own insurance company, they are going to be wondering why you didn’t call them earlier. Meanwhile, once your neighbor has been paid, any role or influence he might have had in the process is over; you are no longer dealing with somebody who might have any interest in a peaceable neighborhood, but a subrogation dept rated on how much money they can get out of you.
As far as “back off when they realize they’d have to file a false police report,” you are making an assumption not supported by the OP. The neighbor’s daughter may very well know how the accident happened, but there is nothing to say that the neighbor himself is part of the plot. If they are willing to file a false insurance report, then likely they are willing to file a false police report; if the neighbor himself doesn’t realize what’s going on, he’s filing what he thinks is a perfectly valid police report.
A no-injury, low-damage, not-blocking-traffic accident is going to receive THE lowest priority at the police department; depending on department, there’s a fair chance that the person handling it is going to be a clerk rather than an officer, and they almost certainly won’t send anybody out to the scene to investigate. Once it’s got an official police report number, though, it’s in the system, and their insurance company* will be able to point to it as a basis for paying them. What time or investigation do you think you are buying?
*Just five insurance companies hold over 50% of the U.S. private vehicle insurance market; there’s a non-zero chance that the neighbor’s insurance company is your insurance company anyway.
It doesn’t usually work like this. I can’t make claim to how it works in the OP’s or your state, but insurance companies usually investigate a few things before they issue checks in any amount. They don’t just take your word that so-&-so caused damage and issue you a check.
Many of us on these boards are adults and have dealt with insurance and how it works.
Doing exactly what the OP did was not in his best interest.
I find it peculiar that you seem hell bent that
*The OP give his insurance info upon demand for something he didn’t do
*The OP provide his information without receiving same from the claimant
*The OP should consult with strangers on the internet rather than calling his insurance agent immediately and explaining the situation.
No, I’m not his neighbor (or if I am I don’t know it).
Yes, I have dealt with insurance (even worked for an insurer for a little while) and know something about how it works. If the neighbor’s car has visible damage and the neighbor carries appropriate insurance, then (subject to deductible) the neighbor’s insurer is going to pay to have it repaired. Even if the neighbor’s report consisted solely of “I found it like this,” the neighbor’s insurer will pay up. They may end up marking it under uninsured/underinsured claims, but they’ll pay. That’s what good insurance does.
For a non-injury, low-dollar claim, they’re not going to be spending a whole lot of time and effort investigating–it’s just not worth it to spend more on the investigating than the claim itself would cost. Yes, I have seen insurance companies pay small claims based entirely on a single estimate or receipt, with no investigation whatsoever. (The theory is that if you are a scammer, you won’t make enough on one claim to be worth your while, and if you submit too many small claims, they’ll just decline to renew your policy and be rid of you, still with minimal or no investigation.)
Now, in this case, the neighbor wants to run it through OP’s insurance, not his own (or not just his own), which could mean he doesn’t have full coverage on the car or he’s got a very high deductible, or he just doesn’t want his rates to go up, or he turned in the OP’s information to his own insurance company and is letting them handle the claim with OP’s insurer. Any of these are possible, and depending on which one is true, which insurance company/ies, and the value of the claim, it still may or may not get a whole lot of scrutiny. (A claim involving substantial damage or a lot of money will be handled differently, but nothing in the OP’s statement says this is a high-dollar claim.)
Whether OP obtained the neighbor’s insurance isn’t explicitly stated, but even assuming he did not, so what? Having their insurance policy number is significant if (and pretty much only if) OP plans to file a claim himself, which doesn’t seem to the be the case.
I guess I really don’t understand what advantage you think the OP would have gained by refusing to disclose the information. It’s not any more work (or any more risk) for the neighbor to file a claim with his/her own insurer and have them pursue OP, versus just filing a claim with the OP’s insurer; depending on company, they may be willing to look up the OP’s insurance info and give it to the neighbor without even opening a claim themselves. Depending on the state, it might not be much more work to fill out a form with the DMV and receive the insurance policy information on file anyway. The level of scrutiny a claim receives isn’t magically going to increase just because you refused to tell the other guy your policy number. How does it advance the OP’s interests to refuse the neighbor’s request? What is the point, or what is the advantage you hope to gain?
araminty posted he did not damage the neighbors car. Do you really think it was wise then to give his insurance info and tell the neighbor to file a claim? Really? Do you want claims made on your insurance for damage you didn’t cause?
No flame intended but **araminty **did things backwards. Hopefully his insurance will be able to deflect te false claim.
My point is that if the neighbor is interested in pursuing the matter, giving or withholding the insurance info is basically irrelevant-the neighbor will still be quite able to make claims against OP’s insurance for damage he didn’t cause. It might not even be any extra work on the neighbor’s part, or it might cause the neighbor have to fill out an extra form or make an extra phone call, but refusing to supply the information does NOT prevent a claim from being made. If that is the advantage you’re hoping to get, the tactic is a failure.
Refusing to supply information is likely to succeed in pissing the neighbor off, but that doesn’t really help OP. If the neighbor wants to pursue a bogus claim, or for some reason believes the claim to be genuine, it is trivially easy to do so armed only with a license plate number and/or VIN (and the neighbor can get both of those without the cooperation of the OP). The existence or lack of a police report, the quality of an insurance investigation, etc., are independent matters unrelated to supply of insurance info.
Yes, I hope the OP’s insurer will be able to deflect a false claim, in all circumstances. However, I still don’t see how withholding information from a potential claimant makes that outcome any more likely. The insurance company is going to do what they’re going to do regardless of whether the claim is received based on information from OP or based on information the neighbor’s insurer or attorney found in a database such as Autodata.
Why would I have a black mark against me for not turning over my insurance information to a person who I wasn’t involved in a car accident with?
When they contact me in some official capacity (police, lawyer, insurance), we can go from there, but I’m not handing over any personal information to random people that are, essentially, running a scam/insurance fraud. I’m going to wait until they take their pretend story, put it in writing, sign their name to it and put it on record. That way, when it can be shown that I had nothing to do with it, their insurance company can go after them for fraud or the police dept can go after them for filing a false report. But my guess is that they outright lying, they’ll just move on to the next mark. If they’re not sure and your car was the closest, maybe they’ll reevaluate and just make a claim but to get it fixed…not a claim against you.
Or the insurance company will decide that it wasn’t your fault, will fix their car and raise their rates.
TLDR, there’s literally no reason to hand over your insurance information to random people in the street…and that’s what you’re suggesting.
This is my biggest concern. Even if you had incontrovertible diagrams and photographs, the Claims adjuster is going to do a quick cost/benefit analysis and you’ll end up the proud papa of a bouncing baby claim.
I used “black mark” in the exact same sense you did earlier in the thread: a claim paid on your record. I even quoted you:
If you DON’T hand over your information, the exact same thing can happen, with one extra step: somebody somewhere has to look up your insurer.
Depending on your state, the neighbor may be able to call or write the DMV and get this information, or they may have to ask their insurer to look it up. (Back when I had more current knowledge about the workings of an agent’s office, the agent had access to the database. “Oh, you want to file a claim against Joey P’s car with license plate XYZ 987? According to our database, he is insured at State Farm with policy number 1234567890. Let us know if you want us to handle the claim for you or not.”)
Contrary to what you seem to believe, your insurance information is not really some super-secret personal information that is hard to discover. If somebody is running an insurance fraud, refusing to provide your policy number will not prevent them from running that fraud. Filing a claim with your insurer based on a policy number you provided does not in any way make it harder to go after them for false reports or fraud than letting them file a claim based on a policy number they had their own insurer or attorney or agent look up.
If you give them a policy number, they are still going to have to “take their pretend story, put it in writing, sign their name to it and put it on record” with your insurance company. They know that going in, so why do you think the threat of it would cause them move on to another mark?
There’s literally no reason that refusing to hand over your insurance information is going to protect you from insurance fraud. If the claim comes to your insurer via a policy number that somebody else looked up somewhere else, your insurance company is still going to decide whether it’s worth their while to conduct an extensive investigation or not, and the same outcomes are possible.
Like I posted earlier, I know people want to get along with their neighbors, but sometimes you just can’t.
Handing over your insurance info and saying “go head and make a claim” is tantamount to saying you caused the damage. Now you have your own actions working against you.
The OP did not go about this correctly and you’re simply wrong in your assertion that he did. If he truly did not cause the damage there were a couple of different things he should have done, but just handing over his info and telling them to make a claim isn’t one of them.
Bullshit. This was the best, most sensible way for me to proceed while retaining pleasant relations with some of my nearest neighbours. Why would I antagonize them? As someone posted, this is the reason we HAVE insurance.
Update: I made a recorded statement for my adjuster today, who will call back in the next 24 hours with her findings.
You should have said that to your neighbor rather than let yourself get bullied into handing over your insurance info over damage you claim you didn’t cause.
Your situation not withstanding, there are people who simply cannot appease their neighbors no matter what. Whether yours is one of those situations is up to you to decide.
No, it’s not. Insurance info is almost trivially easy to obtain, and the insurance adjuster handling the claim probably will have no idea whether you provided the info or whether the claimant got it by some other means. Your actions will be irrelevant; they won’t change the manner in which the claim is handled at all.
How do you think it would matter? If a file lands on the adjuster’s desk that says that slash2k is claiming pkbites damaged slash’s car, why do you think the adjuster cares who told slash how and where to file the claim?
I was not bullied. YOU are dots on a screen to me. My neighbours are human beings that I have to deal with daily. Can you really not see the difference?
Yes, it does matter. If you come up to me, tell me that I hit damaged your car and I hand over my insurance info, you can make a claim against my insurance and the only parties involved will be you and my insurance company. They’ll either pay you or they won’t. There’s a good chance that if they deny the claim, that’ll be the end of it.
What I’m doing is telling you to make the claim for your damaged car (that I didn’t damage) against your own insurance. They can contact me and I’ll take it from there. I might be able to explain to them that I couldn’t have done it or I might have to get my insurance company involved, but either way, I’m forcing you to make claim against your company…not mine.
Also, you keep talking about how easy it is to get someone else’s insurance information. I’m not buying it. If I don’t hand it over willingly, you either make a formal claim with your insurance company or get the police involved (and I’d have to put my info on the accident report in which your saying I did a hit and run). I guess that’s easy, but it’s not like you can call the number on your card and just request ask the person that answers the phone for my insurance information. At least not that I’m aware of.
Maybe this is all publicly available in some states, but at least it’s not where I am. I don’t know of any way that I can make a claim against someone else’s insurance, if they don’t give me their information, without me doing something in some official capacity. Namely, making a claim against my insurance, telling them what I know about the vehicle and/or owner that did the damage and hoping for the best.
But, again, if I didn’t do what they’re saying I did I’m sure as hell not going to make it easier for them to extract money from me.
I posted a link above to one company offering a database for one state; similar databases exist for pretty much every state, which are accessible to people in the business. In many states (I don’t know about yours), the DMV records information about your current policy every time you renew your registration, or requires insurance companies to provide that information to the state, and will sell this information to anybody who asserts a bona fide reason for wanting to know, with “investigation in anticipation of litigation” being one such reason.
Social-engineering a DMV clerk, an insurance agent, or a spouse’s cousin’s best friend who works in an attorney’s office is another possibility. So is just calling up various insurance companies; phoning just two (State Farm and Geico) yields a better than 1-in-4 chance of getting the right company.
Beyond that, the neighbor doesn’t actually have to file an insurance claim at all; they can proceed directly to small claims court and file against you personally. (And if it gets to that point, your insurance company is going to be asking some hard questions about why you didn’t involve them earlier–they HATE surprises like that.)
You keep saying that it’s super easy to get this information. Again, it’s not. That link, as you say, requires you to be ‘in the business’.
Social engineering a DMV clerk? What’s your plan there, exactly? What are you going to say to a DMV clerk or Jake from State Farm to get them to give you any information about a license plate that you have that isn’t going to result in them telling you to start with your own insurance company (or the police). Keeping in mind that your talking about tricking the DMV clerk and the insurance company has their own interests in mind.
And none of those methods you listed are ‘trivially easy’. Looking up someone’s address is trivially easy. Finding out if they’ve been in trouble with the law (in most states) is trivially easy. Lying to county employee or calling in a favor with your spouse’s cousin’s best friend that has access to this stuff (BTW, pulling those records leaves an audit trail, doing it without a good reason can get people in trouble), is not ‘trivially easy’.
Why? what? So some guy tells me that I messed up his car. I know that I did no such thing and tell him that if he wants to pursue it he can call the police or his insurance company. Why would I call mine? What would I tell them? That somebody is what? Falsely accusing me of a hit and run? Yeah, I’m sure they’d be thrilled to know now, but since it NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED, there’s no reason to tell them. That’s the whole point. I’m going to keep them out of this as long as possible (hoping that it blows over) since it never happened.
IIRC, I have a duty to report all accidents to them with in some set period of time. I’m pretty sure there’s no time limit on reporting fake ones to them.
Also, I know they can take me to court, I mentioned it many times in this thread. My thoughts are that if someone is lying, just totally running a scam, they won’t take it that far. But it doesn’t have to go that far, I don’t know why anyone (that has insurance) would go that route, they would just file a claim with their company and that’s pretty much the end of it.
Seriously, think this out. I come up to you and say that you keyed my car last night. Are you really going to to hand me all your insurance information? If you are, I guess we’re never going to see eye to eye on this. Personally, I can’t see any reason to make life any easier for someone that comes right up to you and tells you that they’re going to make you pay for something you had no part of.
And just because I feel like this needs to be said, again, the OP didn’t do anything. He didn’t damage the other person’s car. They found damage on their car and falsely accused him of it. You’ve now gone beyond giving them your insurance information and suggested he should proactively notify his own company.
You didn’t cause the damage yet you insist that giving them your insurance info and telling them to file a claim was…
Well then you’re a pushover.
If you didn’t cause the damage you could have handled this differently without being rude or antagonizing your neighbor.
It’s called being assertive. You can maintain a friendly, civil relationship without giving in to their demands. Giving your info and telling them to file a claim IS tantamount to suggesting that you were somehow involved in causing the damage.
You gave your neighbor your insurance info and told them to file a claim. How antagonized are they going to be if your insurance company tells them they should jump in the lake?
No, it isn’t. You have insurance to cover financial obligations for when you do cause damage/injury, or when damage/injury is caused to you by an unknown or uninsured/under-insured party. It is not for paying for damage on other peoples property that you did not cause.
Believe it or not I’m actually on your side here. Sincerely I am. I don’t like the idea of someone trying to soak somebody for damage they didn’t cause.
But you opened this thread asking for opinions. Please don’t get pissed because some of those opinions are that you should have done things differently.
I’m going to say, “I’m slash2k and I have a problem. Can you help me?” Most people, most of the time, are pretty willing to help. They don’t NEED to be tricked; they’re perfectly happy to give you what you need. That’s how and why social engineering works.
In my state, for example, the state Division of Vehicles has an official form for requesting information from motor vehicle records. You give them a license plate number and $10; they give you vehicle registration information. There’s no trickery, no lying, no calling in a favor. It’s a standard process. (Whether the information you receive still includes policy # I’m not sure, as it has been a number of years since I’ve needed to do that.)
I know for an absolute fact that my former insurance agent’s office would look up information for their insureds; I said so earlier in the thread. They were in the business and had access to the database; they’d tell you, “that vehicle is insured with XYZ Company–do you want to contact them yourself or handle it through us?” They regarded it as a service for policyholders, especially policyholders who have liability-only coverage and hence no chance of collecting from their own company. That may well be an unusual practice, but it’s hardly unknown.
I actually returned to this thread because I had the opportunity to discuss the matter with a retired insurance guy this weekend. (He started as a claims adjuster, and then moved into the litigation side, mostly defending his company and their insureds from claims real and otherwise.) He says the company absolutely wants to know. They’ve seen plenty of bogus claims through the years, they have experience and protocols for dealing with 'em, and trying to keep them out of it does them no favors. If they end up being dragged into it later, getting in late makes it harder for them to investigate and determine what really happened, and if it does end up in court, “I thought it was bogus but turned it over to the experts at my insurers” plays much better than “I tried to keep it secret from the experts.” [Juries sometimes conclude that “I’m going to keep them out of this as long as possible (hoping that it blows over)” means “I’m guilty, I know I’m guilty, but I’m going to cover it up and hope it blows over” (because sometimes that really is what it means) and reach a corresponding verdict.]
He also says that specific policy language varies from company to company and state to state, but it is pretty typical to require that any POTENTIAL claims be reported. If you know of somebody who claims your vehicle damaged theirs, the company may regard it as your contractual obligation to report it to them regardless of whether you think the claimed incident ever happened, and failure to do so once you are on notice of the potential claim may be grounds to drop you at your next policy renewal. Check the language of your policy, or discuss it with your agent.
No, it’s not the end of it. Michigan is the only state that has mandatory no-fault rules covering property damage; in all of the others, the owner of the other vehicle (and/or his insurer) has the right to pursue you, through either your insurance company or the small claims process. If they don’t have full coverage on their vehicle, or they have a very high deductible, pursuing you may be the only way they recover.
Even if they do file the claim with their own insurer, if they name you in the claim then their insurer is going to want to know whether you/your insurance can be compelled to pay. If they pursue you, sooner or later your insurance company is going to hear about it, and they’d much rather hear about it from you.
From what my insurance friend says, a lot of the time it’s NOT a scam, in the sense of somebody deliberately lying or attempting to put one over on the company or the courts. It’s somebody who has convinced himself, sometimes in the very face of reason, that you are the guilty party, that you are the one who should pay. Insurance companies have plenty of experience dealing with these sorts of claimants too.
It’s not about making it easier on the other guy; it’s about making it easier on you. Jake at State Farm knows a heck of lot more about defending you from bogus claims than you do.
According to the insurance guy I mention above, no, as a claims adjuster and litigation specialist, it absolutely does not mean that to him or to his company. His advice to me, if I ever find myself in that situation, was to turn everything over to my insurer, including telling the would-be claimant to talk to my insurer, not to me.
They’re going to be antagonized at your insurance company, which is usually better than having them antagonized at you.
It’s also for protecting you from bogus claims. You are paying them, in part, to defend you against unreasonable claims, so let them do their job.
As I recall, pkbites, you are ex-law enforcement. If somebody is being harassed, would you suggest that they try to handle it entirely by themselves, or would you recommend they involve the appropriate authorities (which might be LEOs, HR for workplace issues, the school administration for K-12, etc.)? From my experience, most LEOs would rather know about potential issues sooner rather than later; in my workplace, HR definitely likes to know early on. In the OP’s case, their own insurer is the appropriate authority to handle the matter.
(I realize you have no particular reason to trust me about what “my insurance friend” has to say, so I strongly suggest you discuss the issue with your insurance agent, or any claims adjusters or insurance lawyers of your acquaintance.)
slash2k, with all of that acknowledged, I think there’s quite a different between a situation where there has been an incident and the facts & fault are in dispute, and a situation where no incident has taken place, i.e. where the other party is mistaken or attempting fraud. If I am certain that my vehicle has not been involved in any incident at all, there is just no way I’m giving any details to somebody who’s must making stuff up. If they want to persist, then it’s up to them to file a police report and sign their name to their false or mistaken allegations, but there’s no way I’m going to cooperate. I certainly might advise my insurance company myself of what happened, and just tell them that I refused to exchange information because no incident occurred, I think that addresses your concerns about keeping your insurance company apprised of potential claims.
