I had a car accident two weeks ago. It is the kind of accident that is hard to tell who is at fault, including the police findings could not determine fault. It seems the other driver was quick to contact my insurance (perhaps after first calling her insurance). On the flip side, I contacted my insurance, but they dragged their feet for two weeks before advising me (a) that they are rejecting her claim, and (b) I should to submit a claim to her insurance and see where it goes.
Is that normal that I should have had to wait two weeks before filing a claim!?! I should mention that, on the initial call to my insurance representative, he gave me the option to start my claim right away against my policy OR wait for the other insurance company - based on an investigation that may result in determining fault. Since the former option would lead to a rate hike that would hard to undo should I be not at fault, I decided to wait for the investigation to complete. And, while my representative expected I’d be contacted by the other insurance company, my representative never said I should file claim with the other insurance company until NOW! Couldn’t I have started this process two weeks ago*? Now, I am two weeks behind the 8-ball! (In hindsight, I am kicking myself for not thinking to ask if I should start a claim with the other company within 24 hours.)
What is the experience of the SD in such matters?
*If you are wondering, I have a spare car I can drive. I am not using a rental car at the expense of either insurance company.
What is your insurance company? In my experience, the only thing I’ve ever done after being in an accident is to call my insurance company and give them the details, including the other driver’s information, and let them handle it. I have never spoken to the “other person’s insurance”; that’s what I pay my insurance company to do.
YOU should lay it all out to YOUR insurance company, and THEY should deal with it from there, including trying to extract payment from the other driver or his insurance if they think the other driver is at fault. (If I understand the legal mumbo-jumbo jargon, this process is called subrogation.) Based on OP’s description, it sounds like OP’s insurance company is a pack of jackasses, or at least the reps he dealt with are. OP should deal with his own company and ONLY them, and kick their asses until they do their jobs.
When all is said and done and settled, OP needs to find a different insurance company.
Yup. That’s what happened when I had an accident. I called my insurance company and they dealt with the other driver’s insurance. The other insurance company refused to pay for my car, so my insurance got my car repaired. My insurance company did send me notice they were going to raise my rates, but I requested an appeal because the accident was not my fault. The other driver ran a red light and hit me broadside at an intersection. She admitted to running the light and was cited. I was not cited. The insurance company then decided not to raise my rate.
So, if your insurance company does decide to raise your rates (as long as you’re not at fault) file an appeal with them and be ready to provide documentation.
The other insurance may contact you for an amount settlement, but you shouldn’t have to file a claim with them at all… You should only have to file through your own.
My car got dinged by a neighbor who decided she was going to drive drunk that night, hit my car and not tell me. Luckily I have other neighbors who told me, and the police, the whole thing. Despite her insisting she doesn’t remember (and hey, with the amount she drank, she maybe didn’t), the report determined her to be at fault. Unfortunately she’ not insured, though that didn’t stop her from lying to the cop and handing over expired insurance information.
Now, even WITH uninsured motorist coverage, I’m still out $500. Fuck that lady and her entitled-ass attitude. I hope your situation turns out far better than mine did, OP.
Years ago, one of my neighbors’ parents backed into the side of my parked car (a fairly new BMW). The accident was clearly their fault, so I went through their insurance. It was an absolute nightmare. The other insurance company wanted to use cheap aftermarket parts and/or junkyard parts, and didn’t want to pay for a rental car for me to get to work. After finally agreeing to pay for a rental car for all of a week, they then told me they wouldn’t pay anymore, even though it took over four weeks to get my car fixed.
I complained to my own insurance company, and found out that I could have just gone through them, and because it was the other driver’s fault, my rates wouldn’t be affected. :smack: At the same time it occurred to me that the other driver’s insurance company really had no interest in pleasing me — I wasn’t their customer. I was just a cost to them.
Ever since then, I’ve always gone through my own insurance company, and let them deal with the other person’s insurance.
I have very little tolerance for drunk drivers, especially after one rear-ended my son at 50 mph back when he was in high school. (He was stopped with his turn signal on waiting for traffic to clear so he could make the left turn into our neighborhood.) My son was injured, and our car was totaled. Unfortunately we had just put a lot of money into the vehicle making it safe for my son, so we got screwed in the settlement. Anyway, we ended up suing — the first and only time in my life I’ve been involved in a personal lawsuit. My son got a modest settlement for his injuries, but we got nothing for the money we lost due to the totaled vehicle (which I still don’t understand).
Are you assuming this, or did the rep tell you this? Because I’ve been the not-at-fault person in an accident, filed a claim under my collision coverage and let my insurance go after the other person. And it’s never resulted in a rate hike. Why would it ? I wasn’t at fault and my insurance company recovered their payment and my deductible. It might have gone differently if I was found to be at fault.
You could have started it two weeks ago. I don’t think it’s actually your insurance company’s responsibility to tell you to file a claim with the other company. Your insurance company will deal with the other company if and only if you file a claim on your own insurance in order to recoup what they paid you - but if you don’t file a claim, it’s as if you have liability only. And when I’ve had liability only, I’ve had to file the claim with the other driver’s insurance directly, with no involvement from my own. Except in one case - I called with a question about whether the other driver’s company was acting appropriate,y and my company advised me to sue the other driver in small claims court - because her insurance company wouldn’t pay me since she never reported the accident to them. Little known fact- they don’t have to pay if their customer didn’t report the accident because the contract requires the customer to report it but getting sued is a great motivation to report the accident.
Everyone who is saying that their insurance dealt with the other company filed a claim with their own company
Subrogation is the process where my insurance company can recover their payment to me from the other driver’s company - but if they didn’t pay me, there’s nothing for them to recover. Your insurance company is not your lawyer- you paid them to insure you , not to deal with another driver’s insurance company. If you choose not to file a claim with your company or only have liability coverage , they are not involved with repairs to your car.
If I’m reading your OP correctly , you didn’t file a claim with your company and that means you will have to deal with the other company on your own.
@doreen – Read the OP again. He DID file a claim with his own insurance company, or at least he made come contact with them, then the company sat on it for two weeks, then rejected the claim and told him to contact the other company.
If OP’s insurance company did that, and then used that as a pretext to blow off the OP’s claim, that sounds like outright breach of contract to me.
The OP contacted his company, but it appears that he never filed a claim because he was afraid his rate would increase.
and the insurance didn’t reject the OP’s claim- they rejected the other driver’s claim.
What seems to have happened is that the OP reported the accident as required , was told he could either file a claim at that time or wait for the insurance company to determine who was at fault , and he chose not to make a claim until the determination was made. Presumably he waited because he had reason to think he might be found at fault and the rates would get raised ( even if the reason was just that it was difficult to assign fault) . I suspect the OP simply didn’t realize that he could file a claim with the other company directly - and I also wonder *why *they rejected the other driver’s claim but advised OP to file with her company. I suspect what happened was :
Jinx didn’t want to make a claim if it would raise his rate, so he decided to wait for a determination.
The insurance company rejected the other drivers claim for some reason other than her being 100% at fault. ( In some states , the claim would be rejected if she were 51% at fault)
Even though the investigation caused the other driver’s claim to be rejected, the results of the investigation would raise the OP’s rates ( for example, other driver 51% at fault, OP 49% at fault ) if he made a claim.
If OP’s insurance company is not involved, then the other company is not bound by their determination. If you and I get into an accident and we each file a claim with our own insurance,in most cases, they are going to negotiate and at some point settle on who is how much at fault. But if OP just makes a claim against the other drivers company, his company is not involved. Maybe the other company will pay 49% of his damages without any effect on his rates. Maybe the other company will decide their insured is 100% at fault and pay him in full.
Everything else seems to have come from the decision not to file a claim with his own insurance until they completed investigating the other driver’s claim.