I was involved in an accident on June 18. It was the other driver’s fault and I’m dealing with his insurance company. (My insurance can’t help because I dropped collision coverage last year.) The driver’s side doors are damaged but I can still drive the car. The claims rep called me the day after the accident so obviously someone had talked to other driver. She told me an adjuster would call in a couple days and to let her know if he did not. He did not so I tried calling her and her voice mail message said she was out of the office until the next week. I called and left messages for two days after she was supposedly back in the office. She finally called back and gave me the number for the adjuster. I called him and he looked at the car a week ago. I left a message every workday since then asking for an update.
So this afternoon I get a call from a different claims rep. She says nothing can be done yet because she does not have a police report. I told her that I gave the police report number to the first claims rep over two weeks ago. I give it to her and she says she will order a copy. Then she tells me that the other driver is not responding to their calls and they just have no control over that so she can’t give me any indication of when things will get moving. I end the call saying I hope we can get this resolved very soon.
Does she really think I’m that stupid? They have had plenty of time to get the police report. And why would they even need to talk to their client since he would have told them his story when he made the claim? I’ve been very patient and pleasant with them. Should I not be? Should I let them know that I know the game they are playing? How long can they play this game? Forever? I’m so frustrated. I hate being at their mercy. Anyone have experience with this?
My mother was injured in a car collision. Ambulance to trauma center. Surgery. The whole works. The other driver was 100% at fault so at least we did not have that thorn to deal with. Still it took about 3 weeks to get paid for a totaled vehicle. No delay due to waiting for body shop estimates, just foot dragging by the insurer.
She still has not seen the first dollar of her medical bills paid by the other driver’s car insurance company (let’s call them Fate Harms). They haven’t even ordered a copy of her bills and doctor’s notes from the medical providers even though mom has sent them the necessary releases multiple times. Mom has personally sent them copies of the bills, including notarized copies, four times. They have not even paid the initial ambulance bill. The kicker is…
the collision was late September 2016, more than 9 months ago now.
Delay appears to be an intentional business practice in the insurance claims world.
Wow. Nine months - that sucks. I hope your mom is doing well.
I thought about getting the police report myself but that would mean either taking off work, going downtown and finding parking somewhere or having it faxed to me for $15. But then I figured they would just lie and say they never got it if I faxed it to them. A waste of time or money. Besides, they probably already have it. Grrrr.
I’ve gotten estimates from three body shops so I’m ready for them if/when we ever get to that point.
Tell them you’re going to call the sleeziest ambulance chasing lawyer you can find and sue them for your intractable back and neck pain. One of my less savory relatives did this and got 10,000 out of that very same insurance co. when they tried to dick him around.
Call them back and tell them the driver’s side door no longer functions adequately and the vehicle is unsafe to drive and you want approval for a rental vehicle. This places an ongoing time stamp on the claim with the potential accrual of daily rental fees. If they approve a rental fine, but if they suggest it’s up to you to rent a vehicle, tell them you’ll get one immediately for about $30.00 a day but naturally, don’t rent one.
Call them every two days or so and ask about payment for the rental fees and give them a running total of the charges. If the other driver is at fault, the insurance company should settle with you on your vehicle damage and when they request receipts on the rental charges, tell them that you rented a vehicle from a friend who later agreed not to charge you.
The delay is because they are a bureaucracy not because they are intentionally delaying anything. Never attribute to conspiracy what is explicable by incompetence. They have a million and one claims, yours is just one more, and the whole thing is just a nine to five job to them. I’m not saying that to justify it, just to explain how this is almost certainly not a deliberate strategy.
And those advising you to lie are advising you to play a dubious game. My experience (and I work with insurance claims people every day) is that if they think you are in the slightest bit dishonest, they will begin to treat you not with mere negligence but with true disdain. There’s slow and there’s slooooooow.
Whatever the documentation is, if the insurer does not get it via registered mail, return receipt requested, then they will probably claim they never got it. Only exception is if you can directly upload documents online to their claims system.
Never assume incompetence if *all *the errors turn out in the insurer’s favor.
What Princhester said +1. They aren’t intentionally stalling; they’re not your insurance company and thus feel no urgency to give you money.
Bureaucracies generally pick the course of action that is the least bother. The way to overcome that is to make it more bother to stall than it is to act. Calling them every work day is good. Calling everyone who has ever spoken with you every work day is better.
Not exactly. What you want to be is calm, polite, and completely and utterly relentless.
Excellent. Now keep repeating “here are three estimates - which amount will you pay to get my car fixed?” If they say they can’t approve it, ask for someone who can.
Nag nag nag nag nag. Eventually they will settle just to get rid of you.
And strategically sympathetic to the poor insurance company employees trapped in this slow-moving bureaucracy. Not sympathetic enough to give up and stop calling of course, since after all you need your car fixed and their job is to do that, but sympathetic enough to occasionally commiserate with them. You want them to still be annoyed enough by your calls that they make the effort to resolve things quickly, but you don’t want them to get actually personally angry at you.
At times easier said than done, of course, but that’s what to aim for.
If you do need a rental car, one thing to keep in mind is that the company at fault (in many states - check your local law first) is usually required to put you in a “comparable” vehicle. Meaning if you had a full-size sedan or SUV, they need to pay for you to rent another one, they can’t just get away with paying for a tiny Ford Fiesta or whatever.
However that also means that if you were driving a little Ford Fiesta, you can’t expect them to shell out a Chevy Tahoe or convertible. Most insurance companies are on to that.
As for getting them to respond, the other thing you can do is report to your state government insurance commissioner’s office (or whatever the oversight body is). That sometimes helps grease the wheels.
Really this is the best idea so make it happen. Your doors no longer reliably close and you want a rental. Get their approval for one and go get it. I lost my truck in an accident with a driver covered by the same unnamed company. Once they understood it was not driveable and started to pay for the Hertz rental on a full sized pickup, things moved along nicely.
I’ve been run over a couple times, so have been down this road, so to speak.
In my experience, they want you to settle fast, before costs start going up.
If you want to see them jump, the next time you speak with them, tell them you have a doctor’s appointment for the sore neck you have developed, complain about the lack of sleep since the accident, the sexual dysfunction, whatever you can think of, and they’ll be begging you to settle that claim within a day or so.
This is why insurers investigate claims thoroughly before paying, if there’s any doubt. I read somewhere back in the 1980s that auto insurance fraud alone cost every American (not every driver, every AMERICAN) about $200 a year. :eek: And it’s well known that about 10% of Medicare claims are fraudulent, and that’s probably enough to pay for most, if not all, of the bills for every un(der)insured American citizen. :mad:
Now, companies which refuse to pay legitimate, documented claims? That’s another story.
The way I’m reading this it doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary…a bit dragged out, but not too much. In short, you got your passenger side door bashed in less than 3 weeks ago and, the person working the claim went on vacation, then it was passed off to someone else, that’s pretty common. Give it a few more weeks. Also, if you nag them to death, it’s not going to speed anything up. All the paperwork still has to pass through just as many hands as it always did and you’re going to annoy everyone to the point that they’ll start ignoring you.
Now, if this goes on for months without getting resolved, that’s different. If that’s the case, than I’d suggest turning it over to A)your state’s commissioner of insurance B)your state’s attorney general or C) filing the accident report with the state (if no ticket was given out and the police report was ‘non-reportable’ ie just gathering driver info for the two of you).*
*I did that one once. Someone backed into my car in, cops came out and took a report, he said he’d take care of the damage. I sent him the estimate, he refused to pay and wanted me to get 3 estimates, including one at his brother’s shop. In Wisconsin, only one estimate, at any shop, is required. He told me to pound sand. The estimate was for $600. I took the car to a dealership, knowing it would be higher, it was just barely over a grand and I used that estimate to file a report with the state. He showed up in person, with cash, a few days later to get it cleared up. He was also gave me an insurance card that was long since expired…Geico wasn’t happy when I called them.
But, to be fair, it hasn’t been very long. Give it at least a month, maybe two before you get too worried. In your shoes, I think my next course of action would be to ask for a supervisor when I call back. Explain that I’ve sent in everything that’s been asked for, multiple times, but I seem to be getting the run around and I’m not sure what to do next.
Also, I wouldn’t make up medical issues or you may find that they going to require you to see a doctor. OTOH, fearing that the door may pop open while driving or being worried that it doesn’t lock properly or saying “I think I saw water leaking in last time it rained” aren’t lies but may motivate them to get it fixed before, say, the carpet or seats start to rot (that’ll total a car).
You could also pony up the 60 bucks and sue the guy in small claims court to see what becomes of it, but you’d have to keep in mind his insurance company may help him, legally, with that.
Again, give it a few more weeks. Be persistent, but not obnoxious. Get a supervisor on the phone next time you call.
Is at all possible that you called to start the claim, and the rep called in response to that? I had a situation where the other driver was at fault, and I had dropped my collision because the car was too old for it to be worthwhile. I called her insurance company to try to get things started- but since their insured had never reported the accident and didn’t respond to them, they weren’t obligated to pay the claim under the terms of their contract with her. I finally had to sue her in small claims court - once she got the summons, she reported the accident to her insurance company and I had a check before the court date.
Thanks to everyone for offering advice and suggestions.
I was very surprised to get a call from claims rep #2 today. She emailed their estimate to me and I took it to the body shop at lunch. They will order parts today. But the insurance company won’t allow repairs to start and order a rental car except on Mondays or Tuesdays. So if the shop can get the parts this week, we should be good to go next week. If not, I’ll have to wait another week. But things are progressing!
Well, yes and no. I worked in finance for a while. The delay is due to bureaucracy because of intentional management decisions about methods and priorities.
(Probably) nobody looks at your claim and decides to delay it. (Certainly) they look at numbers and say "on average, we pay out at 3 months. % of claims are abandoned before payout. % of claims claims have to be re-opened and adjusted. Cost of early payout would be $$. Cost of bad publicity is $$
Cost of early payoiut includes things like finance cost, liquidity cost, (insurance companies are finance companies and absolutely consider things like this), but also staff costs, which includes wage costs, building rental, tax, health isnurance.
It happened to my parents. Some drunk idiot drove his truck off the road and smashed through the front wall of their home.
It was well over two years later before they finally got their check from their insurance company. My brother and I both told them early on that they should get a lawyer but they didn’t want to upset anyone. The insurer clearly saw an elderly couple that didn’t want to make a fuss and treated them like crap as a result.