I just checked my insurance policy. I must inform them. I will bring all my paperwork in addition to the case number slip from the police officer. I will tell you how the meeting at the car insurance office goes.
I understand that “informing” the car insurance company is not the same as “filing a claim”. I will not file a claim if it will cause my premiums to go up. I CANNOT afford to have my premiums go up. That’s why I’ve been mulling over this all day.
I’m glad I read through to the end before posting, as this is exactly what I intended to say. Many policies require you to report all accidents. While there’s a reasonable chance your carrier might never find out about a minor accident that was not reported to the police, making that report changes the equation dramatically. They probably routinely mine police reports looking for covered vehicles, to protect their interests.
Your carrier would have the right to cancel your policy. Further, they might not cancel immediately upon learning about your failure to report. They could continue collecting premiums until either policy renewal or until you get in a more serious accident and drop you at that point. Insurance isn’t philanthropy, it’s loss management, and the companies hold all the cards.
Just got back from the meeting. The receptionist was pushing a brochure on me, urging me to report an auto claim, even “helpfully” pointing out that there is a open-line telephone over there. I insisted on meeting with an insurance agent. She put me in, told me to wait and have a seat. While I was looking over my papers, I heard my name being called, looked up, and saw the insurance agent. He made a good impression on me. We talked about the weather, how it was a cold morning and that it’s now summer. Then we got down to business. The insurance agent asked if I was a visual learner. I thought that was an interesting question. I told him that, yes, partly, I am a visual learner. He got out a sheet of paper and we sketched out the scene of the accident. It was intense! I knew I was in a car insurance office, but it felt like I was in a court of law.
Here’s how the accident played out, according to the sheet we both wrote out:
12:00 PM – I go to lunch.
12:03 PM – I get in my car.
12:05 PM – accident
I look for oncoming traffic.
She’s looking for oncoming traffic. She decides not to go.
While looking for oncoming traffic, I see cars turning into the parking lot.
I look out for traffic, decide to go, start to turn, and see car’s glare which impared my vision, hit her car, and heard impact. (Did it impare her vision?)
12:06 – I get out of car, inspect her damage noticing scuffing on left side of rear bumper while simultaneously she is rolling down her window presumably inspecting my damage noticing dent in the right side of the hood. From my point of view, I see her looking at me. I look at her and she says “Pull over to the side and we’ll talk.” She calls the police. We talk. The police arrive. The police officer gives us a report to fill out jointly. We fill out the report to the best of our ability. The police officer help us fill it out and asks questions and we briefly discuss the accident. The police officer leaves. The other driver leaves. I leave. Approximate end time: 12:30 PM. I come back from lunch at 1:00 PM.
The insurance agent explained to me that unfortunately the police department won’t care about the car that was turning into the parking lot. They won’t care that the car’s glare impared my vision. In fact, the police report form only had room for two parties, two cars.
The easy part: Deciding to not report an auto claim; instead, getting a reference to a shop. Bottom line: Tell the police (already done), don’t tell the insurance (report an auto claim), get repairs (need to do), and my insurance rates will not go up (no surcharge).
It’s 24 hours after the accident. In 48 hours (72 hours after the police report) I need to get a copy of the police report and get an estimate on the repairs. The good news: I’m off Wednesday.
The hard part: Knowing what she will do. First of all, I am glad that my car received the brunt of the impact and that her car only sustained scuffing. Optimally, of course, we would have both recieved scuffing. Theoretically, there would have been no impact. Secondly, I’m glad that she said “Pull over to the side and we’ll talk” and not “Pull over to the side. We’ll talk.” Meaning, you’ll be getting a call from me.
Me and my insurance agent spend most of our hour long meeting going over what she could do. In short, either I call her or she calls me. Her not filing any claims regarding scuffing on rear bumper depends on whether she wants to buff out the scuffing. Worst case scenario is her insurance company calling my insurance company… One alternative scenario is for her deciding to settle in which case she goes to collision shop, gets $100 estimate, calls me with the estimate, and I offer to pay the estimate. Another scenario involves me calling her in 48 hours asking “Have you decided whether you want to file a claim?” and then asking her “Would you like me to pay for your damages instead of filing a claim?”
Should I call her? What should I say?
Your policy likely has a requirement of Full Disclosure. That means you have to tell them. It doesn’t mean that you make a claim. You say something along the lines of, “I wish to report an incident. (Give brief details.) I am not expecting to make a claim but reserve the right to do so.”
Where I work, we take claims and inquiry calls and I field this type of question (Should I file a claim?) all the time. And I can tell you for sure, this tactic wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. You DO have the option to report the claim as incident-only, but we still have to ask all of the questions we would while filing a full claim. You can’t just call your ins.co’s call center and say, “I was in a minor fender bender and I’m telling you, but I don’t wish to make a claim at this time. Bye!” It won’t be recorded anywhere except in the bowels of millions of other phone recordings, which aren’t indexed or accessible in any meaningful way. We get thousands of calls every single day. You have to start a paper trail, or it’s meaningless.
This is obviously a difference between the U.S. and the U.K., because here it’s pretty much exactly that. The thing is that it’s quite common with minor claims for the damaged party to sue on their own account so as to not lose their no claims discount. As long as you disclose that there’s been an accident and the basic nature of the accident, everyone’s happy. You can then go back and say, “I’ve looked into it, and I’d now like to make a claim”, whereon the full claim process starts.
That is how it works for some companies (including mine), but you still have to file an *official *initial report with the insurance company. You can’t just call and say what you want to say and have them document your file (at least, not at my company). When a report-only claim is filed, we ask all the same questions that we ask when taking a normal claim–if you don’t want to disclose certain things, you’ll be saying “unknown” a lot. We don’t take any action post-filing, but we still have to go through the exact same list of questions. We provide a claim number and a phone number for them to call if they’d like to assign a claim handler to the file later on. But, you need to follow this official set of steps to get it into the system, and this is not optional.
My company doesn’t mandate reporting every single minor incident, though. I know some do.
Just came back with the police report and an estimate from a collision shop (I’m going to get the headlights replaced, not the hood, fender, or bumper – too expensive). In the police report it states: “ADVISE YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY THAT THIS REPORT HAS BEEN PLACED ON FILE WITH THE POLICE DEPARTMENT.” and then has the ominously relieving message: “NO FURTHER ACTION WILL BE TAKEN BY THIS DEPARTMENT.”
Now the question is: Should I call the other driver?
My insurance agent advised me to call her and ask her “Would you like me to pay for your damages instead of filing a claim?”
First the usual disclaimer – I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, I am not an insurance agent, I am not your insurance agent. All statements made are exclusively for entertainment value and may not bear strict one-one correlation to reality. Now…
The police have no interest in your civil affairs, they only take interest in crimes. You didn’t commit a crime, so they have no further interest in you and plan no further involvement with your accident. That’s what the boilerplate statement means. Did you expect anything different?
As for calling the other driver and volunteering to pay up, of course your insurance company would like you to do so. It will reduce or eliminate the chances that they’ll have to fork over something to the other driver. But why, now that you’ve involved both the police and your insurance carrier, would you do so? Covering the losses of yourself and anyone else involved with you is exactly why you’re paying those premiums in the first place.
I know, you said upthread that your overriding concern was to keep your premiums from increasing. And so you’re trying everything in your power to keep your carrier from incurring any costs, or at least you’re struggling to limit those costs. I’m sure your carrier is smiling. Laughing out loud behind your back, maybe. You see, your carrier doesn’t set the cost of your premium based upon the actual expense of covering you. They’re not holding some secret amount in mind, waiting to pounce with higher premiums as soon as you cross that line.
The cost of repairing a 1993 POS won’t be the same as that for a 2012 Jag even when both have similar hood dents. This is the carrier’s exposure, and Jag owners pay more than cheap, old-car owners because of it. This will not change for you as long as you have the same car.
The other factor your carrier uses to evaluate your policy is risk, and it uses complex actuarial tables to calculate that risk. Risk goes up, premium goes up. Risk passes some level, or includes some special factor, and policy gets declined regardless of price. (For instance, conviction for DUI might place you outside their limits, or maybe 2nd accident in X number of months could be a deal breaker. Red cars seem to be at greater risk than green ones, just as one less than intuitive example.)
At any rate, by having an accident – any accident – you’ve already increased their risk. Drivers that have accidents tend to have more accidents. That’s a simple reality of life, and insurers are well aware of it. That’s one reason they require you to report the accidents you do have, so they can assign you to a higher risk class. The actual payout for your loss is irrelevant for this purpose, although of course they will do everything they can to persuade you to limit their direct expense if they can.
Basically you’re stuck. The carrier already knows everything it needs to know. It will decide at renewal exactly what its risk & exposure is, and set your rate – or drop you – based upon that knowledge. Right now you may as well take advantage of all those years of premiums paid and at least let them fix your car.
I got in a car accident, ok? Hood, fender, bumper, headlights, to be specific. I’m going to get the headlights fixed for under $200 and opt out of getting the hood, fender, and bumper fixed. Getting those fixed would involve my insurance which would involve my premiums increasing.
The police already know. If I didn’t tell the insurance then they woulld know, except they wouldn’t know from me, they would know from the police. I’d rather tell the insurance than have the police tell the insurance (or have the insurance find it out from police reports).
I need to show my insurance agent a copy of the police report (will do). I need to get my car’s headlights fixed (already getting estimates). I need to call the other driver (debating whether to do this).
Feel free to do as you wish. But you still seem to be operating on the belief that your premiums are based on the payout your carrier makes – the higher the payout, the higher the premium. Again, this just is not the case, although your agent and the carrier have a vested interest in “suggesting” it, or failing to actively dissuade you from your belief. You might try asking the direct question “Will my premium be based directly on the amount you pay out to fix my and the other driver’s cars?” I’ll bet dollars to donuts you won’t get a simple or straight answer. You’ll get some BS about it being “part of the consideration”. This is because they can’t really lie to you, but they can obfuscate endlessly. The real answer would be “No, premiums are based on risk.” Carriers already know how much they’ll pay out for a given group of policy holders in a given year, give or take some fudge factor far, far larger than the total value of your car. This amount has already been figured into the premium of you and everybody else in that particular pool. That’s why insurance is called “shared risk”. Your actual loss is an infinitesimal – and already accounted for-- part of that shared risk. Your future risk to them has already increased by the simple fact of having an accident. That risk isn’t affected in any way by the cost of your hood.
I really don’t think any good can come from the police hearing about any kind of accident either. However, the police were at the scene of the accident and there is a police report. I really don’t think any good can come from my insurance company hearing about any kind of accident. However, the police heard about the accident and if the insurance company doesn’t hear about the accident from me then they will hear about the accident from the police.