Six gear cars

Archive for May 11th, 2010

When The Car Insurance Company Doesnt Pay

I recently read an article about an incident that could teach all of us a great deal about car insurance firms. A person with comprehensive insurance on their vehicle had it vandalized during the night in front of their house. The insurer said that because the vehicle was not broken into and because they did not know who had done it !? they would have to treat it as accidental damage. Further because the owner was under 25 years old there was an additional 500 charge for any accidental damage. To put it in other words the car insurance company was treating it as though the owner of the automobile had driven automobile into a wall and was charging them as such.

A few things become apparent to me as I read this. Of course the car insurance company does not want to pay money. And they really don’t want to pay out money if they know they won’t get any of it back by increasing the premiums and this is likely the case. Comprehensive premiums are based on the replacement value of the car and the geographical region. So we should never be surprised if they don’t want to pay us anything. The second thing to remember however is that they have vast experience in legally avoiding their obligation to pay their clients and we generally have no experience whatever in getting them to fork over the dough. When we make a claim it is more often than not the first time or at least the first time with this insurer. We need to understand that they always have caveats like this one to put the claim in a special category allowing them to treat it in the way that most benefits them.

Auto insurers are not the only ones to do this. I had a leak in the upstairs bathroom in a rented house a few years back. This caused a stain which needed repainting downstairs. I called the insurance company to make a claim but they asked me to show them the invoice for having had the room painted initially. I asked them why. They explained that I had to demonstrate that I was damaged financially in order for them to reimburse me anything and if I had not paid anything to have the house painted originally then I was not damaged financially. According to their logic the person who originally painted the room was the one who was damaged and therefore they did not have to reimburse me. Talk about convoluted reasoning! They must have stayed up late to think that one up.

What does all of this mean? Simply that for the most part your insurance policy is of little value. Get over it. Buy insurance with the objective of protecting yourself against a disaster. Where car insurance is concerned this means public liability and nothing else that is not required by law. The purpose of insurance is to foresee the worst. Take the money you save and put it into your savings account. And learn how to compare auto insurance quotes on line.

About the writer:  Darrell F writing about the Audi A3 on contract hire and Audi leasing.