Car Insurance Claims Evaluation in California
Reader’s Question:
Why did my vehicle insurance company here in California send this “adjuster” guy to my uncle’s shop? They already have a list of the repairs that he made to my car, so why are they bothering to send another guy?
Mei
San Jose, CA
A vehicle insurance company in California, and anywhere else in the U.S. for that matter, will send adjusters or appraisers to double check and evaluate the insurance claims to see if they’re reasonably priced.
Basically, adjusters step in as “arbiters” who provide the final say when it comes to estimating the cost of vehicle repairs in a shop. Their estimate is what the vehicle insurance company will bank on to prevent the contracted repair shop from overcharging the costs of repairs.
Don’t feel threatened by adjuster: it’s his or her job to estimate the cost of repairing the damage to your car, investigate liability in the accident and generally work for your benefit. You’ll have no problems as long as your uncle’s auto repair shop is playing by the rules. If you have photos or videos of your car’s damages before being repaired, present them to the adjuster for extra proof of the extent of damage.
On the flipside, it may be the adjuster who’s over-charging for repairs, so you may want to consider asking the adjuster to make a comprehensive breakdown of the expenses to check and confirm his or her estimates. Be especially careful if the adjuster is a staff adjuster who works for your vehicle insurance company.
Also, you may want to wait until the adjuster arrives before repairing your car the next time you get into an accident. Both the adjuster and your uncle can then make proper estimates together so neither of them will have problems with over or underestimating the extent of damage to your car.
How Long Does an Accident Stay on Your Car Insurance Record In California?
Reader’s Question:
How long does a car accident stay on your insurance record in California?
Tom
Good question Tom.
All accidents are reported by the law enforcement officer to the Department of Motor Vehicle that will show upon your driving record unless another person is at fault in the event of accident.
The California assigns one point to at fault accidents. The points will be placed on your driving record and all the information regarding the incident. This information will stay on your record for three years.
Whenever a person applies for a policy, renews his insurance or makes any changes in their auto insurance policy, the car insurance companies check the individuals car insurance and driving records. If your accident is on the MVR, this will definitely affects your insurance rate.
Insurance companies keep records of your claims related to accidents as well as the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The insurance companies can access the comprehensive loss underwriting exchange to find out what previous claims you’ve had.
You may contact the California Department of Insurance to find out if California allows insurance companies to charge surcharges or raise premiums due to accidents.
Goodluck!
MariCAR
Why Does Car Insurance Have To Cost So Much?
Nobody wants to think about car accidents, aside from trying to drive well and avoid them. However, sometimes things happen and you can’t avoid them, so having a car that will stand up well in a car accident will both protect you and get you a good car insurance rate for your collision premium. With more information coming to light about what makes a car safe, even the car insurance companies are trying to get changes in the law so that car manufacturers have to construct their cars in a safe way.
Changes in laws have played a big part over the years in making damages less serious and the incident of car accidents fewer. The passage of laws that require seat belt and air bags, lower the speed limits and outlaw drunk driving, have been pushed by the insurance companies, among others, and they are not doing the same with other measures.
And accidents are certainly good motivators to these insurance companies. According to the government’s information, the costs that car accidents had were about three hundred dollars for every single person in the United States, or almost two hundred and thirty one billion dollars. That’s billions of dollars in California alone, the most populous state in the entire country, right before Texas. It is also one of the states with the highest amount of uninsured drivers, so although the study didn’t specify, it probably has the highest amount of costs as well.
The National Highway Traffic Association already performs crash tests on cars, but they are trying to get more tests to be done and more available to consumers so that we can make the right decision when trying to buy a safe car. This government associations wants us to know how the cars we want actually drive and react in a crash. They also want the companies that make the cars to wise up and start making better ones and safer ones.
At the moment, having a safer car will save you money on your insurance, and will probably continue to do so, just like you are still able to get discounts for having air bags, which are mandatory. However, requiring more safety means that car prices will go up because cars will be more expensive to make.
Online California Auto Insurance For My Lemon Car?
If you want to get a good online California auto insurance quote for a lemon, then you have to keep track of what is going on with the lemon, because for the time that you have the car it will be considered a higher risk because its delicate state will make it more susceptible to damage in the case of a car accident. If you want to make sure you are not overcharged in your auto insurance quote for your lemon car, then you have to be able to prove why you should have a cheaper rate.
Here’s what you should keep track of:
- All of the information that you have from when you first bought the car. This includes that big envelope containing your contract and everything you signed which was given to you by the dealership. You should also have on hand anything about the warranty for your car, as well as whatever ads you saw, if possible, that alerted you to the sell of the vehicle.
- All of your registration stuff. You’ll need to be able to show with your online auto insurance quote in which state the car was registered when it was bought by you, and where it is registered now (California).
- Any documentation you have about repairs. Your online insurance quote about this will get the information from your CLUE report, but in order to get the best deal, you have to make sure that all of the repairs were done by the dealer or manufacturer with OEM parts. You should also make sure that any statements or bills that the repair shop releases should have your version of the damages, because a lot of times the car lots will sidestep lemon laws by playing with words.
- California auto insurance law requires you to tell the dealer that your car is a lemon, so you need to send a letter. Make sure you have a copy of this, as well as the response, and any other correspondence between you and the manufacturer. Also make sure that all letters are traceable, so that you can have proof that they arrived or not.
California Commercial Insurance – How To Get a Cheaper Rate
If you are a self employed person who spends a lot of time on the road, then you might need to get California commercial insurance, which would provide you the extra protection that you need while being your own boss. However, in order to get the best deal on commercial insurance, you need to live up to much the same standards as required by a regular car insurance policy in California. In order to do this, and to make sure that your commercial insurance rates come out very cheap, you need to make sure that you are conducting your business in the safest vehicle you can get.
Now, you may need to make some sacrifices if you are on the road a lot, such as choosing a gas mouse over a gas monster, and it will never be possible to point out which car is the absolutely most safe one skidding over the cement, but you can get pretty close by paying attention to a few major aspects of your car. Your California commercial insurance premium will thank you.
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The bumpers in the back and front need to be well placed and strong. These take in a lot of the force of a headlong or rear end crash, so if you want to protect your valuables in the trunk or yourself and passenger in the front seat, then you need to have these two things as strong as possible.
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The size of your vehicle is better off being neither small nor large, as large vehicles inflict more damage while small vehicles take more damage. A mid sized vehicle both protects you and the other car.
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The weight is also important, because the more your car weighs, the more force it will bring to a crash, and the less it ways the more fragile it is. Proper care of tires will keep your weight where it needs to be.
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Restraints like headrests, belts, and as many air bags as possible are more protections against serious injuries in a car accident.
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Stability controls, be they electronic stability control, rollover detectors, or traction control, can be great aids in preventing you from getting into an accident in the first place. Many accidents are caused by simply turning the wheel the wrong way when you start to slide, and these devices can compensate without you panicking and making the situation worse.
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Anti lock disc brakes also help to keep you from losing control of your car, and are able to give you more control of your brakes on difficult surfaces.
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Daytime lights make your car more able to be seen in the day.
Filiing an Auto Insurance Claim in California?
Making a claim for auto insurance in California often involves the big fish in claims terms of injuries related to the car accident. When you receive an injury as the result of an auto accident, it is in your best interest to contact a car accident lawyer. Injury claims are very high stakes and complicated, and while I can give you an idea of them so that you don’t go into your claim for auto insurance in California completely ignorant, you would do better if you had an attorney to help you on the issue.
These attorneys are good for a variety of things. Not only are they able to aid you in getting the health care that you deserve and need after your accident, but they can also make sure that you have the right documentation for all of your bills and other damages. Doing this, they are better able to prove to the company for auto insurance in California that you indeed do have the right to money for your injuries.
You cannot simply choose any lawyer for auto insurance in California, though. First of all, you need an attorney who is experienced on the matters. Hiring a general attorney at law who also dabbles in car accident claims will not cut it. It is best to either get an attorney who only works for victims of car accidents, or one who has does significant work in the area. When choosing a lawyer to help you with your claim for auto insurance in California, consider also what percentage of his cases he has one and how high the damages paid were for each of those cases.
Whenever you get into a car accident, it is possible that your company for auto insurance in California owes you money for several things, from lost wages to any kind of permanent physical therapy that you might need as a result, to something as unquantifiable as pain and suffering. To make sure that you get this, hire a car insurance accident lawyer.
If My Friend Wrecks My Car Will My Insurance Policy Cover It?
Reader question:
What happens when a friend takes my car out and wrecks it? Will my car insurance claim be denied?
Max in Fresno California
Thank you for your question, Max.
It really depends on the circumstances of his borrowing the car and wrecking it. These days, car insurance policies are very extended. For example, even if their names are not on your California car insurance policy, other family members in your house will be covered if they drive your car. Another group of people that will be covered under your policy is pretty much anyone to whom you give permission to drive it, or has a decent reason to believe that you would have given them permission.
This can be kind of troubling sometimes. For example, when you didn’t give someone permission then at times it is very hard to prove that this is the case, especially if they are a good friend or relative. I would never let my brother drive my car, but if he did somehow and got into a car accident, then my car insurance company would consider it to have been consented to. This means that his at fault crash would affect my auto insurance premium in the future. If they find that I did not give my consent, or wouldn’t have if asked, then while the damages to the vehicle will be covered, the driver will not be and my future premiums will not be affected.
So, yes, if your friend takes your car out for a spin and gets into an accident, then your car insurance policy will cover their injuries as well as the damage to your car. You still need to be the one to file a claim, though, and pay your deductibles. All of the responsibility for that sort of thing depends on you, since they have not signed your policy and everything is required from you.
Now, if your friend wrecks your car, then your own insurance policy will be the first to kick in. However, if they have their own policy, then once your own insurance coverage runs out, it will kick in as well.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
California Auto Insurance Law And Diminished Value
One particular issue has been bugging California auto insurance law for awhile, and that is the right of the policy holder to receive diminished value payments for their vehicle after an accident. Along with such legal issues as credit insurance scoring (which many say is effectively discriminatory against minorities and low income people) and zip code scoring (same as the above), it holds a somewhat shaky ground in California , but it does hold ground.
- What is diminished value?
When you get into a car accident, California law will state that your car insurance must cover the damages of your vehicle if you meet the required conditions and have the right coverage. So, after your car has been fixed, perhaps you will decide to put your car up for sale or trade it in. One problem that you will face, though, is that when you put your once repaired vehicle up for sale, it will not sale for the value that it should.
This is not because of the regular depreciation. Let’s say that you’ve checked Kelley’s Blue Book and according to it and other calculations for the actual value of your car, it should sell for around ten thousand dollars. But you find that no one wants to take it for more than seven thousand. Why is that?
It’s because, when you repair your car, the value of it goes down because it is not so much in its original condition. The value drops even more when the car in question has been repaired with aftermarket parts.
- Can I make a claim for that?
According to California auto insurance law, no, you can’t. Thirty six states, in fact, have put language in their car insurance policies under the exclusions so that diminished value payments do not have to be made. According to a spokesman for State Farm, the value of a vehicle does not really decrease if the repairs are done by a mechanic with enough skill to return the car to its previous condition.
It remains to be seen whether diminished value exclusion language will be passed in every state, and whether or not the next step will be to file claims complaining about the person who apparently did not repair the vehicle as well.
What Will Happen if You File an Automobile Insurance Claim?
My husband’s car was hit last week by another vehicle, and we had to file a car insurance claim with that person’s automobile insurance company. The company was AllState, and the claim went smoothly. They looked at the car, we took it to the rental agency and got a rental car, and then we dropped our own car off at the repair shop recommended by the insurance company. Everything went well and, a couple days later, we had our car back as good as new (and vacuumed!).
That is how things should go. Whenever you get into a car accident and another driver is at fault, you, the victim, should have an easy time of it, right? All you should have to do is call up their insurance company, and then they take it from there. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes it’s just the problem of the automobile insurance company, and other times whenever the claim involves an injury the claims process can be more complicated.
Whenever you need to get repairs done on your vehicle after an accident, be sure to call the insurance company beforehand. Many companies do not like to be told after the repairs are being done, and if you take the car to the shop without telling the company then you might not get your claims check later on. So, first things first, make sure that the insurance company of the other driver understands that they are liable, and make sure that you get an approval from them on paper, even if you have to fax it.
Auto Insurance Claims – The Other Party Does Not Accept Blame?
Reader question:
When the owner of an auto insurance policy in California who crashed into your car doesn’t want to take the blame, what do you do?
Mark
Thanks for asking, Mark.
Sometimes a person will be completely apologetic at the scene of the car accident, but when it comes time to file a claim with their auto insurance policy in CA, you find that they’ve told a whole other story to their car insurance company. The company that sells his auto insurance policy is going to go with his story unless forced to believe otherwise, because they want to pay the least money and stick by their policy holder. If it’s your fault, then they don’t have to pay anything.
Normally this happens when an accident hasn’t had a police report filed for it. There’s a good reason for calling the cops every time right there. However, sometimes even when a police officer comes, they don’t file a report. Why is that? It’s because if the police officer believes the damages of the accident to be $500 or less, then it isn’t necessary to file one. However, what might seem like only a little bit of damage at the time could be worth several thousand dollars at the mechanic.
While you might try to convince the police officer to follow a report, it’s not something that you can reasonably do. Instead, do things yourself. Ask witnesses and get their statements about the accident, get the other driver’s statement about the accident, and make sure you take your vehicle to a repair shop as soon as possible so that the damages can be checked out and no one can say that they didn’t come from that accident.
Make sure you get names and numbers of the witnesses, as well as the name, number, and policy number of the other driver. Take pictures of the vehicles, and if there is a police report filed, you can get a copy.
If the auto insurance policy still gets you a no to your claim, you can get more serious. Go to small claims court with the other driver, or even get an attorney. Make sure that they can’t push you around.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
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