need help/advice

[Stage3S4B5]

Ok I will try to make this as short/easy as possible

My girlfriend was in my dodge caliber 2 weeks ago stopped at a red light. A woman driving a Toyota tundra rear ended her at 45+. she was using her cell phone and never even hit the brakes. thank god my girlfriend walked away with some minor lower back pain which was caused by bruising, confirmed by ER. Thankfully 2 dover cops witnessed the accident and immediately said the woman was at fault. My girlfriend and i are both DE residents as is the woman that hit her but the truck was insured under a fleet insurance company based out of pa.

Heres where it starts to get interesting. The accident occurred late in the afternoon. I immediately went to the scene of the accident and contacted our insurance company and the womans insurance company. I was told by her insurance company to have the vehicle towed to my house because it was so late in the day and to pay the bill and provide them with a copy of the receipt. A few days later an appraiser checked out the car. I was at work but my brother was there during the inspection. He never looked in the back of the vehicle but he did provide a rather thorough appraisal minus interior pieces and the drivers side tail light which appears fine but now holds water. I contacted him as instructed by the insurance company about a sub woofer that was damaged in the accident. He asked me to provide pictures of the damage in an email with a link to a reputable site that had a price. Also during this conversation i asked him if the stereo equipment in the vehicle needed to be removed and he said yes. This was confirmed by body shops when i was shopping around for them as well. Once i removed the equipment it revealed much more damage to the floor and inner rear quarter panel area.

Today i get a letter in the mail with a check for the amount of the appraisal and the amount of the towing. The letter states that the check is the settlement draft and the car needs to be repaired within 13 days of the incident and the rental car is only available for that period without out of pocket expenses.

Here are the problems...
1. when i first requested a rental they denied it until i threatened to call my lawyer
2. the draft does not include any expenses incurred from the visit to the ER, prescriptions, or anything for the $400+ sub woofer
3. I was told by numerous body shops that the insurance company had me tow the car to my house to save them money and i should charge them for storing the car
4. I was also told the insurance company should be billed for the removal of the stereo equipment (I have a business license to install car stereos so i did the work myself). It took a total of 5 hours to remove the equipment which included numerous amps, component sets, double din, kick panels, reverse camera, etc.
5. heres the main issue...the accident occurred on 11/18, i received the letter today 12/2 so it has already been 14 days since the incident occurred. now i have a check from them for the appraised body shop expenses but obviously the car can not be repaired in the alloted time because it has already passed so what if more damage is found (which it will be because the appraiser never opened the vehicle...

I will be calling the insurance company first thing in the morning but this is my first time dealing with an accident and i feel like i am being jerked around. Should i get a lawyer? I feel the car should be totaled should i fight for that? any help/advice is much appreciated.

[i_ride_fieroGT]

Your entitled to any kind of expenses that wew incured by this accident (towing, medical, repair, prep,) best thing to do is contact your insurance company and see what they can do. usualy when you get 2 insurance companys arguing you always win. If not fully rembursed for the expenses you listed i think you are entitle to sue the woman who hit you and her insurance company for the damages/cost's

[DC2.2GSR]

Today i get a letter in the mail with a check for the amount of the appraisal and the amount of the towing. The letter states that the check is the settlement draft and the car needs to be repaired within 13 days of the incident and the rental car is only available for that period without out of pocket expenses. Bullsh**. They cannot tell you when/where you must get the car repaired. What if it's during the busy season for shops (which it is currently) and shops are scheduling out past christmas (like we are right now)?

Here are the problems...
1. when i first requested a rental they denied it until i threatened to call my lawyer. If they deny you a rental car, they are breaking the law. Bottom feeder insurance companies lie to customers all the time and people just give in without a fight because they figure what the ins. company says is what it is.. they never check out the facts on the issues, they just cave in and go pay for their own rental. By state law, you are entitled to a rental car if you are hit. The 'offending' insurance company is required to pay for it. That's why they gave in when you threatened to call your lawyer. They can't afford to be tough and call your bluff because they have no basis for their refusal, it's the law.

2. the draft does not include any expenses incurred from the visit to the ER, prescriptions, or anything for the $400+ sub woofer. They must pay... there is no option. If necessary, your insurance company will get the money from them.

3. I was told by numerous body shops that the insurance company had me tow the car to my house to save them money and i should charge them for storing the car. First, I have a problem with the 'numerous body shops' thing because it's another part of the MO of a piece of crap ins. company... sounds as if they told you to get more than one estimate. You should go to one shop and stick with that shop. Get one estimate and be done with it. Another state law: You are not required to get more than one estimate... ever. It's another shady insurance tactic, they get you to waste your time and shop around and they go with the lowest written amount. They insist that it's required but they're just trying to trick you into saving them money.

As far as the towing thing... it's hard to come up with civil words for that. :mad: I hear about that garbage too often. YES, they had your car towed to your house to save them money. The insurance company is responsible for the entire process, including arranging towing, paying for the towing, and also paying any storage fees that are incurred. We have a daily storage rate of $100/day for indoor storage and $65/day for outdoor storage in our fenced-in lot. Those are the fees that the insurance company must pay or they will not get the car back. They hate paying storage fees so they'll BS you into towing it to your own house on your own dime. Yes, you should absolutely charge them for storage. If it was me? I'd invent my own storage fee... $100/day sounds fair. I'd get every cent of it too.

4. I was also told the insurance company should be billed for the removal of the stereo equipment (I have a business license to install car stereos so i did the work myself). It took a total of 5 hours to remove the equipment which included numerous amps, component sets, double din, kick panels, reverse camera, etc. Yes, they are responsible for every single second and cent that is spent repairing the car. It's not your job to do anything. The customer is always 100% hands-off. Write up an invoice with your hourly rate (again... if it was me it would be inflated) and an itemized list of services rendered and materials used (if any). Give it to the shop that is working on the car. It will be tacked on to a supplement (explained below).

5. heres the main issue...the accident occurred on 11/18, i received the letter today 12/2 so it has already been 14 days since the incident occurred. now i have a check from them for the appraised body shop expenses but obviously the car can not be repaired in the alloted time because it has already passed so what if more damage is found (which it will be because the appraiser never opened the vehicle... Additional damage will be written up in a supplemental estimate and given to the insurance company and they are responsible for paying every penny. An appraiser is not allowed to write up damage that he can't see. That's just the way the ins. laws work. Lets say a bumper is bashed in severely and it's obvious that the inner bumper brackets or reinforcement bar or 5 mph absorber is destroyed, but it's all 100% covered by the damaged bumper... the appraiser writes a bumper cover in the original estimate and he can't write the other parts because technically, he can't see that they are definitely damaged even though he knows they probably are.

When a car gets to a shop, the estimate is already written and the job is set into motion. The car gets torn down and additional damages are noted, along with a ton of pictures of the damage. The additional parts and/or labor is written up on a supplement and it gets forwarded to the ins. company.

I will be calling the insurance company first thing in the morning but this is my first time dealing with an accident and i feel like i am being jerked around. Should i get a lawyer? I feel the car should be totaled should i fight for that? any help/advice is much appreciated.You are being jerked around. That's what bottom feeder companies do. All the 'bargain' companies do it, and a lot of times even the big names do it too. That's just part of the game. It's a giant pain in the ass, but it is what it is. You should not have to get a lawyer. Just speak with your ins. agent and ask some advice. They'll tell you how to proceed.

It does no good to try to get your car totaled. As I mentioned in another thread recently, you have absolutely no say in that. Insurance repair is not variable, it's a purely numbers based business. It runs on a simple if/then system. If X, then Y. If the repair cost is less then a certain percent of the total value of the car, then fix it. If the repair cost is equal to or greater than that same percentage, then total it. The customer and the repair shop have no say in the matter.

Don't give in.. fight the insurance company with your insurance company as your weapon if you have to. We have had many customers who have run into the same sort of issues and they just entered a claim with their ins. company and the two companies battled it out over who's responsible for what. Very simply, you are responsible for nothing. You were hit... they do the work and foot the bill.

[420sx]

^^awesome post. I just learned a lot.

[Stage3S4B5]

DC2.2GSR thanks a lot for the very thorough reply. After 11 calls to penn national insurance company i finally got a hold of the supervisor of my claim representative. All other attempts went straight to voice mail. She had the rep call me and we got a lot of the issues straitened out. They extended the rental until Jan 2nd pending any additional time spend waiting for parts, etc. so my alloted time for repair and rental should be more than adequate. She confirmed the supplemental process as you described. The woofer that was installed in the vehicle was damaged and i sent her pictures and information about it of which she said was already being processed. So it looks like everything is good now other than the storage fees. The guys at the body shop have been more than helpful so i will talk to them about submitting invoices for the stereo removal and storage fees. Still sucks for all this to be happening. I have attached pictures of the stereo that had to be removed...only difference is instead of 2 18"s there was only 1 8" sub in the back which was changed when my girlfriend started driving...custom a pillars were removed as well.

[Stage3S4B5]

3 more pics