The claim has been filed and the adjuster has approved you to get your vehicle damage fixed. The first thing that will need to happen is the vehicle will have to get inspected by the insurance company to see if the vehicle is repairable or a total loss. If the cost to repair the damage is close to or over the actual cash value of the vehicle, then the insurance company will deem the vehicle a total loss. The total loss specialist or the adjuster will run the numbers to get the actual cash value of the vehicle based on the vehicle owner’s physical address. The national average blue book values are not normally used by the insurance companies based on my experience. If you are the insured and you do not have a “replacement policy” as well as if you are the claimant, then the actual cash value is what you will get from the insurance company. Some insurance companies do have replacement policies, so that means you can get a payout equal to the cost of replacing your vehicle, however these policies usually cost you more in premiums. Insurance is about indemnifying a person, so you usually can only get the amount you are owed based on what you had at the time of the accident, you cannot do better than where you were before the accident happened.
If you have rental coverage on your policy then you usually have a maximum number of days or cost that the rental can go per claim. I have $30/day up to 30 days on my policy, however if the vehicle is fixed or the total loss is settled before the 30 day maximum, then the rental will be done on whichever day is sooner. If you are the claimant and the vehicle is repairable, the insurance company will usually let you stay in the rental as long as your vehicle is being repaired as long as the shop is actively working on your vehicle, if they are not, the rental may be cut-off sooner. Also the rental may be good for the claimant until the total loss is settled. Again, you should check with your adjuster to confirm when the rental is due back. Also, the extra insurance, gas options and the upgrades the rental company offers you when you rent the car are usually an out-of-pocket cost to you that many insurance companies will not reimburse. I used to work for a rental company so I know that the renting agents are forced by their employers to offer this coverage on every rental.
I cannot tell you what a fair amount of your total loss settlement should be as that can be construed as legal advice. I tell people to check the same vehicles in their area that have similar miles, features and conditions as their own if they want to get an idea of what the actual cash value is for their vehicle.
Going back to if the vehicle is repairable, the insurance company usually will have their lists of shops they can recommend to you. As far as I know, people can use whatever shop they want for the repairs, but not all of the shops are guaranteed by the insurance company. Always check with the insurance company and the shop to what the guarantee on the repairs would be before you decide to use that particular shop. A lot of shops do guarantee their work up to a certain length of time. Remember that the insurance company will want to approve the estimate before they let the shop begin repairs and most reputable shops know this. As far as using a shop the insurance company recommends, it is up to you. However about a decade ago, my car was hit while it was parked, I was mad and took it out on the claims adjuster of the insurance company for the at fault driver when they were not the ones that hit me, the person that hit me was the responsible party and they were trying to help me out. I didn’t trust a word they were saying because I was young and thought I knew everything. I picked my own shop out of the yellow pages, had my vehicle repaired there after turning down the insurance company’s shop recommendation. The shop I used kept telling me the insurance company wouldn’t let them use good parts to fix my vehicle and I believed the shop representative. The car was repaired and my driver side window never worked right again. I complained to the shop but they said they did everything they could, and the insurance company said they did not guarantee their work, so I was stuck. I no longer have the car, but now that I have been a claims adjuster for a while, I would do things differently in my next accident. I am not trying to influence you. I am just trying to tell you a story of someone who did not know what he was doing at the time so you understand what choices are actually available to you if you have to go through with repairs on an insurance claim.
*I am not an attorney. The information on this site is not legal advice and should not be taken as such by the reader. What I post on here are my opinions based on my experience as an auto claims adjuster.
mrhelper@bestcarwreckinfo.com
bestcarwreckinfo.com
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