Insurance Question

[MJH661]

Years ago I hit a corvette that was left in the road, when it ran out of gas. It was raining at night and the vett. Was at the bottom of a hill with no lights on. They wrote both of us a ticket. When we went before the judge, he dropped my ticket and charged the other driver with the wreck. Said it was unavoidable . Totaled both cars. I got paid. Good luck, it could have turned out worse. Glad everyone is OK.

Shame on You! You killed a vette.

 

[webicknell]

I think I will slow down and avoid these messes...

Glad you are alright... That is most important...

 

[Sowega86]

Insurance agencies have their own valuation system as my understanding. I'd use the NADA and KBB and get a good general idea of where you'd be.

Last wreck my daughter had, the valuation was based on the average retail value for what the car would have sold at area dealerships. I received more for her car than I paid originally including repairs and improvements.

 

[plastic dr]

Shame on You! You killed a vette.

And my flawless 1968 belair.

 

[CBH13]

Actually, they pull comparable values of similar vehicles for sale in the same geographic area. At least that is what I was told last year. Helped me out...the car my daughter totaled had a lot of miles on it, but was in mint condition on the inside (and close on the outside). So my car was being compared to $10K cars instead of the $7K I paid for it. Hopefully OS will get the same benefit of the doubt...

yup and you can actually look around yourself as well. When my brother totaled his integra last year they were offering a really low amount and we went online and found 7-10 vehicles that were in similar shape and were selling for much more and gave all of those to the insurance company. It almost doubled what they originally offered and he actually ended up coming ahead like 500 bucks.

 

[Okuma]

Everything finally got wrapped up with this so I wanted to post an update in case it happens to anyone else. Thankfully the issue of who was at fault was never questioned by anyone, so that was nice. The real issue was that the guy who caused the whole thing only had $25,000 in total coverage with Geico, and there were 5 cars in total involved, so they told me pretty quickly that they wouldn't be able to cover everything and my uninsured/underinsured policy would have to cover the rest, which is fine, I understand how it all works.

Since there were multiple cars involved and money was tight they needed to get an estimate for every vehicle before they could dole out some money and before I could then move on to my insurance company to get the rest. The problem was the Marta bus. After 2 months I was still having to wait on an estimate from Marta to come in before anything could happen, so I just resigned myself to not getting anything for a year or so.

The same day that I found out that we were still waiting on Marta I got a call from State Farm and they said they were going to go ahead and cover it under my underinsured policy, so good on State Farm, I didn't feel like they had to do that, they could've just waited until Geico was done. After that State Farm sent an adjuster out to look at the car and they phoned with an offer of $5,200 or so. Personally I felt like that was a pretty awesome number, but Geico's adjuster had given me a value of $6,500 so I figured I'd try to get a little more out of them. I sent the Geico valuation to State Farm and they somehow came back with $6,700! I took it and ran.

I did learn one thing, if your life would be seriously upset if your car got wrecked, get full coverage. No matter who's fault it is you can get the process going fast and get in a rental car. I would have been screwed if this was my only vehicle.

 

[sniper22]

SF don't like to be shown up by anyone, but their premium also reflects that..
Glad your done with it all and can move on. We started carrying full coverage when my age reached a point that there wasn't much difference in the premium.

 

[boneboy96]

Glad it all got settled out. Like everyone else said...glad you weren't injured.