Positive Car Insurance Story

[milee]

Since we are known to vent our frustrations and ire about bad insurance, car repair and mechanic stories, I wanted to balance it a little by sharing a really positive one.

Last week, we had unusually heavy rain for about 3 straight days. The day after the rain was done, I started having trouble with one parking light that wouldn't shut off. Took the car to my mechanic who discovered that there was a leak in one of the rear light units; during the rain the water had run into the place under the rear storage compartment where many of the car's electronic control units are housed.    The control units housing the external signal lights and the rear lift gate were both submerged and several others were possibly damp.  Cost to replace the rear light unit gasket and the two submerged control units is around $2500 plus the possibility that over the next few weeks/months, some of the other units or wires that just got damp could corrode and eventually need replacing.  As I was just about to tell him to go ahead with the repair, he mentioned that he thought this would be covered under the Comprehensive part of my car insurance policy.  The best part about that was if it was covered, if future electronics failed due to this leak, those repairs would also be covered.

Claiming this under insurance had never even occurred to me since I hadn't had an accident or an event like having a tree fall on the car.  But I made one simple call, the company - GEICO - was incredibly efficient and nice about it, sent out an adjuster that day and it was covered!  Not only that, but within 3 minutes of hanging up after making that call, my phone rang and it was Enterprise calling to see if they could bring me my free (covered under my insurance) rental car. 

So bottom line, it sucked to have the unexpected leak and electrical damage, but it was fantastic to have my mechanic give me the suggestion about insurance and even better how easy it was to deal with the insurance about it. 

[zibazinski]

Hooray!!

[milee]

Even more lucky - less than 3 weeks ago, I reduced the deductible on our car insurance from $1000 to $250. Pure coincidence and normally those don't work in my favor.   We've always kept high deductibles because it's so rare we're in accidents, we can cash flow $1k and the savings in premiums were worth it.  But over time, the difference in premiums between $1k and $250 has greatly reduced (good driving records I guess), so it's less of a savings.  And since our 15 year old is starting to drive, I redid all the insurance.  It's not unusual for newer drivers to get into fender benders and if/when DS does get into one, I want to be understanding but also have him feel some of the "pain" by having to pay the deductible.  Since I didn't think it was reasonable to have him pay a $1k deductible, I wanted our deductible to be an amount that I thought reasonable for a 15/16 year old to come up with.

Anyway, the bottom line was if this whole thing had happened a month ago, it would have cost me $750 more to fix under the old $1k deductible policy...

[zibazinski]

You must be doing something right for all the good karma. 

[Knee Deep in Water Chloe]

Nice!

I'll add two: 
1) We got our truck stuck in the mud while trying to park our trailer. (Technically, we could have gotten it our, but we would have destroyed the neighbor's yard in the process.) We have towing on our insurance; we called them out. The claims person on the phone told us we were only covered for $150, and the bill ended up being $300. Farmers still sent me a reimbursement check for $300!

2) DH backed into a car that was parked in our cul-de-sac. I thought he was at fault, and I kept waiting for the deductible bill to show up. It never did! It's been three years now, so I'm thinking either they forgot to bill us or we weren't really at fault. 

[sesfw]

Glad you are getting some good stories about car insurance companies. They are needed for good morale.

Unfortunately there are more bad stories than good. This last one really has me ticked off. We changed our insurance company ....... and that company immediately sold our name and number to every carrier they could find.  One morning in particular, I personally had 4 phone calls within 15 minutes after 8am wanting me to buy all kinds of insurance.  Health, home, life, hang-nail, etc ............  I was NOT a happy camper.

DH went back to the agent and let him know we didn't appreciate it.  If we can find a different agent/company we will probably change again when this one is up for renewal.

[Deleted]

I haven't had any hassles with car insurance, thank goodness. I've only used mine twice that I can remember, once when I had to use my uninsured motorist and once to replace a windshield with a crack in it. I can't remember the deductible with the uninsured motorist, but I didn't have one with the windshield replacement. I had some issues with the body shop that fixed my car when the uninsured motorist hit me, when they first gave my car back, one of the seatbelts fell off and my gas gauge and rear defrost didn't work anymore. When I first took my car to them, everything was working fine, it just had some large dents in it. But my problems with the body shop had nothing to do with my insurance.

I was on vacation on the Gulf some years ago and a lady driving an Expedition backed into my car while I was waiting to turn out of the hotel parking lot. She apparently hated the blind spots in the Expedition and vowed to get rid of it. She was upset, especially when she saw my son was in the backseat. I guess she was afraid I'd jump out my car and cuss her out or something (I did curse a lot in my head before I got out the car), because she thanked me for being so nice to her. But really, she seemed to feel so bad about it that I felt bad for her. AND it was her birthday, which was why she was there in the first place.

The only damage was to my bumper. When I got home after my trip, I took my car to the body shop the dealer used, to get an estimate for the damage. Her insurance company got a copy of the estimate, mailed me a check, and I was satisfied.