Even if you’re the safest driver in the country, you have to file a claim when a natural disaster damages your car. File a claim is quite a straight forward process, you must be aware of some important details, otherwise you may fail to get the right amount of money from your claim. Continue reading to know more about this.
Understanding Comprehensive Coverage
Before we dive into the claims process, let's review what comprehensive coverage is and what it covers. Comprehensive coverage is a coverage option that protects your car agains non-collision dangers like theft, vandalism, damages related with animals -rodents biting your vehcile’s wires or hitting deers- or acts of God like fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fallint objects like trees or rocks, among others.
What are the steps to file a comprehensive coverage claim?
Comprehensive coverage claims won’t differ so much to other sort of claims, let’s explain it in 7 easy steps:
1. Check youself, your passengers and your car
The first you must do is check everyone in the vehicle is not injured, if someone has been injured the first thing we must do is call the police and the ambulance, describe what happened and how many injured people are inside the vehicle.
2. Contact with your car insurer
While you wait for the police or the ambulance to come, is a good moment to take pictures or videos in the damaged parts of your vehicle. If you or any of your passengers were injured, please take pictures of their injuries. Once you’ve finished, you can contact with your car insurer, and explain what happened.
Note: If you know a trusted body shop, we strongly recommend you to send the pictures of the damaged parts of your vehicle to know how much would cost to repair your car, you will need this information in the future.
3. schedule an inspection with your car insurer’s adjuster
Once you finish to file the claim, your car insurer will contact with an adjuster. Due the large amount of crashes, that adjuster may take a couple of hours or days to respond to your claim. In that case, calm down, prepare all your documents, police report or medical expenses if needed. Once the adjuster phones you, you will have to schedule a date to check your vehicle’s status, that adjuster will also ask you several questions related to the accident, just answer these questions.
Note: your car insurer’s adjuster works for your car insurer, s/he’s not your friend, in any case that person will try to lower the car insurnace claim exepnses.
3: Wait for the Results
After the adjuster’s inspection, your car insurer will review the results given by the adjuster and determine if your claim is covered under your comprehensive coverage policy or not. If that claim is covered, they will give you an appraise of the damages and the amount of settlement you can expect from your car insurer. In case you think the settlement is ok, then you should accept. However, that’s not simple, most car insurers will give you a random amount of money, they will try to know if you know how much does your car costs. So I recommend you do not accept the first offer.
4: Agree to the Appraise and Move Forward
As we explained above, your car insurer will let the car adjuster to appraise your car, in that moment, you can hire another appraiser who can help you get the real price of your car. If both appreaiser do not concord about the price, a 3 person called impairer will decide the final price of your damaged car. At this moment, you car insurer will give you a settlement.
At this moment, you have 2 options: you can dispute the settlement or you can accept it
If you dispute it, you will have to negotiate with your car insurer and their adjuster about the amount of money you will receive. You will need to provide them more documentation about the damages, your possible medical bills, and/or wage loss. In addition you will have to explain in detail why do they have to give you more money for that claim.
If you accept it, your car insurer will sign a check with the total amount of money stipulated by the appraisal minus deductibles.
5: Review the Repairs
Once your car insurer gives you the money to pay the body shop and the hospital (if needed), you have to check the repaired parts. Be sure everything is ok. I know that might sound stupid, but, if you think there’s any other problem, you must contact with your car insurer.
Conclusion
Filing a comprehensive coverage claim is not that difficult process you thought, in fact, it’s quite a straight forward one. If you follow all the steps, get the documentation about the accident like medical or repair bills, taking pictures to the damaged parts of the car. Contact with the police or the ambulance to get an official report about what happened. Your car insurer will send an adjuster who will investigate your accident, once the accident has finished, your car insurer will contact you with a settlement. In case you’re not agree with that settlement, you can dispute it. If you think the amount of money received by your car insurer is reasonable, you can get the check.
Other readers were also interested in the following posts:
How can I know if my Insurance adjuster is doing a good job?
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Comprehensive Coverage for Fire Damage: What's Covered and What's Not
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