Title. Was in an accident (nobody was injured we all safe) that screwed up 3 cars. I was at 0 fault (a car hit another car that hit me into the curb). Just dealing with insurance this week and it's a nightmare. It's all theoretically going to be solved at no cost to me because that's what insurance is for, but dealing with estimates and towing and rental and this and that and the other is just taking it's toll on me. I feel I'm over my head with it.
Does anyone have any advice here? It's going to require a lot of body work to fix and the car is basically brand new (yeah I know I'm PMC bourgeois over here) so I'm really concerned about not getting it back in junk shape. Has anyone gone through this? What do I need to look out for? What should I be asking?
Anyone have any general accident / insurance stories? Feel free to share those too if you want, even if it's not helpful to me. Would be nice to hear about how others managed this stuff.
Ask your insurance if they have a recommended body shop to bring it to for an estimate. Have them send that estimate to the insurance company. If your insurance policy has rentals covered, ask your agent how to get one reimbursed. Depending on your insurance, the agents might actually be nice since you're the victim. I've had really good luck with my insurance having actually nice people on the phone and being nice to them really makes things move.
Find as many examples of your exact car/trim for sale as you can, I forget the term but kelly bluebook doesn't mean anything, you need to show them real examples of how much your car is worth if they try to total it and lowball you.
If the car is new enough, it might not be totalled but you might want to get a second opinion on if you want the car fixed. It sounds counter productive but depending on the repair, the car may be permanently worse off. Ie impossible to align the suspension, electrical bugs from pinched wires, new creaks and noises from bad fitment, etc.
A good bodyshop can truly restore a car back to a good state if they're good enough, but there's a lot of pitfalls. I've seen fucked up cars become perfectly fine cars after the insurance took a bath on a bad estimate and paid over the cars value in repairs. I've also seen simple accidents(small rear end to a tacoma, tweaking the frame) turn into huge lemons due to small things like wiring.
Insurance will likely try to go through the at-fault party's insurance first to see what they can get. It's gonna be an annoying process and you will have to call and vouch for yourself.
Thanks. I did get an estimate for the body work from the insurance at least, it doesn't seem like they want to total it. LOTS of replaced parts though, mostly in the front, mostly body parts...wheels, lights, fenders, hood, door...so I guess really it boils down to "how bad is the suspension" and is there any internal damage. It sounds like I should call the shop I'm having them take it to when it gets there and ask them for an independent estimate as well? Would they do that?
Mostly I'm worried that they're trying to source aftermarket parts for some of the stuff like the headlight assemblies.
I'm also kind of lucky that the guy who was at fault has the same insurance I have, so it's all through my insurance company. I have been on the phone once with my rep and his rep though that was kind of funny. It sounds like I can use that again though, if I'm not happy with something, maybe get my insurance rep involved to advocate for me?
Honestly it just sucks it has to be like this. Everyone trying to squeeze the dollar out of each other and all we want as the owners is for our cars to be restored to how they were. Thanks for the reply
my car has headlights that are worth like 10% of the car, so I understand. Push for OEM, you want "to be made whole". Aftermarket headlights are worse than OEM.
I don't know how it'd play out since its the same insurance company, but generally you'd want your rep to advocate for you.
I know the feeling. I invested in good dash cams just so I could calm down on the road.