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.
Good luck. It's a little tougher for you to get multiple quotes since it sounds like your car is undriveable.
when you get the car back make sure the fitment on the fenders/hood/door is good, especially as you open and close the hood/door. On my car the bracket that holds the driver's side fender got fucked up which presses it into the hood and door too tightly. Wheels and lights are pretty much just replace and go on your way.
I drive a rare car. Got hit, suffered body damage, made claim with other guy's insurance company. Rather than pay for all repairs (quoted $5 and $6k), they "totaled" it and gave me $7k I think. Parts for my car are very expensive to buy individually (they were $3k in the quote, and then would have to be painted and installed), so I took the money and bought a wrecked car in the same color (maybe ~$4k total?). Swapped out the damaged panels myself, which actually only took an afternoon. Saved a few grand, and also got a second set of wheels and various spare parts out of the deal.
I did not let the insurance company themselves give me a quote since I thought they were going to lowball it and/or send it to a shitty shop. They wanted me to send them pictures of the damage, or bring it to one of their shops. I just got quotes from two local body shops and showed them the higher one.
Insurance was surprisingly not that bad to deal with. They substantially overestimated the pre-crash value of my car. I believe that's because they base their estimates off what's currently for sale in dealerships, and my car has unusually high mileage and I bought it cheap from a private party. Maybe companies figure that they are primarily in the business of taking inflated insurance premiums, and so can't be bothered to screw people over too bad on the actual claims. Good luck.