Normally, for someone who as never been involved in the car insurance claims process, you are inclined to think that once you have made your claim initially, the rest is out of your hands. You get to sit back until the check comes in, right? In reality, decisions need to be made by you all along the way, and those decisions could not only affect your own future car insurance rates, but also the rates of everybody else in your area. It all starts when your car insurance company and the repair shop that has consented to fixing your car cannot come to any agreement regarding compensation for services. It would seem simple enough. The repair shop gives an estimate, and the car insurance company gives the okay, but it really goes beyong just that.

Usually it begins when the car insurance company gives the body shop an appraisel for the needed repairs. The problems that start after this usually originate from the shop when they try to mess with the system. It is unfortunately a widespread happening that at many repair shops, they will try to fix the price so that they can get more money out of car insurance companies. This can be done by ‘fixing’ things that aren’t even broken, or by replacing something with an entirely new part when all it needed was to be repaired. Such actions by a repair shop can lead to a long drawn out battle with the car insurance company that gets in the way of your claim and could bring more serious complications for you if you end up implicated in the fraudulent mess.

Such actions bring rates up for everyone. This can be for several reasons. The most salient one is that the extra rates charged by the repair shops make the claims amount paid by the car insurance company. However, in order to avoid this problem, car insurancec companies often have to hire people to stand watch at the repair shop to make sure that nothing fishy is going on with their claimant’s car, and that’s more money still.

There are ways that this can be avoided though. If you do end up getting with a shop where the company and it cannot decide on how much money is owed, you’ll probably end up picking up the slack. In order to both avoid a duct tape fixing of your car and problems with funds and fraud, you can just call up your claims adjuster and ask for repair shops suggested by the company. These shops have not only proven over time that they do quality work, but they have formed a relationship with the car insurance company. There is no suspicion between them, so you can easily turn their vehicle over and forget until it’s ready to be picked up.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.