Your frustrations? How about my frustrations? I've tried holding your hand and explaining everything to you till I'm blue in the face and you just don't get it. You're welcome.

 

So don't ! It's all voluntary, you know. If you find me annoying, there's this nifty feature called "ignore," all you have to do is click and I go away. You've been here with a superior attitude from the beginning, not even a "gee that sucks for you" or anything. Not that I require it from any one here. I asked for help with my situation, not a primer on how insurance works. I actually do know quite a lot although my indignation about this situation tends to take over from time to time.

Drop my hand, I don't want your help. And take a breath, it's not healthy to be blue.

 

Sorry. I thought my experience and knowledge would help you understand. My bad.

 

It did help me out, but what do you want me to do, lick your toes in response? I mean I am not going to be happy about the situation! I have to take the frickin truck to the body shop and pay the deductible and it's been 4 mos. since the accident. If it had been my husband driving the car that was at fault we would have told our insurance company to pay for the repairs to the other car, since he would have gotten the ticket and we believe in doing the right thing. When you consistently do the right thing and then someone else stiffs you, it is annoying and disappointing.

 

If your husband had been driving the other car and told his insurance company to pay the other guy do you think they would have? They don't pay claims their policy holders tell them to pay. They pay claims where they feel their insured is at fault. If they think their insured was only partially at fault they would offer to pay a percentage of the damages just as happened in this case. The insurance policy you have doesn't say you decide when your company pays a claim. The policy will state in some kind of wording that they will invetigate and handle the claim as they see fit.

Licking my toes? No. But a thank you for trying to explain would have been cool.

 

The main headquarters of the company doesn't really matter. If they're doing business in your state, then they have to comply, as any given company will have specific guidelines in each area and sometimes even operate under different underwriting companies. For example, one of the companies that I utilize at my agency is Progressive, and they have different names depending on the state (i.e. Progressive West Insurance Company in California, Progressive American Insurance Company in Florida, etc.), so those specific underwriting companies will be the ones to answer to the insurance commissioner of your state, regardless of where they are headquartered.

While I know that you're expecting a different response from whaap, he's been pretty accurate. It's just how insurance works, and while it's not as painless as you were expecting it to be, he's actually provided a lot of insight that even I learned from, despite being in the industry myself, but again just on the agent side (as opposed to the claims side).

By the way, which insurance carrier did you and your husband have, and who did the other driver have?

 

We have State Farm, and she also has State Farm, but she was driving a rental car which was insured by Rental Insurance Services, out of FL. I believe that to be the internal National/Enterprise insurance, from what I could research on the internet. We tried to file a claim under the other driver's State Farm policy, which was listed as her insurance on the police report, but as expected, they referred us back to the rental car insurance as the primary.

I am not disputing that the information you and whaap have given is correct. It is just maddening to be on this side of things and have to go through so much BS for something that *I* see as fairly straightforward. Again, I only see OUR situation at this point, but as I considered how many accidents the rental insurance must deal with every day, the seemingly minuscule amounts of payouts would add up to millions very quickly.

My husband is taking the whole thing very personally, as if the insurance company has done something specifically to US, but he's over-reacting. He's not normally like that, always tells me not to throw good money after bad, etc. but I guess this just struck him in the wrong spot. He did what he thought was the good and honest thing, to respond to the insurance company and trust that they would do the right thing, which is to repair our car, and he does not appreciate being jacked with. He believes their underwriter tricked him into saying what he did not intend to portray, which is likely IMO. He will not talk to someone again in the same trusting way, I'm sure.

I don't know what State Farm will decide about the 20% liability the other company says is ours, nor the discrepancy between what they estimated and our estimate, but I'm not going to worry about it for now. I have other stuff on my plate, got a kid going into his 3rd year of college (out of 5) and one who will be a senior in high school. Too much other stuff to worry about for this to be such a big deal for me.

Anyway, thanks for your help, and thanks to whaap for his also.

 

See, the thing is, I was on the other side of this same accident a few years ago, I was waved across the same street a couple of miles farther east, and there was a city bus in the last lane, farthest from me. I did not know that there was enough space for a car to whip in front of the bus and come speeding up the street just as I crossed over. Bam, I hit her fender. State Farm told me then that I was at fault 100% even if her driving practices were not the best. They paid for her damages without questions. And yet, all of a sudden, it's my husband's fault because someone crossed in front of him the same way I crossed in front of that other car, the only difference is that my husband hit HER car instead of her hitting him, but that's only a matter of a second or two.

Anyway, it's going to be over soon. Thanks for trying to explain and help.

 

Juliane, keep one thing in mind. You have to consider the human factor. (I'm talking about the accident you had that was reversed and State Farm accepted 100% of the fault.) Each company has their procedures and guidelines for handling accidents. However, one claims office could have at least a dozen if not more adjusters handling claims. Your accident was assigned to adjuster A. Had it been assigned to adjuster B it's possible there would have been a different decision made. After adjuster A closed their file and it was reviewed by A's supervisor I doubt if he/she got a memo saying "good job". It's likely the adjuster got a pink memo (I worked for State Farm once upon a time) saying: why did you pay 100% of this claim?

That's just speculation on my part but I've seen adjusters make bad calls many times. A decision made once upon a time by an adjuster does not determine the decision that will be made in the future.

And after all this bantering back and forth I will also say, in the accident your husband had, they're being very liberal in accepting 80% of the damages. If your company handles the damage to your car and you pay your deductible, any percentage your company recovers from the other company they will refund you an equal percentage of your deductible.

I've got a very corney saying: If this is the worst that happens, you've got it made.

Good luck and thanks for the thank you. You're welcome.

 

Whaap -- what other companies did you work for? And what were your experiences with them?

I'm just curious because like I said, I work in insurance as well, but on the agent side, and it's always nice to know which carriers tend to be more cooperative. I utilize a lot of Safeco and Progressive, though for the non-preferred market, we do use Unitrin Specialty, Foremost (formerly Bristol West but owned by Farmers), Dairyland/Viking/Peak/Sentry (name varies depending on state). We also do a bit of Fidelity and CSE (both mostly West Coast states). Any experience with them?

 

My 25 years in claims was first with State Farm in Michigan and later when I moved to San Diego with USAA. I was fortunate as both were very good companies to work for. I've been retired for 22 years now and more than likely there have been a lot of changes in the insurance/claims world that I'm not presently up on.

 

Update: We got the repair done, our insurance paid, we paid the $500 deductible, and State Farm assured us they would try to collect the entire amount from the other driver's rental car insurance company. Next month, it will have been an entire year. We haven't heard anything from State Farm in 3 mos.

:P