Re: Homeowners Claims
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:17 pm
Hard to Say MT. I know with The Hartford, where I worked for auto, I would go out of my way if I knew what we were offering was bogus. I.e. Had a woman with an old minivan. Our driver drilled her vehicle so The Hartford OWED for her claim. Her vehicle was a total loss. Total Loss claims SUCK!! Instead of making someone "whole" we owed for what the vehicle was worth. Not worth to replace but just worth. Which means we would give her $2500 for that vehicle but that doesn't include the mark up that a dealership would charge for that exact car. That may be where your difference came. Some adjusters were better at settling those than others. For me I would have requested dealership quotes for that same make, model and year. Usually that can bridge the gap between the two parties involved but that is all discretionary. Some people can just be pricks about it because they hate their life. Personally, I would have filed a DOI complaint. That always gets the boss' boss attention
Most of the time I would have been able to get things settled on repairing a vehicle but I knew we were screwing her but my hands were tied and her vehicle was so old I couldn't get dealership quotes on it. Think it was a 95-96 mini van. I couldn't get it past my supervisor. So I flat out told her to go through her insurance carrier because they would take care of what she was asking for and then we were tied to paying back her insurance carrier.
Now with Auto claims, being made whole (also known as indemnifying someone) they basically owed to get the vehicle back on the road. People would argue OEM parts or no aftermarket parts, which I can understand to an extenct. If your vehicle is 1-2 years old we would owe for OEM parts but anything older than that we could use after market parts. I think people have a huge misunderstand of what an aftermarket part really is. There are several varieties of aftermarket parts. There are refurbished OEM parts which are considered aftermarket parts, there are the cheap crappy aftermarket parts (which is what people think of) and there is the in between. The in between is typically really simple. Say Ford orders 10,000 bumpers for JOKERS INC. Well, JOKERS INC. doesn't typically make 10,000 parts and call it a day. Maybe they make 14,000 parts. Ford only buys and stamps there little logo on 10,000 of those parts and the other 4,000 parts are shipped to another company who sells them for cheaper because they don't have the ford logo on it. A lot of companies are going that route now. Or the after market companys buy the patent for the ford mould and use that mold to make the part.... same exact part at a fraction of the cost. And most of the time you aren't even going to see the part that was used. I know we used aftermarket parts on a ton of cars and I basically told the customer if you can tell the part is aftermarket when you get your vehicle back we will change it out. Typically never had any push back on that.
Hope my ramblings helped a little. Basically it comes down to discretion and hoping you got an adjuster that isn't a douche
Most of the time I would have been able to get things settled on repairing a vehicle but I knew we were screwing her but my hands were tied and her vehicle was so old I couldn't get dealership quotes on it. Think it was a 95-96 mini van. I couldn't get it past my supervisor. So I flat out told her to go through her insurance carrier because they would take care of what she was asking for and then we were tied to paying back her insurance carrier.
Now with Auto claims, being made whole (also known as indemnifying someone) they basically owed to get the vehicle back on the road. People would argue OEM parts or no aftermarket parts, which I can understand to an extenct. If your vehicle is 1-2 years old we would owe for OEM parts but anything older than that we could use after market parts. I think people have a huge misunderstand of what an aftermarket part really is. There are several varieties of aftermarket parts. There are refurbished OEM parts which are considered aftermarket parts, there are the cheap crappy aftermarket parts (which is what people think of) and there is the in between. The in between is typically really simple. Say Ford orders 10,000 bumpers for JOKERS INC. Well, JOKERS INC. doesn't typically make 10,000 parts and call it a day. Maybe they make 14,000 parts. Ford only buys and stamps there little logo on 10,000 of those parts and the other 4,000 parts are shipped to another company who sells them for cheaper because they don't have the ford logo on it. A lot of companies are going that route now. Or the after market companys buy the patent for the ford mould and use that mold to make the part.... same exact part at a fraction of the cost. And most of the time you aren't even going to see the part that was used. I know we used aftermarket parts on a ton of cars and I basically told the customer if you can tell the part is aftermarket when you get your vehicle back we will change it out. Typically never had any push back on that.
Hope my ramblings helped a little. Basically it comes down to discretion and hoping you got an adjuster that isn't a douche