Is the Insurance Company Giving You Enough Money for Your Car After an Accident?

An insurance company will possibly lowball you on the value of your car in an accident. When in an accident, hopefully property damage is the only issue you have to deal with. If there are injuries, please call us right away to guide you through the claims process so you get every penny you deserve. Otherwise, your property claim should be made to your insurance company. Your company may tell you to just have the claim paid by the other company, but the other company has no other business with you and will often times give you a lowball offer if your car is totaled or they may delay the processing or repairs.

Unlike the company for an at-fault-driver, your company has an incentive to keep you happy. They will often pay the entire car rental bill even if your policy does not have rental or only carries $30.00 a day. They will usually work quickly to get your car assessed and payment to you for its fair value. If repair is possible, they will go to a competent shop that will repair your car quickly and correctly.

Insurance companies will often lowball the value of the vehicle to save money knowing that it would be too time consuming and expensive to hire an attorney and appeal to bump up the value. Illinois Courts rely on the Nada Guide ( Nadaguides.com) and Kelly’s Blue Book (kbb.com) to resolve a value dispute.

You are able to put all of the specifics, options, condition, ratings and mileage into the system and a sales value and trade-in-value will be shown. You should be offered the sale value. The company may show you reports of recent comparable sales that come in much less than the sales value, but there are many ways to discredit those values if it were necessary to have a judge decide the value.

If you are faced with an offer that is well below value or an unreasonable delay in payout or repair, we will be happy to evaluate it to determine whether we can be of assistance. You need to be aware that the insurance policy will have strict deadlines for appeal of a claim decision, so any communication you receive about settlement could trigger the start of the deadline countdown. Please contact us right after this communication to make sure everything necessary to preserve the claim is done correctly.

The next step after the company has made a decision that you need to appeal depends on the insurance policy. Most policies require an out of court arbitration to take place to resolve the dispute. Other policies may require you to directly file a lawsuit which is a lengthy and costly process because you will need a mechanic and/or possibly a car dealer to testify at a jury trial as to the damages and value. If the company has no possible basis for its alleged value except to save themselves money at your expense, you may be entitled to additional punitive damages and/or attorney’s fees.

Please contact our office if you are faced with a claim decision you think is unfair to see if we can assist. Also, remember that you should contact us right away if there is an injury to make sure we can maximize your recovery.