Filing an Auto Insurance Claim
After you have a serious car accident, one of the things that needs to happen is that you need to file your auto insurance claim. You’re going to have a lot of questions at that point in time, the answers of which may not seem readily available. You’ll be wondering whether your vehicle can be used again, whether your auto insurance company will be cooperative, and what will happen during the claims process.
If you want to make the most out of the situation, there are some things you need to do in order to prepare to file your auto insurance claim:
- Understand your policy ahead of time. The best time to get a handle on your insurance policy is before you need to use it. Chances are pretty good you have a general idea of what sort of auto insurance you have. Still, you should try to familiarize yourself with all of the fine details of your policy, as many of those will determine how things go during the auto insurance claim process. You’re better off knowing that information before the accident, rather than having it explained to you by your insurance company after the fact.
- Figure out your immediate transportation needs. If your auto insurance policy includes rental car coverage, it can help you to have at least a few days to get things together after an accident. A rental car coverage means that you don’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars at the last minute just to get transportation to take you back and forth to work.
- Know your rights. You need to familiarize yourself with your state’s insurance laws. Check with the department of insurance or whatever it’s called in your particular state. Every state has laws that will help protect the citizens of that state from being cheated by an insurance company in the claims process, so find out what your state can do for you.
- Know what your car was worth. The insurance companies use a number of different sources to figure out the actual cash value of your vehicle. If you have some idea of what your car is worth before the accident, it will help you in knowing whether the insurance company’s payout is reasonable.
- Get a fair evaluation of the damage to your car. Your insurance company will make a visual inspection to start the estimation process. Make sure you’re there when it happens so that you can identify things that the insurance adjustor might try to overlook, otherwise you run the risk of having a lower settlement than what you should have.
