Had a mishap with the Box this weekend, and am trying to figure out my options regarding insurance. (No injuries, happy to report…just a serious fender bender.) I’m afraid the car, which has been running great, has the great potential for being totaled, an outcome I’d love to avoid. Have had this ride for 11 years and have never tired of it.
At this point she was flat-bedded to where I’d get any body work done, but they’re not open til Monday. (Actually, they were open for a few hours on Sat, and I did go in and talk to one guy. He said the person who’ll get things going with the estimate will be in come Monday morning.)
My problem is that over the 40-some years I’ve been driving I’ve very rarely submitted any claims and have no experience with this situation where a car I don’t want totaled very likely may be. I guess my questions probably would be:
1) I’ve got a $1k deductible on my collision insurance. Are insurance companies at all open to offers to up the amount I’d personally be willing to fork out towards the repair? This all assumes that there’s no structural damage (if there is, sentiment aside, I’d readily go along with the “totaled” assessment). From what I’ve read so far, it sounds like it’s kind of a black/white thing---not totaled and they fix it, totaled and they don’t. But if it’s just bumper/fender/headlight repair that’s needed to make the car whole again, it seems crazy they wouldn’t be open to me tossin’ in a few more bucks to bring about the fix. The car would then be no less sound than it was prior to the accident.
2) Is there any illegality to working with the body shop, offering to pay part myself (ie directly to them) and have them then submit an estimate that the insurance company IS likely to result in a ‘go-ahead’ to fixing the car? (Sounds kind of bribe-like, I know, but there’s really no intent to defraud anyone here. I just want to get a car that I'm pretty sure is fixable fixed.) I haven’t talked to ‘the man’ at the body shop---I have no idea what their policy would be in such circumstances. Is it likely they’d be willing to talk to me about the estimate prior to submitting it to the insurance company?
3) If a car is totaled, apparently there is a process by which one can buy it back from the insurance company? How does that work? I’m not sure I’d do that, but if that happens and I have the car repaired elsewhere (this body shop has already indicated they have a policy against doing repairs on cars declared totaled), will it have a salvage title? Is it likely the insurance company I've been with for decades would still be willing to insure it?
4) I’ve got a rental clause in my insurance contract, and I’ve not done that yet. At the moment my older son has a spare vehicle he’s willing to loan me. If I continued to use it instead of burning up additional insurance company funds, does that help my case negotiating any of this?
I guess what I really just need to know boils down to this: What points should I bring up and what questions should I ask, to both the insurance company and the body shop, and (I guess), what order do I need to be doing these things?
I don’t know if I’m crazy to even push this angle. It IS a fair amount of miles on the car…it’d probably make more sense to negotiate the buyout and put the bucks towards a replacement. Like I said, though, I still really love this car---for a 16-year old car it still looks great (other than the obvious current problem), and mechanically it feels like it could go another 95k.