Some years ago we got into a car accident.
Fortunately I called the police and had the officer file a car accident report. As a result, a full report of the accident was on file for my insurance company to use in their case against the person who hit us. If we didn’t have a report on what caused the accident, the other driver, then we would have been responsible for the deductible.
Not calling the police would have cost us $1000!
How is that possible? The other driver rear ended us putting the fault of the accident on him. Without that police report stating what happened, and that the other driver got a summons for driving too close, then we would have shared the blame in the accident. That would have meant we’d have to pay our $1,000 deductible.
A little while after we repaired the car from the accident we got a check in the mail from the car insurance company for $1,000.
Whew! Everything worked as it was supposed to and we got our insurance deductible back.
Our insurance company paid for all of the repairs but we had to pay $1,000 of the repairs out of pocket. I was afraid everything would drag out and it would take even longer to get the deductible back. Or even worse, something would happen and we wouldn’t get it back. In fact the collision company that fixed our car stressed that we should firmly follow up with our insurance since some companies keep the deductible. You always hear about some paperwork SNAFU that causes you to not get your insurance money. Thankfully our insurance was great and they paid us back without any problems.
So you understand, our insurance takes all of the information about the accident and basically sues the other driver’s insurance company for the damages. The success of the case determined whether we got our deductible back. If our insurance couldn’t win it back then we wouldn’t get it back either. Fortunately that wasn’t the case. A big part of that was having a police report saying the other driver rear-ended us.
Some of you might wonder why our deductible was so high?
I set it up that way with my insurance so I would have lower payments. Since we had the $1,000 socked away we could afford to have a high deductible. A higher insurance deductible is a great way to save on your car insurance.
This is a great example of why it’s important to have adequate savings! If I couldn’t back up the deductible I’d be paying higher insurance OR I might have to find the money somewhere else such as a credit card. That would not have been good.
If you are going the higher deductible route to save on your car insurance make sure you have that deductible handy in savings.
So to recap: Make sure you have the police at a car accident. And raise your car insurance deductible as much as you can afford in order to get lower car insurance payments. Also have enough savings to cover your deductible should you ever need to pay it.
photo credit: curly_exp( l)osure
How smart you were to get the officer to file an accident report! Thanks for passing along that information to others.
You are smart to have a high deductible on your insurance, since you have planned and can afford it.
Yes, it is very important to file a police report for any damage or accident to a car. The insurance company basically looks at it like with more faith. They feel if you actually filed a report then it is 100% true and you are not trying to scam them. There are so many insurance frauds that happen on a daily basis, the police report just give proof. Congrats on saving $1000 as well.
That’s very smart of you to sock away the deductible just in case something happens, which something did… Many people don’t do this which brings some to an issue where they cannot collect on a claim since they don’t have the cash on hand to pay the deductible.