WOT: Changed the title to the Big Story!, The big stupid insurance company vs the lil guy. This is very long...L Options

[rick 918-S]

Last October My youngest son was riding his bike to school. It was snowy and sloppy and his brakes failed as he approched an intersection. He was on the sidewalk riding against traffic. The light turned red for him but he couldn't stop. The car waiting at the light started off. Although the driver of the car my son hit had the right of way she never bothered to look to see if anyone was coming.

So, I'm not arguing my son was mostly in the wrong. Hey, His brakes failed. Here's my beef. The woman stated at the scene she was not going to turn in a claim as she had lots of other damage on her car.

So, she then turns in a claim to her insurance company, that's fine, she's entitled, however were not notified until the end of January and then it's by a collection agency. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/WTF.gif)

The douch at the collection agency comes off as a total prick. He has no clue who he's talking to. He's arging with me about the facts and telling me I shoould just turn this into my home owners insurance. I tell hime to send a proper subrogation demand. He faxes over the estimate I attached here. $ 2000.00! caused by a bike! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/WTF.gif) The photo that came through the fax machine was a black blob.

I contacted the woman's insurance company. To make a long story short I insisted we have the opportunity to settle the damage in good faith. Eventually the insurance rep canned the collection agancy douch bag and sent the photos I attached here.

As you can see the woman is attempting to claim the prior damage she has on her car. Remeber the damage she told my son she already had...

My son, seeing the pending collision turned to the right and hit the quarter panel with his left shoulder. His bike went down and he flew over the trunk lid and landed on the ground behind the car.

So the damage to the rear door and specially the front door was not caused by my son. I confronted the claims rep about this. She is standing her ground and is attempting to charge us full tilt based on her insured word. I ended up going to the rep's supervisor. He asked me to submit what I felt was caused by my son.

Now, Here's what I need. I need a print out showing what is an included and not included operation with regard to refinish time.

Example, I am going to write an estimate for the repair to the quarter panel only. No blend time, masking the rear window, masking the rear bumper.

I know as part of the refinish time, "color tint time" is included. I need this printed out and faxed to me. In the old school crash guides there was an included and not included operation section. I know computer driven software estimating systems have the same thing.
12 hrs on the quarter panel is funny time. In the real world that's a 6 hr repair. I the spirit of settling things, I will give them the funny time.

Oh, and in discussing the estimate with the insurance rep, She agreed that "body pull" was a fraudulent charge. No shit!

My son ended up with a wrecked left shoulder that day. He was on his way to his jury. He's a musician and it was finals week. He ended up on the Dean's Lists. But was so sore a week later he went in for an xray. He's better now but still has some mild pain from time to time. Good thing he's young.

[sww914]

The second I saw that estimate it screamed DRP. Clearly the estimator thinks he can charge whatever he wants because he doesn't have enough review from the carrier. We both know that the sheet metal pull is a load of crap, there isn't enough energy stored in that dent to need a pull at all. He's just trying to fatten up the estimate and knows that the picture looks good enough that the inside adjuster that's looking at it is probably fresh out of college and has never seen a crashed car before except in pictures. The additional previous damage is just a matter of the shop estimator writing up whatever the lady said was related. He didn't care if she was lying, more money to the shop for more repairs.
I'd report the shop to your state's version of the BAR, whoever oversees auto repair to make sure that they're fair. I think it will be easy to prove that their repairs aren't fair. I'd also threten to turn the carrier in to the dept. of Insurance. One of the adjusters that I was good friends with said that in Ca. every report to the DOI costs the insurance company an average of $10K. They try to avoid that.