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.

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! 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.

Second page

For the day crew. Anybody?

People suck. I am not sure how you would go about this without an attorney. But get any prior police reports and insurance claims/accident history on the car. Then any reciepts from where the prior work was done with copies of cashed checks. Maybe your home insurance agent can assist, then get her for insurance fraud. Hope all goes well Rick.

Ya, Clearly Fraud. And her carrier doesn't want to back down from their position and admit they over paid the claim.

I got what I needed for paint time so disgrard the request.


Just for fun I will post the letter I'm sending to her carrier.

Oh, The collection douch bag kept pushing me to turn this into my home owners insurance. Ya, Right for $ 2000.00? Buzz off dork.

Wait til you see my counter offer!

In the first picture there are white scrapes on the quarter. I doubt your son had any white paint on him and also if it's his left shoulder how did he go over the trunk? I don't think he did any of that damage.

Here's my response. I removed the names and insurance company name. I'm far from an english major so don't critique my grammer or structure.

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

Here's the supporting documents..

Too bad it doesn't get any better with this failing economy, people are just trying milk others for money one way or another; legally or illegally

Does your son ride his bike on the street now? I hope so. The side walk is no place to ride a bike, unless it's at a walking pace. I'm unclear about the law on that area in this country, but any time I exit from a drive way with somewhat obscured clearance vision, I always fear somebody on a bicycle ramming into the side of my car, for which I could have done nothing, and if the bicyclist gets hurt you know you're going to have to go to court.

Anyway, it really sucs when somebody says one thing, then turns around and tries to screw you. Being reasonable is a disappearing term in this country/world.

Best of luck, I hope it turns out to your advantage.

Because of the oneway streets around the area, if he would have been riding with traffic he would have had to ride about 6 blocks out of his way to get to school. He is normally careful. Were not saying he was in the right. Were contesting the amount of damage this woman and her insurance company is claiming.

Hey she's entitled to recover for the loss and damage, but not more than my son caused .

Yep in NYC it's illegal to even straddle your bike on the sidewalk. It's also dangerous for riders since they are crossing roads at a very fast pace and constantly surprising drivers. Best to ride on the shoulder even though some motorist still think thats illegal.

I would get an attorney and fight it. The person is obviously scamming you so fight back and even if it cost you in the end so what you will have cost the lady her time and money and not made her scam worth it.

I love taking people to court and love fighting the system. It's a big joke so take advantage of it. Hell counter sue the lady for money lost and emotional stress.

Arent these boys just great.
I was in court last week, in a school hearing today...the fun keeps on going and going...

We have lost two cars already...lol

R

DOUCHE and yeah you are dealing with the upper crust of doucheness. Nail em to the floor Rick, you can talk circles around these douches all day long when it comes to his stuff

Just my point of view as a bodyman, but at best you should be paying to blend the rear door and R+Iing whatever is involved, but no repair time on it just based on where the damage is. Your best course of attack would be the insurance company's failure to communicate and the obvious adding of unrelated damage. However you say he turned right and flew over the trunk, whats to stop his bike from the scraping down the right side of her car before it came to a rest. Im not saying it did but by the description you can see why this would be a hard case to fight.

Good luck
Nick

If you had the ability, it might be worth trying to speak with one of the car owner's neighbors to see if any of them noticed the prior damage and could testify or do a declaration regarding that. Just a thought. Good luck -

I understand your point about blend time. I owned a shop for 18 years and have been an insurance adjuster now for 15 yrs. So I've seen both sides of the fence. As a shop owner I would push for blend time, mlding R&R, extra masking time body shop supply's and what ever else I thought I could get. Those are profit builders. Body shop need to do this.

The body shop estimate I attached is a perfect example. This is a direct pay shop for this insurance company. They clearly have a comfortable relationship with this carrier. If you look at the estimate it's fill of funny time. They listed as the first item on the estimate, "body pull" as a body guy you know this requires setting up the car on the bench and making a pull.

When I called this line item into question the insurance company noticed it was on there and removed it. Notice the manual correction in the estimate. The claims rep did that not me.

The second item they list is the right quarter panel. In my shop, I would have written the panel replacement time. 12 hrs. to do a section. I would have convinced the adjuster this was fair as I was saving the cost of the part. Most adjusters don't work on cars so they were easy to convince. However, as a bodyman you know 60% of that dent will pop out with a body shop version of a suction cup in the first 2 minutes of repair. The rest of the panel can worked out in 2 hours. That leaves the tech 2-3 hrs to finish the filler to 180 grit.

Now, a good tech can beat book time by 2/3. At least my guys could. That's how shops make their money. Good negotiation, and fast workers. I'm not faulting the shop for doing what they need to, I'm faulting the insurance company for not correcting them prior to the start of repairs. That's their adjusters roll. That's why they are employed. Specially when then fully intend to subrogate this claim. The money they are demanding is not fair and honest. I should not have to pay for their lack of oversite.

I agree with your opinion with regard to blend time. This makes the shop's job an easier sell to their customer. It makes it easier to match without spending time allowed in the refinish time for correction. First, less time spent and more time allowed. The body shop profits. Nothing wrong with that, but not on my dime.

From a liability perspective, there is a function in the paint time as shown in the ADP opperations guide I attached for correcting paint. Considering this is a 2001 model car and subject to fade, poor paint maintanence, and other contributing factors, I should not be required to pay blend time when color correction is part of the refinsh procedure.

And with regard to the damage to the doors, it's pure physics. My son is traveling 90 deg. from the vehicle. The vehicle is moving off way from him to his right, He turned his bike to the right to avoid hitting head on and took the imact with his left shoulder. He told me this was a concious decision to avoid the head on. He told me he was trying to bail and roll over the trunk thinking that was the least threating tact. He hit the quarter panel first but that was not what he wanted to have happen.

Do you think the bike kept going forward from a near 90 deg impact when he hit the car and flew over the trunk lid landing on the ground behind the car in the traffic lane? or do you think it's more likely the bike bounced off the tire and flew away from the car? The fork was mangled and the front wheel was bent. Think about billards. Have you ever seen the cue ball hit anything and stay on course?

I told the insurance company it would have taken some serious electo magnets connected to the car to change the laws of phisics and gravity.

Wow... Things might have changed since I left Minnesota but 92K miles! That is a lot of miles on a car in all that salt and snow... It was probably pretty worked over to begin with...

Your English is not that bad.

What reason do they give for contacting you so late in the game? You have had no opportunity to examine the car with the damage - only photos? I would counter with a fraud claim against the car owner. As it is, you have no opportunity to mitigate their claim of your son's damages. They simply send you a bill and say it is a done deal. Write a check! Not.

Thanks, I never finished school. I attribute my communication skills to the penguins that beat me repetedly with their rulers and open palms in catholic school. They still couldn't get me to write with my right hand though..

That's my point. As a liability claims rep, I was required to send a written notice to the offending party with a signed return reciept notifying the other party of the companies intent. The letter would always suggest they contact their insurance company if that had it, however we would be looking to settle. I didn't close my file and send this to the subro dept until I did my job first. I think the rep was in way over her head and did not do her job in a timely manor. Then when the thing sat and festored on her desk for a couple months she booted it out the door to collection. Her file notes probably show very little or no effort to make contact and resolve this.

If we go to court, which I fully intend to do all her notes are discoverable.

In any event, I at least managed to get the collection action terminated.

Rick, is this how the scene was?

Check your laws on this as well. In Washington a bicycle is still a pedestrian at an intersection and if you hit one in your car you will be charged and you will be at fault. My brother is going through something like this where the kid rode out into the street and rather than the kid being at fault my brother was given a ticket for failure to stop for a pedestrian. He had to fight and and won but the kid got off scot free... other than injuries he received.

Hope this works out for you. Sounds like you're dealing with some real swell people

Insurance companies suck...people suck. I don't know how old your son is but the part that bothers me moest is;

" My youngest son was riding his bike to school. It was snowy and sloppy".

Why is he riding a bike to school if it's snowing??

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.

People ride mountain bikes to school and work in MPLS in the snow and rain all the time. This is not unusual behaviour. These are tougher people than you can probably imagine. Where he erred was in being on the sidewalk instead of the street as bikes do not belong on sidewalks however, if there was plowed snow along the roadway, riding on the road would have been a suicidal act in my opinion.

True, maybe California has softened me up. I used to walk and ride my bike to school in 3rd grade in Boston.

Nowadays being a parent in today's world, i can't imagine my son or daughter going to school on their own (before high school)...even on a beautiful sunny day.

Times have changed.

Yes, My son told me he ended up in the middle of the driving lane behind the car, he jumped up and grabbed his bike that was laying in the street by him. He had traffic barreling down on him. He thought he was going to get run over.

Ya, he's a tough kid but he is also one of those college age kids that doesn't want to pollute, eat meat or make waves. That's fine for him. I'll eat his share of steak and burn his gas in my 914. And as far as making waves.... Well I think we know what's up there.

you got their number!

Just an update and an end to this story. If you read through the thread you know I was attempting to settle an inflated claim for damage resulting from an accident my son was involved in. We checked our bank account and discovered the insurance company processed our check. So... We win!

Just a lesson for all of you. If you are involved in an accident and you get a subrogation demand, don't just assume there is no defense or chance to review and reduce the amount of the demand. Insurance companies on average use the shoot gun approch. There is almost always something wrong with the demand amount or the percentage you owe.

Demand= $1959.40 our offer and check amount= $ 624.60 We reduced the demand $ 1334.80

Does that mean the car will only get the damage where you think your son hit it or will the insurance pay to fix it all or just give the insured the 600.00 and let them do this again to someone else?

The car was brought into the insurance companies prefered shop. The shop does not need to wait for the insurance company to come out and inspect the damage. They fix the vehicle and send photos and a bill to the insurance company. So the vehicle was repaired long before we received notice.

The insurance company paid the full bill. They will either need to try and get the money back from their insured, contact them and try to apply a second deductible or take up the ass for not inspecting the vehicle and the facts of the loss prior to the completion of repairs. I'm guessing...

Glad it worked out for you and your son.
I guess having a quick draw with your cell phone camera is not a bad thing these days. Hard thing is to calm down ones nerves after an incident.

Rawk On!

As i see it Rick: there biggest mistake was to mess around with you.

Glad it worked out well. Is your son's shoulder well now?

At 16 my son had similar run in with a tree on a motor cycle, ( he wasn't

allowed to ride) today at 37 he has lasting affects . Have your boy checked
out!
Dave