Auto insurance company refuses to pay expeses in full, do I have to go to court?
Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at
6:28 pm
leftseat757 asked:
I was in a car accident about a year ago. Other party’s fault. Now I am getting a settlement letter from the other party’s insurance: they’re only willing to pay $500 of $1000 of my car rental bill. They say the car was in the shop unreasonably too long. It was just after the hurricaine last year and all bodyshops were way behind due to all the cars damaged by force majeure. I tried to bargain with them, but they wouldn’t budge. Do I have to take them to court? Is it worth it? What else can I do?
I was in a car accident about a year ago. Other party’s fault. Now I am getting a settlement letter from the other party’s insurance: they’re only willing to pay $500 of $1000 of my car rental bill. They say the car was in the shop unreasonably too long. It was just after the hurricaine last year and all bodyshops were way behind due to all the cars damaged by force majeure. I tried to bargain with them, but they wouldn’t budge. Do I have to take them to court? Is it worth it? What else can I do?
Tagged with: Car Shop • Force Majeure • Insurance
Filed under: Auto Insurance
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!

I would check with your insurance, you might be covered for under insured motorist.
On the other hand, they need to be reasonable in the situation. Maybe a talk with consumer affairs would get them motivated to help. May be a call to your local state insurance commissioner.
What ever happens good luck!
You should file the claim through YOUR insurance company and they will subrogate the claim to the other driver’s company. Yet another reason why you should only deal with your OWN insurance company.
the insurance company is only liable for the time to reasonbly repair your car,
1 week for every thousand
1day for every 4 hours on the repair estimate
the insurance company is not responsible for a shop that cannot handle its work load. you may try going to your shop of choice and asking them to pay some of the bill, all they can say is “no”. sometimes they will absorb some of that cost as customer service, but don’t be hopeful