Bound to happen sooner or later

Not sure how commercial insurance works or Progressive but last year after moving to Toledo my wife and I were both involved in accidents in my 350Z. First I was in a parking lot at the grocery store with the drivers door open when a jack___ in a Jeep came flying though and tore it completely off the car, twisted the A pillar, destroyed the hood and left fender. State Farm said it was his fault and that it would not affect our insurance rates. 3 days after getting it out of the body shop my wife is sitting at a red light and gets rear ended by a chick with no insurance. Of course it was her fault but I'm still waiting on my $1000 deductible. (FYI, we bought two old beater cars to drive and parked the nice vehicles in the back garage till we moved home)

Anyway 3 months later when my annual renewal came in the mail from State Farm the bill was DOUBLE what it had been. I immediately called my agent and she said that they had not "raised" our rates but do to being involved in two accidents even though they were not our fault we lost all our discounts including our homeowners policy and our rental property insurance. So the rates stayed the same but the discounts from the rate got taken away. So if your getting any discounts be forewarned you may loose those. I'm 47 with an absolute spotless driving record, never had a moving violation ticket and other than the a-hole in the Jeep tearing the side of the car off have never had an accident but I'm now paying more for insurance on my 350Z than I was on a Corvette when I was 16!

My insurance went from $1494 every 6 months (that's everything, cars, boat, house, rentals) to $3198 every 6 months!!

We have tried calling every insurance company under the sun and because we now have two claims in one month they all come back with outrageous rates. Even our homeowners policy, other companies count the auto claims against us.

 

When you have time to part with her for a few months I have a 59 ElCamino, 64 Short bed Chevy C10 and 68 Ford F-100 needing her attention!

Oh, almost forgot the 49 Chevy 2 ton dump truck but not sure we want to change anything since it's completely original including the oil bath air cleaner and centrifugal oil cleaner. The only thing that's ever been changed is the needle on the speedometer, the original broke off sometime in the late 60's so around the early 70's my dad got a piece of glow-in-the-dark spru left over from one of my platic models and glued it to the old needle. It's not balanced so below 30 mph it just bounces around 0 then once it gets a good bump above 30 it falls over to 60 and bounces around. There's no way in hell the thing could get close to 60 unless running in Georgia overdrive so I've never bothered to fix it due to the sentimental value of the goofed up needle.

 

So there you have it folks, real world examples of why you shouldn't involve your insurance company if you're not at fault., especially property damage only claims. You may not have a choice if you have injuries, depending on your state laws.

 

And trust me, we didn't want to involve our insurance company but the guy in the Jeep that hit me denied fault so I either had to file a claim or eat $8500 in repairs and the lady (using that word loosely, you should see the text messages from her when she got the bill for what she deemed a "minor fender bender") had no insurance. She insisted that she got to decide who, where and when the work would get done so I schooled her a little on running into another car when you don't have insurance. She is the one who called my insurance company to try and find out what our deductible was because she knew the law and she was only responsible for paying our deductible. Well that started the ball rolling on the second claim. She then blew up at us calling us every name in the book because "we were lying to her, no one has a $1000 deductible", she had it in her head that deductibles are $250 and that's all she'd have to pay. Well I wound up paying the $1000, she lost her license and now State Farm has a judgment against her for $5000.

State Farm said that it's unlikely I will ever see a penny of the deductible from her but hey they doubled my insurance rates and will make back everything they paid in less than a year so why would they fight for my money.

If I still lived in Ohio I would make her life a living hell calling the cops every time she leaves the driveway on her suspended license and likely still without insurance plus I'd drag her through court filing claims for everything under the sun just out of principal. Had she come across with a different attitude in the beginning instead of the "entitled" attitude she had we probably would have let it go and just got the car fixed, people make mistakes, she's a very young single parent of 3 very young children but her attitude dictated the course of action. When the state suspended her license she started texting my wife again telling her that we were ruining her life and calling us names all over again.

The kicker to all of this, my 1 of only 180 of that particular car built was valued at around $18.5k but now that it has had two "major" insurance claims against it the retail value of it has dropped to less than $9k. I just tried to trade it in a couple weeks ago on a new Raptor and they would only give me $6500 for it due to the CarFax report being bad. My 17 year old is happy though, I was so p'd off when I got back from the dealership I threw him the keys. The two older kids are now p'd at me because they got a VW Jetta and Chrysler New Yorker for their first cars.

 

In 2014 I had 3 claims that totaled almost $30k. I had 2 deer hits (new hood both times plus other damage) and I got caught in a bad storm in KS and the paint on my truck got sandblasted (repaint everything on right side, polish alum, new rear fenders). Each time I turned it in and paid my $1000 deductible. So after all of that when renewal time came around my insurance went from $956 a month to $472 a month because I don't run CA anymore. Insurance companies are there for a reason. Use them and make them do their job. They certainly won't give you a discount if you don't. A reputable company won't raise your rate from something you had no control over.

 

Well you'd be right at home then with my 68, long regular bed, 390 with an automatic. As for the Camino, even scored two NOS rear fenders to replace the ones with rust. Car (truck) only has 47k original miles. My C10 was my first vehicle, my dad bought it for me when I was in grade school, we parked it in one of the airplane hangars and rebuilt it from the ground up including a spanking new inline 6 crate motor.

 

paint materials seem to be getting outrageous these days. i repainted my jaguar this winter. using dupont chroma base. just the base clear was was over 800. about 1100 total in just material costs. thats like double the cost of years ago.







i haven't had a insurance claim in probably the last 5 years but the last one i did have i was with progressive on my personal auto policy and i felt they treated me fairly and had no problems with them. good luck to you i hope koshs insurance does not give you any grief.