Anyone dealt with overlapping insurance claims?

velobard · 09-27-06, 03:19

I've been having an incredible run of luck lately. I won't recount the whole thing here, if you're really interested you can see my posts at Need advice, paint or insurance guys help

The result of all this is that I now have overlapping insurance claim. I have a few hail dents on the roof that appear to require repainting and more recently had rocks bounce over my car when a car in front of me lost control in the rain and he skidded into the median and oncoming traffic. All this just a few weeks after my car was completely repainted.

The overlap occurs on the roof, where I have hail from the pending claim mentioned above, and a small dent and paint chip from a flying rock. There are other chips and dents from the rocks, but they are on different parts of the car from the hail damage.

Neither insurance company knows about the other claim. I'm going to take my car to the body shop in the morning for their estimate and I have an appointment to go by Allstate's claim center the following day for their adjuster to see it. The adjuster from my insurance company has already seen the hail damage and sent a check(made out to both me and the body shop), but before the rocks added more chips to my car I'd already started an appeal process to get them to repaint the damage from that since PDR wouldn't fix all the damage. I got word today that sounds like most likely they're going to send out another check to cover that.

Any words of advice on how I should proceed or beware of in all this? BTW, the deductible on my comp claim for the hail is only $100, but I have to admit I'd like to leverage this so I don't have to even pay that since Allstate is liable for overlapping damage.

sspeer · 10-04-06, 01:37

Legally, each claim will cover 1 'incident'.. If insurance company A has a claim for hail damange, they're not going to pay for anything else on that claim, but if you haven't filed a claim for insurance company 2..

What I'd likely do is take the money and get everything fixed (or at least get an estimate)..even if you have to pay a little out of your pocket, it would be worth it not to file a second claim..especially within a short period

Eventually, the new insurance company will find out about a second claim and it may trigger some kind of auditing or fraud investigation..

velobard · 10-04-06, 08:34

At this point I just want to make sure my car is fixed correctly. It's looking even more likely that I'll have to file with my insurance company through my collision coverage in order to twist Allstate's arm to get this settled satisfactorily. I'm not overly excitedabout going back to the body shop that did the work the first time, but that's obviously the path of least resistance. At this point though, we're not even close enough on estimates that I feel like it's worth taking my car in.

BTW, the only reason I filed an appeal with my insurance company to have them repaint the roof was because there was a color change in one or two of the hail dents on the fresh paint. I have confirmation now that they will not be paying anything more on that claim. That's fine, I just want enough to make sure that at this point it is fixed properly. I've already given my new agent a run-down on what sort of mess I have on my hands and he knows about all the claims.