Posted by Keith in Washington on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 at 12:38PM :
In Reply to: Re: Ditto here w/ Haggerty posted by MoparNorm on Wednesday, March 08, 2006 at 10:11AM :
Hopefully you never get hit by someone with Progressive insurance. I had a bad experience. If you can believe that they had an adjuster knock on my door 3 hours after the accident. He wanted to write a check right there for my car. My wife had it towed to the house. My wife looked at him and said that I was not coming to the door and that I had just gotten home from the hospital and that he was to promptly remove his butt from our property at that moment without looking at or toughning anything.
He came back later after I forced him into an appointment and really tried to low ball me. It did not work as I had done my home work and showed him my numbers including repair estimates and Blue book values. You could see that he was not happy. I also got after him for knocking on the door so soon after the accident. He simply stated that their company wanted to service me quickly so I could move on. I simply retorted saying that it was impolite to show up that soon and that they were trying to get me to settle before I had a chance to understand the $$$$ that I was out. After that comment he had a hard time looking at me in the eyes. I guess he knew I was right and he got caught.
Remember that the adjuster's job is to minimize the cost to the insurance company. That means they will knowing low ball you.
State Farm attempted it once with me when my son rolled the Willys. It was insured for 8K stated value. It was totaled. They offered 2K. I said no and we went around. I said it was insured at a stated value. Then the truth came out. With State Farm stated value only holds for vehicles that are insured under their classic policy. This was a stated value for a daily driver. Luck for me I had an appraisal for 8K that was 2 years old. Not only that it was done by one of the people that State Farm uses to appraise vehicles. I touched base with the appraiser and he looked at the pictures and said yep still 8K. State Farm was stuck. They paid. An appraisal is worth much more than the couple of hundred it costs.