Insurance Claims Adjusting 101

The Times- Standard's legal columntis, H. Dennis Beaver, writes today about dealing with insurance claims adjusters. More specifically, auto claims. Some info there that goes against what most of us have been led to believe. For instance, according to his source, adjusters aren't intimidated by threats to hire a lawyer. Seems a bit counter intuitive to me, but whatever.

I've only dealt with one adjuster in my time and he was nice enough. After our old Volkwagon Rabbit Diesel got crunched, while parked, he called us, then came out to photograph the car. The body shop estimate, as expected, said repairs would cost more than the value of the car. 

The adjuster came up with a settlement of $1000, or was it $2000? I wasn't sure what to do and called my insurance gal at State Farm. No, it wasn't Jake, but the gal started trying to assess the car's worth. As she went down a list and I answered Yes or No, she kept giving a new total. She finally got down to two to four hundred dollars. At that point I had to tell the other adjuster their settlement was acceptable.

I went to his office at Walnut and Campton Drive out in Cutten for whatever reason and had to tell him; I felt his was a fair offer, but the way this whole thing works stinks. We had a reliable car that got great mileage. Now we're going to have to take out a loan to get a new car and it likely won't be as reliable s the one that we had. He seemed sympathetic and told me I could contest the claim. I figured I'd just cut my losses and accept their offer.

I don't know that I would have come out any better had we hired a lawyer.